Rex Vs Singh
Co-directed by John Greyson, Ali Kazimi, Richard Fung
Screening and panel discussion
Spinning Wheel Film Festival
Royal Ontario Museum
100 Queen’s Park, Toronto
October 12, 2008, 7pm
About Rex Vs Singh:
Split-screen experiemental video features four versions of the same 1915 Vancouver court case
Length: 30 min
Format: High Definition
In 1915, two Sikh mill-workers, Dalip Singh and Naina Singh, were entrapped by undercover cops and accused of sodomy. Their trial–held less than a year after the infamous Komagata Maru incident of 1914, in which the ship carrying 376 migrants from British India was turned away–becomes a fascinating case study of Vancouver power relations: how police corruption, racism, homophobia, and a covert “whites-only” immigration policy, conspired to maintain the status quo of this colonial port city.
This split-screen experimental video stages scenes from their trial, told four times: first as a period drama, second as a documentary investigation of the case, third as a musical agit-prop, and fourth, identical to the first, but without actors.
Co-directed with Ali Kazimi (Continuous Journey, Narmada: A Valley Rises) and Richard Fung (Sea in the Blood, Chinese Characters)
