Last Saturday, 19 September, we gathered at Zontiga KL for the launch of FOTM 2025: The Film Awakens. It was, of course, a book launch. But looking around the space that day, it also felt like something more: a gathering of people who have, in different ways, become part of FOTM and the wider film photography community around us.

The Film Awakens is the second book to come out of Zontiga’s Film of the Month programme. What began as a simple idea of encouraging photographers to experience different films and keep shooting has gradually developed into photowalks, workshops, conversations, experiments and friendships built around photography. Saturday brought many of those different parts together in one place.

A Year of Film, Now in Print

At the centre of the gathering was FOTM 2025: The Film Awakens. The 250-page book brings together photographs made throughout the 2025 FOTM programme, alongside five Field Notes conversations with Malaysian film photographers. Inspired loosely by the spirit of Star Wars, the book approaches each month as another part of a year-long journey through different films, cameras and ways of seeing.

But the book is not intended simply as a collection of selected photographs. For us, it is also a record of participation. Every photograph began with someone loading a roll of film, carrying a camera somewhere and deciding that something in front of them was worth photographing. The resulting book brings those individual decisions together, allowing photographs made separately to become part of a larger collective record.

That is perhaps what we value most about making the FOTM books: they give something temporary a physical form.

Sharing What We Know

We wanted the launch to be more than a moment of putting a new book on the table, so the day was built around sharing knowledge and experiences within the film community. CameraSmallBoy joined us for a session on film-camera maintenance; a practical subject that becomes increasingly important as many of the cameras we use become older and proper maintenance and repair knowledge becomes valuable.

Wan Arman followed with a sharing on exploring film through Lomography, looking at another side of analogue photography: experimentation, curiosity and the willingness to see what happens when we move beyond familiar combinations of camera and film.

The two sessions approached film photography from very different directions, but that was precisely the point. Film photography is not only about making photographs. It is also about understanding the tools we use, learning from one another, experimenting and discovering different ways of working.

From FOTM 2025 to FOTM 2026

The gathering also gave us an opportunity to recognise selected participants from FOTM 2026 Case #02, What Objects Hold. FOTM itself has changed this year. After two years of organising the programme around individual film stocks, FOTM 2026 moved towards a case-based format. Instead of beginning with the question of what film should we shoot?, each case begins with something to investigate photographically.

It is a small but important shift. The film remains part of the experience, but the photograph and what the photographer is trying to notice, question or communicate moves closer to the centre.

Fittingly, the afternoon continued with our current investigation, Case #03: What Catches Our Eye, as participants headed out together for a community photowalk. Cameras were loaded, people walked, talked, stopped and looked, and once again everyone went off in search of photographs.

The Community Behind the Book

When we started FOTM, we could not know exactly what it would become. The first FOTM book, published in 2025, documented the programme’s beginnings: twelve films, twelve months and a growing group of photographers willing to participate. The Film Awakens continues that story with a larger community and a broader idea of what FOTM can be.

Saturday reminded us that the books are only one part of it. There are the photographs, certainly, but there are also the conversations before a photowalk, someone showing another person a camera they have never used, discussions about film stocks, scans, comparing results, learning how to look after an old camera, and simply meeting other people who still enjoy making photographs this way.

The book gives us something to keep, while the gathering reminds us why we made it.

Thank you to CameraSmallBoy and Wan Arman for sharing their knowledge with us, to everyone who contributed to The Film Awakens, and to everyone who came by, listened, browsed the book, joined the conversations or headed out with us for the photowalk. Two years into FOTM, the community continues to change and grow; and there are still many rolls left to shoot.