Daniel Hui

Daniel Hui is a filmmaker and writer. A graduate of the film programme at the California Institute of the Arts, he is one of the founding members of 13 Little Pictures, a critically acclaimed independent film collective in Singapore. He has made four feature-length films: Eclipses (2013), Snakeskin (2015), Demons (2019), and Small Hours of the Night (2024).

Daniel Hui participated in “Greatest” Short Films of All Time 2025, a first-ever poll of its kind as a collective love letter to the art of short-form moving image. yanco and Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg, in collaboration with Talking Shorts, invited filmmakers, curators, distributors, critics, and scholars worldwide to nominate 10 audiovisual works under sixty minutes that they personally consider the “greatest” of all time. This was Daniel Hui’s submission:

It's of course impossible to select 10 films out of the infinite number of short films ever made, so I've selected 10 films that were personally important to me.

— Daniel Hui

Movie	Original Title	Director	Country	Year
Kino-pravda No. 7	Dziga Vertov	Soviet Union	1922	11’
When I first saw this film in the Billy Wilder Theatre back in 2012, I was very moved that Vertov included a tulip tree in the middle of his survey of the world, as if saying that this one tulip tree is just as important as all the other major events he depicts in the film. I've been looking for this tree ever since, and I'm glad I've found it thanks to this project.
Soft Fiction	Chick Strand	USA	1979	55’
This film showed me how it was possible to represent trauma in a way that is both aesthetic and responsible, a very important influence on my film Demons.
Emerald Morakot	Apichatpong Weerasethakul	Thailand	2007	11’
I encountered this film in an installation setting, at the Singapore Art Museum where it was a part of the Singapore Biennale in 2008. It was installed in a small room in an old colonial building which was once a boys school, on a screen with a green hurricane lamp hanging in front of it. I remember that I couldn't leave the room - that hurricane lamp and the hypnotic film had transported me to another dimension.
Fireworks	Kenneth Anger	USA	1947	14’
Seeing this film on Ubuweb when I was doing night duty in the military transformed me, both in terms of my sexuality and in terms of what I wanted to do with my filmmaking.
My Beautiful Rambutan Tree In Tanjung Rambutan Sepohon Rambutan indah kepunyaanku di tanjung rambutan	U-Wei Haji Saari	Malaysia	2006	27’
For a long time, my colonised mind understood poetry as something that originated from faraway countries. It wasn't until I saw this film—at Shaw's Lido theatre as part of the opening of the Singapore International Film Festival in 2005—that I understood that poetry could also come from the tropics.
Now!	Santiago Álvarez	Cuba	1965	5’
Maybe not Álvarez's best or most revolutionary film, but the film I go to most often when I want to show people what can be done with the short documentary form.
Sarah Winchester, Phantom Opera Sarah Winchester, Opéra Fantôme	Bertrand Bonello	France	2016	23’
The newest film on my list, and a film I marvel at for how immaculately constructed, theoretically thorough, and visceral it is.
Flaming Creatures	Jack Smith	USA	1963	42’
This will never not be one of my favorite movies ever made. My most memorable screening - when it screened at REDCAT on print in 2009 and J. Hoberman gave a lecture about it after. The theatre was full and I could only watch the film by lying in front with the screen towering over me. Watching the film like that, it was as if the entire theatre was about to collapse on my face. After Hoberman finished his lecture, he suggested we see the film again. Why not, since it was so short. And so we did, and it was glorious.
The Sex Garage	Fred Halsted	USA	1972	35’
Someday Halsted will be recognized as one of the most transgressive and deeply personal artists who ever worked in film. I will never forget how horny and confused and energized this film made me feel, after seeing it in Thom Anderson's class in the Bijou Theatre.
Screen Test: Helmut	Andy Warhol	USA	1966	4’
The film that taught me it isn't we who watch images, it's the images that are watching us.