PETALING JAYA, Dec 5 — In Amanda Nell Eu’s expanding list of films, female ghosts do more than just conjure up jump scares.

Her short film Vinegar Baths is a story about a woman’s relationship with her body, using the penanggalan, a banshee-type ghost with a detached female head found in Southeast Asian folklore, as the narrative’s main subject.

"It’s about how a woman can love her body, or fear it and hate it, sometimes to the point where she wants to be disconnected from her body.

"Here we have a powerful woman (the penanggalan) who leaves her body every night. Does she want to be free from it? Does she ever miss it? I like to explore these ideas of femininity and the body using the very stories and folktales we grew up with as children,” Eu told Malay Mail.

Vinegar Baths was part of 10 specially-commissioned short films for Astro A-List that premiered over the weekend at the 29th Singapore International Film Festival in conjunction with the channel’s fifth anniversary.

The female body and the sexual politics that come with it have always been given prominence in Eu’s works.

Her first short film Lagi Senang Jaga Sekandang Lembu (It’s Easier to Raise Cattle) tells the tale of two teenage girls, one of whom turns into a pontianak (female vampire).

The 17-minute film, which was screened at Venice Film Festival last year, explores the fear of female sexuality.

Some might call the topic taboo but Eu disagrees.

"Maybe the reason why we have all these female hantus (ghosts) — and we have so many of them —  is a way of exploring the female body, sexuality and identity.

"These are folktales that have survived for centuries, being passed down generation by generation. Cinema is just another way of storytelling, and I suppose it’s something that I’m just continuing on, passing it down,” the London Film School graduate said.

Eu, who is currently writing and developing her first feature film, a coming of age body horror titled Tiger Stripes, also talked about the importance of female directors in a male-dominated industry.

"The patriarchal boys club of the film industry still very much exists but I feel that more and more different people now have a chance to tell their story, have a voice to say what they believe in,” she explained.

"What I love seeing is more and more representation in the directors. If the storytellers are diverse then the stories become diverse — so what I mean is that women’s stories and experiences can be represented better if there were more women working behind the camera.”