A printed newspaper plays a subtle role in a short film produced to support the rebranding of Chinese-language newspaper Lianhe Zaobao.

A team of four from the flagship Singapore Press Holdings title worked with local production company Smallshop to create the film, with Taiwanese commercial film director Wayne Peng chosen to direct.

In scenes from Pa's Expressions, a little girl rides a rocking horse as her father sits nearby, reading a newspaper, and a few years later they walk together, he to work and she to school.

In his hand, again, is a newspaper.

The ten-minute film centres on the relationship between a father and his daughter, where the newspaper plays a subtle role.

Chief sub editor Quek Sy Mung says the idea for the film - one of a series of to create brand awareness following Zaobao's revamp last year - arose when associate edityor Han Yong May suggested reaching out to the younger generation through a micro-film about the newspaper.

Han, who is also the digital editor of Chinese Media Group, was supported in the idea by chief editor Goh Sin Teck, with both agreeing that that the film should not be a hard sell advertisement, but rather adopt a subtle approach.

For 93 years, Zaobao has been committed to news reporting using the Chinese language, but this has become a second language in the country since the 1970s, even though 80 per cent of the population is Chinese. "As the largest Chinese language newspaper in Singapore, we have been fighting an uphill battle over the years while facing this drop in Chinese literacy and print readership," she says.

Wayne Peng - a columnist at Zaobao for several years - was the ideal choice as director, and has a big collection of scrapbooks with newspaper cuttings, which were used as props in the film, showcasing the newspaper's transformations through the decades.

The film premiered last October, concurrently on Singapore's paid TV station StarHub Channels and online on zaobao.sg, with a 90-second trailer also posted on zaobao.sg and Facebook, where it received more than 18,000 views.

A readers' engagement session was conducted four days after the premiere at the Gallery Theatre of the Singapore National Museum. After the screening of Pa's Expressions, director Wayne Peng, along with the Lianhe Zaobao editor and associate editor, gave a talk and answered questions. One reader commented that the "exquisiteness of the film brought out the depth of the paper and appealed to both readers and non-readers". Director Wayne Peng is pictured with associate editor Han Yong May (right).

More than 200 readers attended the session. At subsequent Lianhe Zaobao events, commemorative USB cards on the film were also given to readers. It has since received six awards in the Singapore Creative Circle Awards.