Back in July last year, I enrolled in a short digital filmmaking course offered by the Objectifs Centre for Photography and Film, a place where I had organised the Walter Benjamin reading group for a few years. I figured it was high time for me to learn the nuts and bolts of cinema. Led by the Singaporean filmmaker Ric Aw whose patience knew no bounds, we were taught scriptwriting, how to set up a digital camera (a Sony A7) and not crush our fingers when propping up the tripod before stepping out in the world to shoot, each taking turns as actors, directors, DOP, and boom operators on a film we storyboarded together. With the same raw footage (rushes), we went our separate ways to independently edit and put together our respective short film. The outcome was a collective of films that all shared the same premise, concerning a man torn by his passion for clouds and his corporate job counting them, but each made with the editor’s idiosyncratic narrative structure and post-production sensibilities. Below is my short film, ‘Cloud Counter’, made with my fellow students Zhao Lei, Gideon Swee, Satwik Divyakarti, and Jesstine Seah:
‘Cloud Counter’ (2025)
Alicia Izharuddin 