This screening presents two short ghost films: Amanda Nell Eu’s It’s Easier to Raise Cattle (2017) and Bo Wang’s An Asian Ghost Story (2023). In both, a pontianak—a female, vampire-like ghost from Malay folklore, believed to be the spirit of a woman who died due to male violence or childbirth—makes an appearance.
In Eu’s film, she takes the form of a rebellious Malaysian teenage girl who spends most of her time smoking in a tree, haunted by the trauma of sexual violence. In Wang’s film, she inhabits the hair of a wig, one of several ghostly figures trapped in temporal and spatial purgatories shaped by Asia’s late 20th-century modernisation.
SCREENING PROGRAMME:
7pm doors open
7.15pm Introduction by Liang Luscombe
7.30pm It’s Easier to Raise Cattle (2017) dir. Amanda Nell Eu
8.10pm An Asian Ghost Story (2023) dir. Bo Wang
This event is free but places are limited! Please register via the EVENT LINK
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DRIVEWAY is a new performance program at KINGS Artist-Run of monthly public events such as performances, film screenings, poetry readings, and more, hosted in the KINGS driveway. In 2025 this initiative is supported by the City of Melbourne through the Annual Arts Grants Program.