MS Speaks: Before we celebrate Filmhouse, we need to reckon with how The Projector died
Five months ago, The Projector shut its doors under the weight of debt, rising costs, and an entertainment landscape that is, in the cinema’s words, “unforgiving” to anything that isn’t loud, franchised, or algorithm-approved.
Singapore mourned loudly. There were many social media tributes, nostalgic posts, and even a petition to save the cinema, all clamouring the collective insistence that something important had been lost.
Now, Filmhouse is moving into the exact same space at Golden Mile Tower, with familiar faces behind the scenes — and suddenly, the mood has shifted. Relief. Optimism. Closure. As if the wound has healed simply because something else is standing where the body used to be.
Source: 周家豪 on Google Maps
I don’t share that optimism. In fact, I don’t think we deserve it yet.
Before we celebrate Filmhouse, we need to sit with an uncomfortable truth: The Projector didn’t die suddenly. It was slowly abandoned.
Love (alone) can’t rent you a space in Golden Mile
For more than a decade, The Projector was held up as proof that Singapore had an indie soul — a rare space where arthouse films, documentaries, local cinema, and offbeat programming could exist outside the Marvel-Disney-Netflix industrial complex.
Beyond a cinema, it was also a cultural third space, hosting a variety of festivals that span beyond film, including poetry slams, drag shows, charity fundraisers, and flea markets.
It was a place of intentional creativity beyond the mainstream.
And yet, when it closed owing more than a million dollars to creditors, the shock felt strangely performative. Because if we’re being honest, the warning signs were there for years.
Source: theprojectorsg on Instagram
We loved The Projector conceptually. We just didn’t love it consistently enough to sustain it.
Singapore is very good at romanticising indie spaces after they die. We excel at grief in hindsight.
We talk about “what this place meant to us”, how it shaped our tastes, our identities, our memories, but we’re far less reliable when it comes to showing up on a quiet weekday, paying full price, and choosing to step out of the house for a theatre experience than clicking a button for the next show streaming.
Source: Reddit
Support, here, has always been emotional before it was economic.
But love alone can’t pay the bills. It certainly wasn’t able to cover the 11-year-old indie cinema’s S$1.2 million debt, which left it voluntarily liquidating.
You can’t slap a different name on the same problem and call it solved
So when Filmhouse was announced — framed as a hopeful new chapter, a revival, a phoenix rising from the same concrete floor — the relief felt premature. Comforting. Almost suspiciously neat.
Because what exactly has changed?
The same city. The same audience habits. The same “unforgiving” economics of running an indie cinema in Singapore.
Source: filnhousesg on Instagram
Filmhouse isn’t the problem. Let’s be clear about that. A new indie cinema opening is, on paper, a good thing.
It takes courage to try again in a space that just swallowed its predecessor whole. But the speed at which we’re rushing to celebrate it reveals something unsettling: we’re eager to move on without learning anything, because a replacement is easier than a reckoning.
But a new name does not equal a new reality.
Source: filmhousesg on Instagram
If another indie cinema exists, then The Projector’s death becomes less confronting. Less indicting. It allows us to believe that nothing fundamental needs to change — that indie spaces will simply keep reappearing, regardless of how we treat them.
That culture, somehow, is endlessly renewable even when support is not.
This belief is precisely what kills indie spaces.
We want indie culture without indie responsibilities
We’ve built a cultural ecosystem where grief substitutes commitment. Where attendance spikes only during festivals, special screenings, or when it’s the last hurrah.
Here, indie spaces exist for identity signalling, but not necessarily for regular patronage.
We treat these spaces like lifestyle accessories: nice to have, aesthetically pleasing, emotionally affirming, but fundamentally optional.
We want the existence of indie culture without the responsibility of keeping it alive.
Source: Edward Salon on Google Maps
This lack of accountability extends beyond the cinemas. We are a culture that replaces instead of repairs. We don’t mend; we throw away and shop again. We cut people off instead of doing the hard talk. We ghost instead of explaining why something didn’t work. We forego the responsibility for convenience.
So, of course, the cinema industry is struggling.
The subscription industrial complex — Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO Go and their endless scroll — has us clasped firmly in its talons. It’s easier to subscribe than to show up. Easier to stream than to commit.
Ownership carries responsibility; subscriptions don’t.
Source: freestocks on Unsplash
And that same mindset feeds directly into the complacency we carry towards our indie spaces. Get a new thing to replace the old. Feel better. Move on. Never think too hard about what was lost — or why.
This is concerning because Filmhouse risks becoming a salve. A way to feel better without doing better.
If Filmhouse thrives, that’s wonderful. It deserves a fighting chance. But pretending that its arrival somehow redeems us — or closes the chapter on The Projector — is dishonest.
Because without a real shift in how audiences show up, support, and commit, we’re not witnessing a renaissance. We’re watching a repeat.
Source: filmhousesg on Instagram
And if Filmhouse struggles — or worse, collapses — in a few years, will we be surprised? Or will we simply mourn again, write another round of heartfelt posts, and wait for the next indie space to rise from the ashes?
A loss worth sitting longer for
There’s something almost cruel about how quickly comfort has returned.
Five months is barely enough time to process what was lost, let alone understand why. Yet here we are, already clapping again, already framing this as resilience instead of repetition.
Maybe Singapore needs to sit with this loss a little longer. Not as punishment, but as education. Because until audiences learn that indie spaces survive on sustained, boring, unglamorous support — not just love letters after the fact — nothing actually changes.
Another indie cinema won’t fix what Singapore let die.
Only accountability will.
Also read: The Projector shutters suddenly on 19 Aug, announcement of closure made on same day
The Projector shutters suddenly on 19 Aug, announcement of closure made on same day
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Featured image adapted from Google Maps & filmhousesg on Instagram.
