its a very humble industry. we’re not known for much in the way of cultural exports. the comedians and creatives in sg very much swim against the current and i respect them a lot for choosing to do that, knowing the most success they’ll have is tiny in the grand scheme of things. but they do it because they must. i wish all would find their passions like them.
I was worried by your comment about the cropping, as I've often seen overzealous cropping on restorations and rereleases. I don't think there is cause to worry on this one, the print they restored from is Open Matte [0] and would not normally be projected like that, rather it would be projected in a widescreen crop like the crop shown. I suspect they did the restoration on the Open Matte version and stored that for future.
"Despite being merely 25 years old, the picture and sound negatives of Money No Enough could no longer be found, and the restoration had to be carried out using two 35 mm release prints from the AFA’s collection."
This is so saddening though that the negatives of a major movie are lost after such a short amount of time. Most movies are made by bringing together a lot of people for a very short amount of time and then everyone moves onto the next project. Everyone is usually ecstatic if something gets a cinema release in the first place. Nobody is looking at the long-term archival. The fact that so many negatives from movies have actually survived is often astounding to me.
I love low budget movies from Hong-Kong, Singaporean movies have evaded me so far, they pretty rarely come by in Eastern-Europe.