Review-'3 Peas in a Pod' by Michelle Chong

November 23, 2013, 4:01 am

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Warning: Major spoilers ahead pertaining to the twist of the film.

The titular “3 Peas in a Pod” are Penny, Perry and Peter; three twenty-somethings who have became close friends during their undergraduate years in an Australian college. Penny likes Peter, but thinks that Perry likes her. As the date of their graduation looms near, Peter wishes to delay their inevitable separation and invites the three to go on a road trip across Australia. There are two likely ways to make this plot original: 1) the three somehow end up in a polyamorous relationship or 2) someone is gay all along. Considering that all three main characters are Asians, it is not hard to predict which direction the film will take.

Haruki Murakami stated in an interview that his work presents women as mediums and that “the function of the medium is to make something happen through herself”. Penny, the supposed protagonist of this movie, is arguably less of a dynamic character and more of a medium for the character arcs of her male friends. As the film is chiefly told through her perspective as the witness of the increasing tension between the two men, the audience is easily misled that she is the source of the conflict between Peter and Perry. It is after the revelation that the two men were in love all along when we come to question the true nature of the conflict. More significantly, it becomes clear that the awkward gestures of affection directed towards Penny are actually meant for each other. Regardless of the genuineness of their friendship with Penny, Penny as a character is nevertheless on one level a means of an end to facilitate the relationship of the two men throughout the film.

One may perceive the “chick flick” tropes used to characterize Penny as hints that it is okay to not be emotionally invested in her own character arc. While most films take the audience’s emotional investment in their female lead for granted, this film shows a hint of self-awareness that makes the obligatory love triangle plot less frustrating. Like a typical “chick flick” heroine, Penny introduces herself through voiceover as just an ordinary girl, yet is shown to perceive a stranger alerting her to an administrative error as an attempt at flirting. Penny’s act of voluntarily doing her crush’s homework may seem like a comical portrayal of the extents of a young woman’s infatuation; but as any university freshman who have faithfully attended their mandatory Academic Integrity lectures would know, this is a form of academic misconduct known as collusion. When Penny’s snooping of the contents of Perry’s phone leads to the film’s grand revelation, we come to wonder if the lead up to this grand revelation requires a protagonist who has no qualms with snooping.

The sense that the twist is absolutely gratuitous is alleviated through the rearrangement of previous clips into a straightforward love story between the two men. The film goes all the way to give the audience a preview of the unconventional romance that it could have been while undermining the romantic drama that it has painstakingly set up for most of the film. Through doing so rather than outrightly subverting genre conventions, the film is arguably more effective in showing how an attachment to tired tropes could dampen the emotional resonance of a love story.

While the heavy application of romantic tropes may lead viewers to be more interested in the scenic Australian landscapes than the characters, “3 Peas in a Pod” ultimately redeems itself through juxtaposing in its final act what the conventional audience wants it to be and what it could have been. The film’s hints of self-awareness makes its depiction of young adult angst more ironic and thus, more bearable.

Review by Joseline Yu

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Singapore Biennale 2013 Special: Liao Jiekai & Boo Junfeng

December 25, 2013, 2:41 am

≫ Next: The 2013 Gala Behaviour (and Misbehaviour) Report

≪ Previous: Review-'3 Peas in a Pod' by Michelle Chong

The year 2013 has been an eventful year for Singaporean cinema and filmmakers, not least for two very special filmmaking talents. Both Liao Jiekai and Boo Junfenghad a memorable year to date, notching up accolades that saw them being credited as joint winners of the President's Young Talents Awards, as well as being commissioned and invited to be part of the prestigious Singapore Biennale this year.

As the Biennale season is upon us, SINdietook the chance to sit down with the both of them to look back at their achievements, reflect upon each other's successes and chat with them about what is in store for their near futures as the year draws to a close.

(From left to right front): Liao Jiekai, President Tony Tan & Boo Junfeng
President's Young Talents Credit Suisse Artist Commissioning Award ceremony
Photo courtesy of Artitute™

Kay Wee (K): I think looking back at the year 2013, as filmmakers and artists, both of your milestones and trajectories feel very similar, as if they were running on parallel lines. Belonging to the same generation of prominent Singaporean filmmakers, both of you were selected to be in the President's Young Talents (PYT) exhibition this year, were the two winners of the subsequent PYT Credit Suisse Artist Commissioning Award, got invited to participate in the Singapore Biennale, had both of your two art works exhibited in the same compounds concurrently, and both of you are also developing your sophomore feature films at the moment. Let’s go back to the beginning first. How did your involvement in the PYT awards actually come about?

Jiekai (LJK): For the PYT awards, basically…I think Junfeng and I are probably quite similar la, because it's the same type of exhibition. So we were invited to a portfolio presentation to a selected external panel that were not from the Singapore Arts Museum. And then, I don’t know how they nominated us or chose us, they just asked us to come and we went, presented and later they told us we are chosen to participate in the PYT show this year. And then, we were given a budget and a very, very short run up time to present a new work at the arts museum.

Junfeng (BJF): So what happened is…for me it was Cheo Chai Hiang (Visual Artist and Local Conceptual Art Pioneer), he saw 'Sandcastles' (Boo Junfeng, 2010) and he liked it and he thought it might be interesting for me to explore a different realm, because I’ve just been concentrating a lot in narrative filmmaking. So I think after that, he made the recommendation and I was invited to the panel presentation. It was really just to present my short films, talk about the thought processes behind them, the ideology behind them and to see if they are suitable for visual arts or their showcase. I thought it's quite interesting because you know, the both of us are filmmakers and they chose us to be involved. So that was the first time I was ever actually even involved in anything visual arts related. I enjoy going to museums and all that, but I've never done anything for a gallery space before.

K: So how were the experiences of exhibiting in a museum, as compared to maybe the cinemas, different for you? Does it change the way you work, in terms of your approach towards your ‘museum works’ this year?

Boo Junfeng and his PYT work 'Mirror'
Photo courtesy of SAM

BJF: Well, for 'Mirror', I wanted to create something that was still cinematic, because that was what I knew or something that I understood. But it was maybe the idea of…expanding it to just two screens, and allowing both screens to sort of interact with one another. And it's inspired by the idea of a ‘split’, in history and in the two realities of these characters, playing with the idea of that. It’s conceptual. It was more conceptual than what I’m used to. Usually when I start with a film I start with a character or a subject matter. But in this case I had to force myself to look at it in a more conceptual level: how the idea can be represented in a space rather than it being simply within the frame of a film.

Liao Jiekai and his PYT work 'Brothers Quarters'
Photo courtesy of SAM

LJK: The context of showing the work definitely affects the way I conceive of the project. The moving-image is a durational medium. When I make a work, I craft an audio and visual experience for the audience through time. When I make work for the cinema, I focus on the film itself, to create that 4th dimension for the viewer to engage in. In a museum, space becomes another factor other than time, because the audience can walk around the space, interact with different elements, something that won't happen in a cinema.

For 'Brother's Quarters', I look at my work as a form of intervention. Firstly, I intentionally isolated my work from the rest of the exhibition by building a wall with a sliding door (which really is a door because of safety protocols, if not I rather it be a wall), making it difficult for the audience to locate the piece, so when they found it, it became some form of a hidden chamber that they walked into. I used many elements to create the installation: wall texts, audio, archival floorplans, 16mm film running on loops, lighting and even a making-of video of the work. For me, 'Brother's Quarters' is about laying bare my process of creating the work, the interviews I did with formal SJI students (one of which includes improvisational music by Leslie Low), the process of working with 16mm celluloid film - a dying medium, and the durational aspect of having to maintain and transform the work over the nine months long exhibition. At the end of the show, only one projector is working, there is a new corner of the room dedicated to broken projectors and burnt film strips, and I opened up the sliding door to create an open passageway to link up Brother's Quarters to the rest of the exhibition.

Jeremy (J): Jiekai, how about your approach to your Singapore Biennale piece, 'Bukit Orang Salah'?

LJK:The title of my work is 'Bukit Orang Salah', which means “Island of Misfits”. A few years ago I started writing a screenplay for a film to be made about islands, but not specifically about St John’s Island. I’ve always been interested in all these outlying islands.

At first I was thinking about Pulau Ubin because I used to go there very very often, like ten, twenty times a year, to camp or to do various things. But St John’s Island is still kind of a mystery; in fact it’s become like a memory, because I remember going there when I was in primary school. I still have very vivid memories of the place.

Still from 'Bukit Orang Salah' (Liao Jiekai, 2013)
Photo courtesy of artist.

So I just went to do like a recce trip, to find out whether it was a possibility, to just see the place. So I went, and I was very fascinated by how it hasn’t changed. What I remember it being in the 90s still remains the same, unlike many parts of Singapore—even Pulau Ubin is completely different from what it used to be, but St John’s Island never changed, from what I remember.

Well actually, one thing did change, it was merged together with three islands. So after more research I found out that there was actually a proposal to turn the entire chain of islands into something like Sentosa Cove. In fact their reference was Venice. But it didn’t become like that. In fact, they built a very nice harbour and then they renovated the roads and they connected all three islands together and everything, but they just left it there and it didn’t happen la, basically. So I thought that place becomes a very interesting meeting point between what could have been and also what was in the past, and also because the island has such a strong and important history in our country, being a quarantine centre, so most of our forefathers were imprisoned there, or quarantined there for some time.

Liao Jiekai on set for 'Bukit Orang Salah'
Photo Credit: Looi Wan Ping

J: So can I say your idea for St John’s Island was actually already kind of in your mind before the Biennale came about, and it was always a part of your—

LJK: I think it was something I always wanted to…it was a point of interest but it didn’t really become a work until I had to come up with something for the Biennale. It was during the PYT exhibition that they asked us each to submit a proposal, and they gave us something like two weeks. So I just made a trip to the Island, went to the National Library and did all this research, and then I put together something.

J: How about you, Junfeng? Was your Singapore Biennale piece 'Happy and Free' something that you conceptualised from scratch or is it something that—I wouldn’t say it’s part of an agenda—but are these themes that you’ve always wanted to present, and perhaps this was a convenient platform for you to realise this?

BJF: I remember they were also asking me to come up with an idea, I can’t remember at which stage, but I was in Jerusalem for a film lab, and in between the mentorship sessions and writing and all that, I was forced to come up with this idea. So I was just staring at the screen and because the Biennale theme is “If the world changed”, I was just toying with the idea of…I guess for me the starting point is always Singapore, so what, how different might this place be. It was actually from the theme that this “what if” concept came about, and of course then I was looking at the different points in Singapore’s history; what, which specific point did I want to cover, which I thought was interesting…

Still from 'Happy and Free' (Boo Junfeng, 2013)
Photo Credit: Wilfred Weegee

So I thought of independence, and most obvious thing was between 1963 and 1965 there’s actually a period that is still quite under-represented in how we understand history. If you think about it, it’s essentially the most crucial period of Singapore right? How Singapore came to be, because we were supposed to be part of Malaya and that didn’t work out. So when I submitted the proposal “What if Singapore was different, was still a part of Malaysia, what would a propaganda video today look like?” and this was tied in to the idea that if we hadn’t separated, 2013 would be the 50^thyear of merger, so then it must be a big year, right. This year would have been such a big, big year for the golden jubilee and since the Biennale is to happen around the same time I though it’d be interesting to explore that.

As I was working on the idea I started asking people about what Singapore might look like and all that. A lot of people seemed to feel, the overwhelming response I got was that "Oh, we will be worse off! We will at most be like a Penang". We tend to see ourselves being lesser if we had remained. While there might be some truth in that I can’t help but feel that believing in that is also subscribing to what I call the “1965 narrative” because after this separation, we want to believe that we can make it. “There was a time when people said that Singapore can’t make it but we did”, right? So that comes in a song that was written and so I can’t help but feel that this belief is also a part of that narrative.

Boo Junfeng on set for 'Happy and Free'
Photo Credit: Wilfred Weegee

So how do I want to break that down, and suggest something that perhaps challenges people’s idea of what Singapore is and what it has become, and then on top of that, I remember Alfian Sa’at, a good friend of mine, once telling me about this album of songs that a friend of his passed to him, and when I got that album of songs and I heard all these songs that celebrated merger, in 1963, and how this album basically vanished after 1965, and this was commissioned by the Ministry of Culture in Singapore. So if that narrative from 1963, which I’m hearing from the songs, was to continue till today, what that might be? It just opens so many possibilities but again in defining this alternative history, I had to really, really narrow it down and it helped that I was framing it as propaganda, I was framing it as something like a National Day type of thing so I could very narrowly define this narrative and then inadvertently it kind of then subverted the idea of national, our national day celebrations and the idea of nation, the construct of a nation and what it is.

So it was a very, very interesting process for me. On September 16 I went to KL on the day of merger. It was Malaysia Day and I heard from people what their idea of Malaysia Day was, and to a lot of people there, Malaysia Day was the more inclusive day, because it was the day when Sabah and Sarawak also came to be a part of Malaysia. Malaysia Day became almost a reaction to Merdeka Day, which was actually the independence of Malaya, which was for a long time the national, the independence day of Malaysia, but Malaysia Day only in recent years came to prominence because people wanted something more inclusive and so now they sort of have two national days, Merdeka Day and Malaysia Day and of course in Singapore apart from August the 9^thwe don’t celebrate or we don’t talk about any of these other days, which were actually a part of our history, especially Sept 16. So, these are some of the things that came to my mind as I was researching for the piece.

K: So in terms of both of your Biennale works, I observed these “audio-centric extensions” out from the frame of the moving visuals into the physical space itself. Like for example, in terms of Junfeng’s work, there’s this whole participatory and interactive aspect of the karaoke element in place. So, tell me why did you choose to make it as such, or make your installation more “fun”, so to speak? What was your intention?

BJF:I wanted people to sing the song and perhaps feel how awkward and funny it is to utter those lyrics, to sing those lyrics out loud. To say lines like “happy and free, in a bigger family, equal and free, with merger and Malaysia”, how awkward it feels to sing lyrics like that today, and why. I think the complexity of just that sentiment is very interesting and that is actually at the core of my work, what the piece is about.

K: As for Jiekai, in your 'Bukit Orang Salah', you added three different sound design layers, on top of the one imbedded into the film itself. Why this decision to experiment with different audios from different channels in the gallery space?

LJK:Actually one of my initial proposals to the Biennale was that I wanted to hear different sounds in different parts of the room but it’s quite technically difficult to achieve that and in fact I wanted something like you go close to the wall, you hear different sounds in different parts of the room, because I wanted to explore the more interactive components to showing a video work in the gallery space. So I approached Bani Haykal (Sound Artist and Musician) to do the sound design, and he actually suggested something very similar to my initial proposal, which was having different sounds in different parts of the room.

We had a very short incubation time. We had only a bit more than one month lead up to work on the sound. And actually Bani is very busy, so most of our dialogue happened via email. He sent me an email questionnaire, like 30 interview questions, very, very long, and at that time I was in Indonesia and I wrote a reply and from these email conversations he gleaned about three or four different themes, in which he used to compose different soundtracks to the film and those different themes are presented in the different headphones that you can pick up at the three different stations.

The filmmakers and the SINdie correspondents during the roundtable interview

K: So I’ve chanced upon some articles and interviews on the both of you and Jiekai, you’ve always been termed as both a filmmaker and visual artist, but interestingly for yours Junfeng, you are usually termed as simply a filmmaker, even in the PYT or Biennale context this year. So what do you guys think of these labels and where do you guys think you stand in between being an artistor/and filmmaker now? Should there even be a distinction in the first place?

BJF: I’ve never been called an artist until this year. Haha. Even in my engagements with say, Arts Engage, and all these organisations where we talk about arts policy, about art making, about the art making community in Singapore, it’s quite often artistsand filmmakers, so it’s always sort of a slight separation but only this year because my work is in a gallery I became an “artist”. To me it doesn’t really matter. At the core of what I do…I see myself making films in whichever form. I don’t really care. My interest is still in narrative films but doing works like that actually opens my mind and broadens my view of what art is and what filmmaking can be as well so it’s been very educational.

LJK: For me these labels are not important also. My background is in visual arts. I paint, and my first video was actually not a film, it was a video installation, at the Singapore Arts Museum also. So I kind of move in between different ways of showing the world, whether is it in a gallery or whether is it in a cinema. I mean sometimes I call myself a filmmaker or I call myself an artist and it’s really out of convenience, so people don’t get—it’s really subscribing to a way that people box up or people label things but personally I don’t believe in that. I think that’s not important. But I think it’s important to understand the expectations of the audience when they come into an art show and when they come into a cinema, because they’re very different.

BJF:Actually, I mean…among the filmmakers in Singapore, a lot of them, whom I have respect for, they tend to be rather multi-disciplinary, people like Ho Tzu Nyen, Brian Gothong Tan, Jiekai, even like Tan Pin Pin also. If filmmaking is but a medium of expression, then you know…we wouldn’t narrow that field of vision so much. We would be keen to explore if given the opportunities.

J: Speaking about labels, do you ever feel pressured by the manner you wish to present yourself as a filmmaker, with regards to aligning and marketing yourself between the so-called distinctions of “arthouse” and “commercial” for example? Let’s say five, ten years down the road you want to make a commercially successful film, do you think it’s important for you to present yourself in the theme / agenda of a certain label?

BJF: I don’t think so. I mean, first of all I’ve never believed that something critically acclaimed and something with mass appeal has to be mutually exclusive. If you take Ilo Ilo (Anthony Chen, 2013) as an example, it is a good film, and of course I think the Singapore public—to many in the Singapore public—they’re only starting to be exposed to films that are perhaps different from the usual mainstream fare that they get but I think that’s precisely the function—okay, not the function but one of the functions—of films like that, it helps in raising cultural literacy, it helps in opening people’s minds so that film doesn’t have to be just about entertainment, there can be other forms of films to watch and if you’re talking about being like an artist vs. being a filmmaker and all that. The labels aren’t really so important, personally I just let the press go with whatever they want to call me, or whatever the PR company / marketing team wants to call me / the work or whatever. I mean, if I don’t agree with it I might resist it, but I don’t really care la.

J: For me, it’s interesting to note that for Ilo Ilo when the posters first came out in Cannes, they looked more art-housey. But when the poster was then modified to give it a more heartland commercial movie look (with the cartoon drawings and all), that to me was a form of succumbing to the market and fitting into labels to make the movie look more accessible.

BJF: I think that exercise was an interesting one. When I first heard they were going to do that, I thought that was interesting because what you want to have is a foot in the door. To have a Cannes label on it, for the masses, may not mean anything. In fact, sometimes it might mean, “Oh, this must be a boring art house film”. So what if we break it down, what if we market it to be a more ‘palatable’ film and see what kind of audiences it attracts. It is an interesting exercise but it is also a double-edge sword, because ultimately it is not a Jack Neo film. If people went in with these expectations, they could either be pleasantly surprised or disappointed. And the word of mouth from that may not be good, because we might be targeting the so-called ‘wrong’ audience, as much as we do want this ‘wrong’ audience to give it a try.

JS: (To LJK) What’s your view on this?

LJK: I certainly liked the original poster more. But like what Junfeng said, it’s a marketing tool. It’s like trailers. Trailers don’t represent the film at all. I made my 'Red Dragonflies' (Liao Jiekai, 2010) trailer using many out-takes. I mean, there were several out-takes that I liked but could not put it in the film. So I think a film can be very different from all the devices, means and labels from how people try to market it.

BJF: For some of us, where the ‘mission’, so to speak, is to really expand the audience to different kinds of cinema, these steps are ultimately necessary. Because otherwise you would always just have that split between what is art-house and what is so-called commercial. And the audience will also be split and clearly, the art-house audience will always remain that minority and you will never be able to make films that are critically acclaimed with a sizeable audience. So in that endeavour to expand our audience, these steps are necessary. So even if people walk out of the cinema feeling they were short-changed for whatever reasons, at least there is a film that they have seen and judge for themselves, and hopefully in the future they can give films like that another chance.

K: As an observer and an audience, I actually find lots of similarities between both of your works. Referencing both your first feature films (Sandcastles & Red Dragonflies) and the two works presented at PYT (Mirror & Brothers Quarters) and the Singapore Biennale (Happy and Free & Bukit Orang Salah), there was to me this common theme of “looking back” and always this heavy historical element attached to them. So can you tell me more about what drives you to make your works and what are both of you normally inspired by?

BJF: I don’t think it’s just confined to us. I mean in general, if you look at a lot of filmmakers in Singapore, there is always a desire, whether consciously or not, to look back. Perhaps, it speaks of a kind of society we live in and the kind of changes we are going through and the kind of physical changes we experience and the things, places and the memories that have been lost as a result. It’s just reclaiming a lot of that and an attempt to immortalize some of these either places, or sentiments, or emotions. (pause) I was also hearing from the curators of the Biennale that in fact, it’s not just confined to filmmakers. A lot of the works from the Singaporean artists are about the past, like Lai Chee Kien has a work on the National Theatre reconstructed and Royston Tan’s one is also about the Capitol Theatre, so it’s always about these things that we have lost.

Aditi (A): I observed that most of your works look at the past but they don’t necessarily take a sentimental view at it. But I feel like there is a national obsession with nostalgia at the moment. Do you have any takes on this and do you consciously try to be more objective when dealing with the past?

LJK: I actually think that nostalgia can be dangerous because you cannot always be dwelling and thinking that the past is better than the present or the future. So, I don’t want to sentimentalise the past. That’s never my intention. I agree with Junfeng that it’s not just us who are dealing with these narratives of the past. Even if you look Singapore films in the past ten years, there were a lot of nostalgic elements. Even when we make films that are contemporary, the production designer will always like to find things that are vintage, cause things that are old attract us? But I will be quite careful with how I deal with it. I don’t like to evoke nostalgia just for the sake of sentimentalizing it.

K: Okay, so now if you have to ask each other one question, what would it be?

LJK & BJF: (awkward smiles) Haha…erm…

LJK:Maybe I ask first la. I think one thing that I thought about when I looked at 'Happy and Free' was that it resembles some kind of an imagined National Day video but you were also involved in NDP before. So how do you see these two different experiences? Because when you were involved in the real NDP two or three years ago, you were constructing a certain narrative that was relevant to present day Singapore or that kind of, say…propaganda. So how do you balance with what you think Singapore is and what the organisers want the public to think, and then comparing it to this particular work that you made?

BJF: I actually didn’t do the National Day videos. I did the multimedia for National Day Parade (NDP) 2010. When I was doing that, I laid it out quite clearly to the committee that I wanted to present something that felt real. I wanted sentiments that were real. For example, I posed a question of what the five stars represent, actually I had a whole chunk of people who went blank and they got it all wrong. Apparently, several people think ‘prosperity’ is one of the 5 stars. So that to me was an interesting exercise because I interviewed a lot of people. And subsequently when I did the multimedia for the 'Fear of Writing', a play by Tan Tarn How under Theatreworks, I did exactly the same thing. I asked very similar questions and that was when I was allowed to put in all the wrong answers people gave. Like I had a lot of people saying ‘prosperity’. So for the NDP version, I showed that people didn’t know and they laughed. When you have 30,000 over people laughing at the same time at how they also didn’t know, it binds people la, if you know what I mean. Because there is some truth and it was the truth that I was interested in.

Still from 'Pink Dot 2013: Home' (Boo Junfeng, 2013)
Photo courtesy of pinkdot.sg

Perhaps the closest I have come to in making something that looks like a National Day music video was actually this year’s Pink Dot campaign video with the song ‘Home’ performed by Dick Lee. I was examining what home means to these characters in the video (who are LGBT) and how that is presented with a song like ‘Home’ means and resonates with people. So, I would say these videos are like part advertising, because we are ultimately trying to evoke something, trying to pull some kind of commonality, in order to propagate an ideology from whoever is commissioning this piece. So in doing ‘Happy and Free’, I was also toying with the idea of how a song like this, with lyrics that sound so awkward in today’s Singapore, when matched with a National Day type of video or even campaign (I even came up with a fictitious Ministry of Culture and 50^thanniversary event), how is it unimaginable? And if I were to imagine the unimaginable, how would people respond to it? It’s always an interesting exercise working on these projects, whether it is NDP or Pink Dot...because ultimately it is an understanding of the pervading sentiments in society and how to make use of that to fulfil a certain agenda. That’s what NDP is about, right?

K: Haha. Okay, your turn to ask Jiekai a question now.

BJF: Hmm…well, my favourite works of yours are the ones that seem very deeply personal and I think I mentioned to you before, 'Before the Wedlock House' (Liao Jiekai, 2012), that piece to me was one of the best short films I have seen from Singapore because it is so deeply personal and yet it is not indulgent. I could see things from your perspective and see that love that the video was made for. So it is always fascinating to see how you present something so personal in a piece of work. Do the works that you do always come from a very personal place? And how do you find the balance between what you choose to present and what you choose not to indulge in?

LJK: For most of my works, the starting point is always personal. But the more personal it is, the more difficult it is for me to confront. For instance, for ‘Before the Wedlock House’, it was done very spontaneously. I didn’t even think about making a film. The night before, I just decided that I was going to make a film. The night after I shot it, I shelved it. I did look through the footages but I didn’t know what to do with it. Then I saw some films that lent me ideas and strategies that I could use on these. So I thought I could put something together with them. And that’s how the film came about.

Still from 'Before the Wedlock House'(Liao Jiekai, 2012)
Photo courtesy of artist

I think there are some things that, because they are so personal to you, nobody else can see them except you. So I think it is also about finding that balance, because if not, it will look like a video that you made for your own indulgence, compared to something that can speak to the larger audience. I also think that sometimes the more personal you get, the more universal it is. This is because everyone experiences the same things in their own unique environment in their own way.

BJF: If you watch a wedding video. Unless they are close friends, you usually do not feel much for the people inside. But I felt something for your cousin. It was a happy occasion, but at the same time, you also feel something very poignant about everything that she said, about your childhood together and the bond you had.

LJK: I shot it as a reaction to many wedding videos I see. At some point in time, I got a bit disillusioned with wedding videos because they are so formulaic. At one of my other cousin’s wedding, the videographers were actually staging things. For instance, they said ‘Now we need the bride to thank the parents’. It was not planned for and they needed the shot and it seemed they already had a story to tell already.

K: One last question. I know you guys are in the midst of developing your second features now, so from an audience point of view, what can we expect from them?

BJF:For mine, we have not officially started pre-production but we have started casting for six months now. Hopefully, we can shoot next year, if everything goes according to plan. But the earliest the film will be out will be early 2015. We first presented it two years ago at Rotterdam and subsequently it was invited to the Jerusalem Film Lab, so I went to Jerusalem three times to develop the script with the script analyst. That was very helpful. And back and forth...I feel that this back and forth is really what film development should be, like I really properly went through the process and quite often it is very challenging. Well, writing is a very solitary process, but then to have these people enter this world of yours, dissect everything, analyse everything, put everything back for you and help you discuss it through...it really, really does something quite magical to the script. It's always a learning process.

LJK: In my case, I've already shot the film, am editing it right now and it's been an editing hell la. The analogy I have been giving people is that it's like a 50,000 piece jigsaw puzzle that has only seen the sky. You know, when you do jigsaw puzzles, the sky and the forest and the sea are the most difficult parts right? So I think I am still trying a lot of permutations, but I am also working with two other editors so we are trying out different ways of cutting it together. I realize for my longer projects I could never...after I shoot it, I can never really edit it to the script. Somehow it just transforms beyond the pages. Because sometimes when I shoot I deviate a lot, so it feels like I am finding the film in the sea of footages. So it can be quite painful.

BJF: Haha. But when it emerges it can be quite beautiful la.

LJK: Hahaha. I don't know, haven't seen the light yet. Very far away still. The film's setting is very similar to my Biennale piece, but it is also very different. It is a romance story that takes place in two different eras, that's all I will say for now.

(From left): Aditi Shivaramakrishnan (SINdie), Thong Kay Wee (SINdie), Boo Junfeng, Jeremy Sing (SINdie), Liao Jiekai

The "Singapore Biennale 2013: If The World Changed" will be running till the 16 February 2014.

(Both 'Happy and Free' and 'Bukit Orang Salah'can be viewed at SAM8Q as part of the event.)

Liao Jiekai's 'Before the Wedlock House' is available for viewing here, courtesy of SG Film Channel.

Boo Junfeng's 'Pink Dot 2013: Home' is available for viewing here, courtesy of Pink Dot SG.

↧

The 2013 Gala Behaviour (and Misbehaviour) Report

December 26, 2013, 4:45 am

≫ Next: One final 'Fly By Night' Journey

≪ Previous: Singapore Biennale 2013 Special: Liao Jiekai & Boo Junfeng

Gala premieres in Singapore are becoming big affairs. Even the President was invited to one this year. And our home-made self-styled movie stars are teasing the audience more than before with show-stopping appearances. We take a serious, deep, hard, insightful look at gala behaviour and misbehaviour over the year. Here's presenting a year at local movie galas....

Taxi Taxi

'Lucky I am wearing a skirt, god knows what the director will make me do.'

Adults and one hipster kid

Ah Boys To Men II

They don't have this level of swag in Tekong.

The 2013 Star Awards was graced by several overseas celebrities who came as far as from Pulau Tekong.

Four soldiers and their espionage specialist.

Red Numbers

‘We were looking for Chinese food.’

That hair is the actual protagonist of this movie.

Ghost Child

Jayley Woo re-enacts her winning audition move for movie.

‘Bobby Tonelli, you played me out, told me it was casual dress so I came straight from the shoot.’

‘I am so inspired to make horror after watching Ghost Child, just between the three of us, I started work on my new film ‘My Black Magic’.’

The Girl in Pinafore

She has no idea what this gesture signifies in European societies, please excuse her.

‘Darren may have many female fans, but only I share the right shade of bleach.’

More people should know the brutal history of the backwards V sign.

All actors need to love the camera. Some are in love with it more than others.

Ilo Ilo

‘Sorry ah, Mediacorp Star Awards is next month, I think you got the dates wrong la.’

‘My mum is getting too much attention. I want some too!’

‘I think you stole some fabric from my mum. Give it back.’

‘All the tickets to the Chocolate Factory are in my hands.’

‘I have arrived to tell everyone pink is the next big thing,’says Elim Chew, Founder of 77^th Street

Auntie Terry at the screening of Ilo Ilo confesses,’I left the job because Jolibee paid better.’

Director Anthony Chen thinks hard about casting the lady behind him on his next film.

3 Peas in a Pod

According to scientists, the pink jelly-fish responds to bright lights and rears its head once in a while to mark its territory.

Annyeonghaseyo! We present the new 5-member band, Shinee-est

Subjects of the Godmother

If you know the answer to the signs, email us at sindie@sindie.sg, you stand to win a limited-edition handshake with Calvin Chen, Jae Liew and Alexander Lee Eusebio

‘Dear Minister Wong, You can be assured there are no kissing scenes between the two men in the movie.’

Everybody's Business

This particular Miss Singapore competition saw a WIDE range of contestants.

Coffeeshop beer girls are BIG business.

A 16 year-old secondary school student won the ‘Doing my business’ Face-of-the-Year contest.

‘Sometimes I use toilet paper. Sometimes I use my finger.’

‘I think my wig just fell off.’

Hands-only Harlem Shake

Screen Singapore

Andy Lau’s note to himself: ‘Better flash a nice genuine smile, I’m going to have to work for one of these Singapore directors soon.’

'Wah Lau eh Minister, how can you tell us about this licensing scheme after we invested in this business?’

Minister of Information, Communication and the Arts Yacood Ibrahim demonstrates what he means by the government maintaining a ‘light touch’ on local media

Written by Joseline Yu and Jeremy Sing

↧

One final 'Fly By Night' Journey

December 27, 2013, 9:08 pm

≫ Next: New Year, New Team, Say Hello to the people behind SINdie!

≪ Previous: The 2013 Gala Behaviour (and Misbehaviour) Report

This year marks the 10th year of the annual 'Fly By Night' video challenge organised by Objectifs Centre of Photography and Film as well as Film Garde Complex. Fly By Night was founded by filmmaker Tan Pin Pin and film curator/producer Yuni Hadi to give people a chance to make short movies in short form and enjoy the process of doing it. The competition has spawned filmmaking interest over the last 10 years and has been an important fixture in the film calendar.

SINdie's editor Jeremy Sing (who's a judge for this year's 'Fly By Night') gives you one final glimpse of this 2-day journey.

Let us guess. He is the cinematograhper. The girl next to him is the actress. And the directorial and producing roles are split between the next two.

Three men and a blonde.

'Serial' participant of 'Fly By Night' Ezzam Rahman intends his entry to span two countries, Singapore and Bosnia (where his buddy Ghazi Alqudcy, in the video, is in)

Tan Pin Pin,'Our 'Fly By Night' will forever be on someone's heart.'. He tattooed it there.

Judges (from left: Liao Jiekai, Jeremy Sing (in red), Teresa Kwong (floral blouse) and Maggie Lee (back facing camera)) crack their heads over how to announce the theme with some pizzazz.

'It's not any kind of yellow, mind you.'

'Die ah, cannot shoot our gangsta movie anymore.'

'Fly By Night' withdrawal symptoms are starting to kick in, 'Fly By Night' founders Yuni Hadi and Tan Pin Pin start feeling cold.

Congratulations to all our winners and thank you to all participants!

All photos courtesy of Objectifs Centre of Photography and Film

So long and keep making short films on weekends if you have time!

↧

New Year, New Team, Say Hello to the people behind SINdie!

December 30, 2013, 11:07 pm

≫ Next: Independent Filmmaking in Singapore - A Brave 10 Years

≪ Previous: One final 'Fly By Night' Journey

As the new year unfolds, we would like unveil the brains, hands and legs who have been helping to keep SINdie running. They are the SINdie writers/contributors who volunteer time to give you the scoop about the happenings in Singapore films. So like 'LIFE' magazine in the movie 'The secret life of Walter Mitty', we are dedicating the final post of 2013 to the people behind SINdie.

Aditi Shiva

Aditi is an editorial assistant at a local publishing house, where she works on comics, young adult fiction and sketchbooks. She has written for The New Paper, and for campus publications while an undergraduate. Her interest in Singapore film was sparked at age 15 when she made a short film with two friends for a school project. She is eager to learn more about the local film scene prior to independence, and about non-English and Mandarin filmmaking in Singapore.

Thong Kay Wee

Kay Wee considers himself an aspirational visual artist, budding film writer and independent filmmaker who believes in the evocative and hypnotic power of the moving images. A communications graduate specializing in film and cinema studies, he is interested in pursuing his needs to create, express and engage enigmatic truths in an imaginative and progressive manner.

Raymond Tan

One of the earliest members of SINdie (since 2010), Raymond is an anti-social hobo who spends most of his time watching films and playing video games, if not writing or blogging about them. An ice-cream enthusiast, his ultimate dream is to taste ice-cream for a living. He is now doing his Masters, is a freelance writer. He has previously written for F*** magazine.

Deitrich Mohan

Mohan was a Lasalle Puttnam School of Film graduate and rebel. Always enjoyed film theory and spends time reading about film theory. Interested to pen down his thoughts and share it with the masses , he has joined SINdie to expand his knowledge on film and hopes to improve his writing everyday. Avid Flowrider, Muay thai trainee, movie buff, volunteer worker, literary activist. (Hopefully movie critic in the future!).

Haswani Sungit

Haswani is both a ninja and crazy bunny on the loose. She has fallen hopelessly in love with filmmaking on the last semester in Uni and tells herself that she needs to marry a Hollywood actor (read: Ryan Gosling) to finance her filmmaking studies in Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. If further studies doesn't work out, she will focus on perfecting her lethal karate chops and deadly weapon-throwing moves.

Joseline Yu

Joseline Yu is a 2nd year English Literature student at NTU. She is extremely wary about what she watches as she easily cries at the movies. She is a lover of films that mash genres, literary fiction and shonen manga. She is currently reading English and is known at school for being a library hermit.

Tay Huizhen

Huizhen has always had an insurmountable urge to tell someone—anyone—her opinion about a film after watching it. She decided she wanted to be a film critic in Junior College and save the world from bad movie reviews. She doesn't like holding a camera but enjoyed every moment losing herself in film theory when writing her thesis entitled Docufiction in the Digital Age. She still cherishes the first time she watched Roberto Benigni's Life is Beautiful (1997) with her mother on Arts Central one night, and being completely devastated and swept away by the film. She writes for MovieXclusive, muses in her film blog, jewelintherushes.wordpress.com and tweets at twitter.com/in_the_rushes

Gwen Xu

Gwen is very happy to be writing for SINdie because it marries her love for film and words.

When not reading, writing or making short films with friends during her spare time,

Gwen plays Michelangelo and designs the next piece of artwork that is to be painted on her nails.

Dawn Teo

Dawn is a big theatre fan. Dabbling in the arts since young and doing theatre since she was 14, Dawn has been a part of more than ten productions locally. Just completing an editorial internship with Youth.SG, Dawn hopes to write more to hone her skills in expressing herself through words.

Yiz

Yiz's mother used to put her in front of the TV to get her to shut up. Since then, she has been devouring films like there is no tomorrow. After learning that sentences can be constructed to deliver meanings and opinions, she likes to write her thoughts on whatever she's watched as well. Yiz has been writing with SINdie since 2011.

Colin Low

Colin is one of the pioneer members of SINdie, having joined the team in 2009. Bringing with him a point of view way beyond his years, he has been instrumental in shaping the 'personality' of the writing seen on SINdie in its early years. He is currently studying English LIterature at the University of Chicago and would occasionally contribute his writings to SINdie.

Jeremy Sing

Jeremy is the founder and editor of SINdie. He started SINdie in 2008 as a platform for local films, including short films to be seen and heard about. He's always loved cinema but picked up the camera and started making short films in 2005. He's since been involved in several local film productions in various capacities including producer, assistant director and production assistant. The films include 'Ah Boys to Men' (Part 1 & 2), The Lucky Seven Project, Keluar Baris and several others. Not known to some, he actually holds a full-time office job in Public Relations. Work and SINdie aside, the dream to make a feature film is still very much alive and he hopes to cross his first hurdle of finishing his script soon.

↧

Independent Filmmaking in Singapore - A Brave 10 Years

January 5, 2014, 5:26 am

≫ Next: Review - 'I Hugged The Berlin Patient' by Edgar Tang

≪ Previous: New Year, New Team, Say Hello to the people behind SINdie!

An 'all-stars' shot on the set of The Lucky Seven Project, taken in 2007, that features some of the most active figures and voices in independent filmmaking today

Singapore went into a filmmaking coma from the late 70s into the early 90s. And to think Singapore used to be busily making 200-300 films in 50s and was ahead of Hong Kong in the game then. Looking at the current flurry of filmmaking efforts, begs the question of when we woke up from the coma. ‘Mee Pok Man’ was almost a buzzword in the late 90s when it signaled the existence of filmmaking activity then. ‘Money No Enough’ seemed like the next sign of a resurgence. Then came ’12 Storeys’. But all in all, it seemed like the efforts of a few men (Jack Neo, Eric Khoo or Glen Goei) who saw the possibility of filmmaking in Singapore earlier than many others. There was still a nagging thought: how about ‘normal’ people like us? Can we make films too?

The year 2003 marked the beginning of a few platforms that seemed to help surface new names in independent filmmaking. The Substation started its monthly programme called First Takes, where anyone could air their first films to the public. The rule was ‘don’t judge, just air’. First Takes stood the middle-ground between film practitioners and hobbyists. It offered film practitioners a chance for a quick public feedback while it also gave film hobbyists who didn’t feel confident enough to submit their films to film festivals a chance to screen their finished product without hiring a venue.

In the same year, the ‘Fly By Night’ video challenge was started by film curator Yuni Hadi and filmmaker Tan Pin Pin. This brought many people, particularly of a young age, together to make a video based on a theme over a weekend. Over the years, it soon became a ‘social-leveller’ in filmmaking, telling the man-on-the-street that you can create your own cool videos without a big crew and a lot of time. Not to mention, the Objectifs Centre of Photography and Film was also started in 2003, providing an opportunity for wannabe-filmmakers to get basic level knowledge of filmmaking, and in particular, digital filmmaking.

Naturally, ‘Fly By Night’ and Objectifs signaled the start of the digital-filmmaking revolution which lowered the barriers to filmmaking and allowed anyone with a story to tell to pick up the camera and just shoot. Till today, filmmaker Kan Lume sets the record for making a feature length film on DV camera with just under $1000. That film was ‘The Art of Flirting’.

Finally, also in 2003, Singapore Short Cuts, a more selectively curated screening of Singapore short films, was launched. This was like a ‘Best of Singapore Shorts’ showcase which brought prominence to several names in independent filmmaking over the years like Victric Thng, Eva Tang, Boo Junfeng and Wee Li Lin.

So in fact, one can argue that the current movement that we see in the film community or even film fraternity is roughly 10 years old. David Lee, Vice-President of the Singapore Film Society, recalls that when he returned from university in Australia in late 2002, ‘filmmakers like Sun Koh, Han Yew Kwang were just starting out, and so were a slew of other filmmakers like Tzang Merwyn Tong who continue to be active today.’ Sun Koh won the Silver Hugo Award with her first short film ‘My Secret Heaven’, Han Yew Kwang won ‘Best Short Film’ at the Singapore International Film Festival in 2002. At the same time, Royston Tan’s seminal short film ‘15’ (picture below) also surfaced in the scene, having won several awards overseas. David adds, ’You can feel there's a burgeoning film community with a new generation of filmmakers, a 2nd wave of filmmakers whom I will refer to as the post-2000 wave.’

Indeed, there was a newly-found courage imminent in the scene and the name Royston Tan (in the rabbit suit above) somehow had embodied this courage. His short films won him numerous awards from various film festivals. He was named TIME magazine’s Top 20 Asian heroes in 2004. While being hailed as the new poster boy of Singapore cinema then, he was also tagged as being the L’enfant terrible of the scene, for being unflinchingly straight-talking in his style, unabashedly ‘obscene’ and honest in his depiction of street kids and in general, eschewing traditional cinematic storytelling rules with so much gusto. This was important for the filmmaking movement then as it bestowed it with a spirit of experimentation and adventure that went hand in hand with the new opportunities presented by ‘Fly By Night’, ‘Singapore Short Cuts’, ‘First Takes’ and the digital revolution in general.

The film ‘Ilo Ilo’ was certainly the story of the year in 2013 and needless to say, Anthony Chen was 2013’s poster boy. Anthony really emerged in the scene in the middle of this 10-year resurgence. In 2007, his short film ‘Ah Ma’ was the first Singapore short film to be competing in the Cannes Film Festival Short Film section and he won a Special Mention Award. He belongs to a generation of filmmakers who dug a little deeper into society, going beyond the sensation and mood that earlier filmmakers may have sought to explore. Boo Junfeng (pictured below), who earned his following from winning awards at the Singapore International Film Festival, was like a generational companion to Anthony. His films often peered into sensitive social, and sometimes, political issues. Despite his young age, his films often displayed a maturity beyond his years. David (Singapore Film Society)calls them part of the 3G (third generation) of Singapore filmmakers, with Jack Neo and Eric Khoo being part of the first; Royston Tan, Sun Koh, Wee Li Lin and Tan Pin Pin being part of the second.

This ‘3G’ class is a thoughtful, almost pensive class. They explore issues hard and deep, have very individualistic takes on things and delightfully, they vary greatly in their artistic approaches. Anthony and Junfeng aside, there is Liao Jiekai whose well-travelled first feature film ‘Red Dragonflies’ took a meditative view on change and growing-up in Singapore. There was also Loo Zihan who pushed the boundaries on sexuality in film with films like Solos and Pleasure Factory and also spoke for artistic integrity in his valedictorian speech, which was a protest against the school authorities asking him to change his final year film poster.

While the bold strides these films made in the cinematic craft did not always find a sizeable audience in Singapore, there was always the film festival circuit audience willing to soak up these films and give due recognition to their works. Yuni Hadi, film curator, founder of Objectifs and Producer of ‘Ilo Ilo’ said, ’The interest film programmers have taken in Southeast Asian films in the last decade have created an international audience for us and opened up the world of critics and festival awards which have helped boost the interest in stories from our region. I remember sending out Singapore short films on VHS to festivals and cultural institutions overseas more than 10 years ago and very few people wanted to collaborate or even knew where Singapore was.’

Alongside this ‘3G’ emergence, from 2007, Singapore seemed to be seeing a start of the ‘professionalisation’ of filmmaking with the ‘mushrooming’ of educational institutions offering formal courses in film. NTU emerged with a filmmaking programme, comprehensive enough to compete with Ngee Ann Polytechnic even though it was not focused on using actual film, but more digital. Then came the NYU Tisch School of the Arts as well as the La Salle College Putnam School of Film (pictured below) which both offered graduate programs in film. At the secondary school level, filmmaking groups emerged as CCAs replacing the relatively unsexy cousin, the AV (audio-visual) club. Evidently, there has been a greater demand for a proper film education. If a teenager was to tell his or her parents that he was going to film school, chances are, they may not nag about the impracticalities of a film career and actually be rather accepting.

The spreading of film education seemed to the second ‘leveller’ after the digital filmmaking revolution. In the last few years, film competitions like cine65, the 48 Hour Film Project, the New Paper First Film Fest and a dozen other mini film contests from a bevy of government statutory boards and corporations have lured entries from a widened pool of people, and in particular students (not just film students). In 2011, 13-year old Amos Yee took the top prize at the New Paper’s First Film Fest, suggesting how kids these days in Singapore may be starting to harbour Steven Speiberg or Martin Scorsese dreams. Aishah Abu Bakar, Programme Manager of the Substation’s Moving Images programme, remarks that ‘everyone, including secondary and primary school students can make films now’. Having been at the receiving point of film submissions for First Takes and the Singapore Short Film Awards for the past 4-5 years, she testifies to seeing how filmmaking is no longer the exclusive turf of a handful of individuals, ‘I think the scene is very vibrant. I'm particularly encouraged seeing younger filmmakers' works, from SOTA, some ITEs, and some polytechnic final year projects. They can surprise you with their depth, and the ideas or concepts behind these films, and I think it's so great that they feel empowered to try their hand at filmmaking as a form of expression.’

10 years on in 2013, it seems we have arrived at the point where the big boys no longer have the best ideas and a generation whose sensitivities and sensibilities are honed on Facebook and Twitter are giving the occasional wise cracks in our film lingo. They just don’t have the experience, equipment and possibly the entourage (of the usual collaborators like DOP, sound etc). David (Singapore Film Society) quips, ’I can already see signs of a 4G - Singaporeans below 25 years old, becoming active in film screenings and talking about films, and most importantly starting to make films. What's interesting to note is that the younger generations are all if not primarily graduates from film schools, the film schools brats if you would, and coming from quite different backgrounds from the 1st generation early pioneers.’

Anthony (pictured above), who won the Camera d’Or at Cannes and the Best Feature Film award at Golden Horse for ‘Ilo Ilo’ could be considered a product of a comprehensive film education, having gone from Ngee Ann Polytechnic to the National Film and Television School (in UK). And the disciplined approach to filmmaking was rather evident in ‘Ilo Ilo’. Therefore, with a 4^th generation of new filmmakers, properly schooled, well-grounded in theory, are we ready to expect a Singapore New Wave of cinema? According to Yuni (producer of ‘Ilo Ilo’), ‘We’re in a good time because we are surrounded by a generation of practitioners who believe that we have a chance to grow beyond what we already have.’

One must not forget that Anthony’s success is also the success of relentless conviction to a dream, where textbooks and theory are only half the formula, where the journey to making the film is most of the time lonely. The fact that filmmaking has been ‘democratised’ to the wider population, resulting in more people pursuing the dream, may not necessarily increase our chances of winning more awards in the future. But it cannot be denied that there is a certain camaraderie that has been developed among the currently active independent filmmakers in which Anthony’s win was almost seen as everyone’s win, and that surely has a mutually-galvanising effect on each other to bring the bar higher. Yuni adds, ‘It is more important now more than ever that we stand together as community to move forward’.

The article is written by Jeremy Sing, editor of SINdie and he dedicates this article to Bertrand Lee, who is making a comeback in filmmaking this year with a Mandarin film called ‘The Abandoned’. Bertrand Lee was a pioneering filmmaker who belonged to the post-2000 class of filmmakers. His career was interrupted when a truck mowed him down in Mumbai in 2005 and he lost his left leg.

↧

Review - 'I Hugged The Berlin Patient' by Edgar Tang

January 7, 2014, 6:50 am

≫ Next: Notes from the Lab : 13 Little Pictures in Bangkok

≪ Previous: Independent Filmmaking in Singapore - A Brave 10 Years

The first man cured of HIV had walked out of the operating theatre alive and there is no stopping for a spritely young Singaporean, Edgar Tang, to find the one and only, Timothy Ray Brown. Edgar dreams to meet his American “idol” in person so badly that he decide to take a leap of faith and buy a ticket to the Berlin, where Timothy previously lived.

With limited information and clues in hand, Edgar remains determined and establishes connections with new friends he meet in the city. Despite the struggles at the start, he soon finds his way to meet Timothy's old friend, Christina, and Timothy's doctor who cured him using the stem cell transplant, Gero Hutter. However, his strongest connections do not lead him to Timothy immediately.

His luck takes a turn when he discovers that Timothy will be speaking at an event in Amsterdam. Edgar quickly contacts the conference manager but finds out that he has to work around the no-camera and privacy issues at the event venue. Surprisingly, the conference manager obliges to grant backstage interview and that means, he will finally be able to converse face-to-face with Timothy.

With chanceful glimpses of Timothy in the hotel prior to the interview, the big day arrives. Edgar is beyond ecstaticbut remains his composure and charm during their conversations at the restaurant and outside. They share moments of insight and discovery which certainly helps Edgar to understand the true man behind the 'Berlin patient' headlines.

The film portrays an honest and earnest depiction of Edgar's curious quest to find Timothy and put his unique case in a bigger spotlight. The story itself is special but its ending comes off as predictable, with title of film being a big giveaway. Ultimately, everyone loves a happy ending so, it is a win-win. One scene with Edgar going to the hospital to check on his flat foot appears trivial but it does enforce his point on doctor-patient relationship being impersonal and intimate at the same time.

Some parts in the conversation between Edgar and Timothy are a little dry, but good enough to keep audience peeled to the end. Edgar tries to splice a fictitiousfeature as an analogy on HIV as an unsuspected “serial killer” showing a romantic couple wining and dining but ended with a brutal murder. This was confusing at first, with extended frames that make audience go what-has-this-got-to-do-with-the-quest, but able to piece the message eventually.

Audience will be taken by Edgar's quirky and child like nature in the film. His search for Timothy resembles his personal journey in seeking hope and, indeed, hope finds him in the least expected way.

Review by Haswani

↧

Notes from the Lab : 13 Little Pictures in Bangkok

January 10, 2014, 8:40 pm

≫ Next: Review - "Revealed" by Michelle Yao & Tan Yun Ting (Viddsee Series)

≪ Previous: Review - 'I Hugged The Berlin Patient' by Edgar Tang

We catch up with Daniel Hui (pictured right) of 13 Little Pictures who shares what happened at the 13 Little Pictures Film Lab held in Bangkok end of last year.

Can you give us a refresher on what 13 Little Pictures is?

13 Little Pictures is a collective of independent filmmakers bound by a spirit of collaboration and comradeship. We believe in making films and friends at the same time, because filmmaking is ultimately most refreshing when it is achieved collaboratively. By challenging, inspiring, and supporting each other, we hope to build a community of distinct individuals who share a similar spirit of adventure and love.

There are 24 participants from 7 countries , where are they from and what genres of films did you all receive?

We had participants from all over the region and the world. This year, we had participants from Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, the U.S., and Portugal. At the end of the lab, the participants made films ranging from narrative fiction, experimental documentary, essay film, dance film, to sound collage. The films were all mind-blowing and I am extremely proud that 13 Little Pictures played a part in bringing all these astounding filmmakers together.

Can you elaborate more on the happenings at the film lab and it's goals?

The first three days of the lab consisted of intense workshopping sessions, where participants critiqued each other's film ideas and shared their opinions on cinema. We also had sharing sessions by filmmakers from 13 Little Pictures (Chris Yeo, Liao Jiekai, and myself) and Electric Eel Films (Anocha Suwichakornpong and Soros Sukhum). Over the next two days, the participants had to shoot and edit their films. There was a final critique of the rough cuts before the films were finally presented on the very last day. Two films were then awarded post-production prizes sponsored by Technicolor Asia.

Our goal for this lab was to open up a space where people from vastly different backgrounds, experiences, political and artistic views could come together and make work collaboratively. We believe in creative tension, the sparks that fly when the minds of distinct individuals collide, because this reflects the spirit of 13 Little Pictures. I have personally learned so much from the participants of this lab. They have shown me that differences can not only be transcended, but also be used to augment one another, creating something that is much bigger than all of us.

Since this is the 3rd edition , how did the films differ from the previous 2 editions ?

This year, we asked all the participants to submit a film idea revolving around the theme 'The Uncanny' along with their applications. This allowed us more time to interrogate each other's film ideas, which, I think, resulted in a greater variety of films in different genres. It also placed a greater emphasis on the films that were made at the end.

How is the indie film industry in Thailand? Could you elaborate more on the recurring themes/genre that is very often portayed in Thailand?

Meeting the independent filmmakers in Thailand - many of whom were involved in the lab in one way or another - was absolutely inspiring for me. Never before have I met so many people who are both visionary and humble in equal measure. From an outsider's point of view, there seems to be a veritable filmmaking and film-watching community that is very receptive to new ideas and modes of expression. Sure there is still no money involved in independent filmmaking, but to me - and of course I run the risk of romanticizing things - there is a very precious flame there that cannot be easily extinguished by the demands of money and commercialism. I am especially excited by the fearlessness with which independent Thai cinema confronts sociopolitical issues.

How did you guys came about with the theme "The Uncanny" ?

We wanted a theme that sets a tone, a color, but also one that is broad enough to invite varied interpretations. More importantly, we wanted to give the participants room for imagination, and since "The Uncanny" marries both the strange and the familiar, we felt it would work best.

Could you tell us what you'll be expecting from next year's 13 Little Pictures?

This year will be our fifth anniversary so it will be a very exciting year for us. For one, we are producing Glenn Goei's Yellow Flowers with mm2 Entertainment. The film will be written by Haresh Sharma and shot by Christopher Doyle. We have also just finished shooting Fundamentally Happy, a feature film directed by Tan Bee Thiam and Lei Yuan Bin. I will also have a new feature this year entitled Snakeskin.

Where is it possible for audiences to catch these films?

Some of the participants are still putting their finishing touches to their films. Once the films are ready, we will put them up on our 13 Little Pictures YouTube channel. We are also excited to see them in film festivals around the world soon!

Interview by Mohan Deitrich

↧

Review - "Revealed" by Michelle Yao & Tan Yun Ting (Viddsee Series)

January 22, 2014, 7:07 am

≫ Next: Interview with Chai Yee Wei and Eric Ng from 'I want you'

≪ Previous: Notes from the Lab : 13 Little Pictures in Bangkok

SINdie continues with its regular weekly reviews of selected short films from Viddsee, an online platform for filmmakers and viewers of Southeast Asian films.

"Revealed" is the story of Brandon (Bobby Tonelli) and Jamie (Debra Teng), a good-looking, newly engaged yuppie couple living together. When Brandon's secret is suddenly revealed to his fiancée, the couple's domestic bliss suddenly unravels.

In its first half, "Revealed" suffers from a weak build-up. The film opens on a small party. The television plays a video montage of Brandon and Jamie's friends wishing them a happy engagement. Brandon officially proposes to Jamie in front of their guests. A tipsy friend, searching for the bathroom, instead chances upon a locked door. The film warms up slowly, with this opening sequence feeling rather artificial, obviously constructed to set in motion the plot. It is as though the leads take a while to warm up on screen, with the dialogue delivery initially rather stilted -- it does not quite come across as the mundane, comfortable chatter of lovers familiar with each other but feels like lines are being recited.

Through belaboured exposition Brandon is shown to be a lawyer, ostensibly a successful one given his crisp shirts, high-rise office and flashy sports car. However, this seems rather at odds with the work he is actually shown doing. His interactions with a fussy client seeking a divorce are mined for laughs, but do not elicit many, for the sullen tai tai with her nail polish, condescending attitude and exaggerated accent is neither charmingly flighty nor outlandishly annoying. Only in a second appearance does her character's purpose become apparent; it is hinted that Brandon is agitated—even disturbed—when someone shouts at him, even if that person is so obviously a caricature of petulance.

Yet, "Revealed" is worth persisting with as it improves considerably in the second half, once the plot is properly set in motion with Jamie's accidental discovery of Brandon's secret. It is suspenseful, and then touching, to watch as Jamie opens the now unlocked door, switches on the light, and goes through a range of emotions: curiosity, then confusion, and then surprise, delight and tenderness as she sees what she assumes is evidence of her fiancé's nurturing desires, of his wish to start a family together. Of course, the truth is far darker, stemming from something far longer unresolved. The sense of urgency is successfully built up with effective editing that cuts between the frantic shots of Brandon rushing home and Jamie's cautious exploration of the room.

The scenes that follow within the confines of the storeroom build up far more convincingly to a tense climax. Set design is a strong feature of "Revealed", with the limited physical space effectively used in this sequence in particular. The amount of white used—the white walls, the actors' white shirts—upon which a sickly yellow glow is cast by the lighting, with the garishly coloured toys scattered around the tight space, makes everything feel more sinister.

"Revealed" began awkwardly, but is not a wasted watch for the actors, Tonelli in particular, do eventually ease into their characters sufficiently that they evoke sympathy. Ultimately, "Revealed" is a creditable effort that does make its point—about a serious subject, no less—but it would be stronger with tighter editing that omitted unnecessary scenes intended to inject humour for the sake of it.

Watch "Revealed" here on Viddsee.

Review by Aditi Shiva

Aditi Shiva works as an editor and is partial to semicolons. If her life were a movie, it'd be an animated indie Bollywood rom-com.

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About Viddsee
Viddsee is an online video platform for filmmakers and audience of Southeast Asian short films. Built and designed by engineers and filmmakers, Viddsee enables users to easily discover, watch and share stories from Southeast Asia on their desktop and mobile devices. Our vision is to continually grow the community of short film audiences to enable a wide and accessible market reach for short films and become the leading micro-cinema platform for Asia.

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Interview with Chai Yee Wei and Eric Ng from 'I want you'

January 28, 2014, 8:33 pm

≫ Next: Review - The Lion Men by Jack Neo ( J Team Productions )

≪ Previous: Review - "Revealed" by Michelle Yao & Tan Yun Ting (Viddsee Series)

I want you stars contestants of popular TV talent reality show ‘The Voice of China’ in a fictional plot of young aspiring singers, set in a school campus. Principal photography started in October 2013 in the city of Sanya, Hainan Island and wrapped up in 17.5 days .

We interview Yee Wei and Eric to find out more about their experience working on the film.

Addressed to Chai YW -

‘I want you’ will open in cinemas this March. How do you think the Singaporean audience will respond to the film oppose to the audience in China?

I am not sure how they will respond to the film, as the Voice of China is not even shown on TV here. But what I am sure they will love the music in the film. For their fans, I am sure they will be glad that there are many songs new and old that will bring a smile to their face.

What compelled you to take up directing ‘I want you’, despite being solely engaged as “Director-for-hire” and not being involved in casting, screen writing etc.?

For me, it is the opportunity to work with these group of artists. They are very popular in China, and to be able to work on this level is very exciting for me. A challenge it may be, because they are after all non actors, but the chance to work on the project that is purely a Chinese production with Chinese crew, will be good experience to have.

Only two other Singaporeans (Derrick Loo as Director of Photography and Eric Ng as Music Director) were involved in the production team of ‘I want you’, and thus filming plus post-shooting processes must have been very different from what you have been used to. Would you kindly share with us your experience?

In terms of the process of filmmaking, it is really not that much different. You get the material (script) and you work with what you have (cast, crew, art). You do script analysis, shots list and so on. What’s really challenging was the time given to execute the entire project. We had no rehearsal time, 17.5 days for shoot and only 2 days to get a final cut. The editor wasn’t someone I was familiar with and I didn’t get to have the final say on the final cut. So I didn’t even get to see the final results until the grading process. Many things wasn’t in my hands.

Did you have to overcome a cultural barrier to direct this well and how did you overcome it?

There was, but it really wasn’t that big of a deal. Just go with the flow. Language wise was something I was worried about initially, but like I said, it didn’t take too long to get into their lingo.

Having worked on this, what are the differences between what the china audience likes and Singapore audience?

I think eventually, I try to think universal. Emotions are universal, happiness, sadness, disappointments, etc. I wouldn’t say there are that much differences. When making the film, you go with your instinct more often than not and hope it transcends.

You have dabbled in horror, comedy, youth drama, and now, music drama. Which is your personal favourite so far and which genre can we be expecting from you in your next film?

I love to work on anything that interests me, and I have lots of interests! I personally prefer things with a darker tone to it, and I think you will see me returning to dealing with heavier and darker materials in my future works.

Addressed to Eric -

Hi Eric, you mentioned before that you had an epiphany writing Paper Plane, about the difference between a song and a hit song. Could we be so bold as to ask, what was the direction you initially had in mind for the tracks in ‘I want you’?

Simple. I want ALL….the….songs….to be hit songs!

You had only 8 days to arrange 14 songs and write 2 of them. What inspired you during those 8 days that enabled you to accomplish this mean feat?

Passion. Nothing is impossible without it.

How is the song writing for the film different from the ones you usually do?

Another reason what inspired me to work with these guys is I've watched them on the competition and know what they can accomplish, in terms of song writing, there's not much difference as it's a pop music film.

The only difference I guess is I can write or arrange the songs more musically challenging as I know they will be able to do it well!

"I want you" will be opening in local cinemas come March 2014.

↧

Review - The Lion Men by Jack Neo ( J Team Productions )

January 29, 2014, 9:29 pm

≫ Next: Production Talk with Ler Jiyuan and Lee Thean-jeen on 'Gone Case'

≪ Previous: Interview with Chai Yee Wei and Eric Ng from 'I want you'

The Lion Men ,

Lets welcome the latest production from J Team productions and the cast of Ah Boys to Men (1 & 2) back onto the big screen. With the locally successful army adaptation on National Service in the perspective of the young cohort of Generation Y, the director and cast has returned yet again to bring you another round of their trademark comedy style with a blend of emotions mixed up in the bunch.

With Jack Neo's decision in Ah Boys to Men to cast non-trained actors to form a band of boys who would helm his previous films, he has brought back the boys once again for a 2nd round of buddy films. With the inclusion of more newly cast actors and actresses, will this second round be a fresh idea for the audiences to accept or will audience be reminded too much of J Team's previous production...

The film revolves around a Lion dance troupe named "Tiger Crane" with the main plot focused on the 5 main cast members. A string of incidences causes a rift in the group and thus leading the creation of a new Lion Dance troupe named "Storm Riders". With the rival Lion Dance troupe "Black Hawk" joining the fray to compete in the Biggest Lion Dance Competition, all 3 Lion Dance troupes whips out all their skills in order to win the competition.

Without revealing much of the film, let’s talk about the various characters. The characters lack real motivation towards the competition. The finale of the competition seems to be undermined by all the sub plots being thrown into the film to in order to extend the length of the film. Audiences aren't looking for their money's worth by siting longer in a cinema but rather be entertained during the entire duration of the film.

Truly Singapore may not excel in the field of CGI effects in film but the highlight of "The Lion Men" resides in the intricate choreography of Lion dance stunts. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, stunt men/women being hung on iron wires performing aerial feats and poses. Looks like that nostalgic feeling has returned after a long hiatus. No Hollywood CGI effects of actors performing stunts on a monitor screen, this is real people performing real stunts and getting hurt in the process. Having a real stuntmen perform these lion dance stunts showcase an authenticity in film that has been slowly lacking in the years. This is probably why we still go back to Youtube to watch Jet Li do the Lion dance fight in "Once Upon a Time in China 3" or Jackie Chan in his heydays performing superhuman stunts which would send shivers down your spine. Truly a highlight to gawk and be amazed , although it helps if more detail was paid towards avoiding camera shots that reveals the stuntmen instead of the actors (IMO takes away some of the film's magic).

Regarding the cast, apart from the main 5 boys that are at the centre of the film, they each brings forth a different flavour to the plate and present themselves as uniquely as possible. I appreciate the effort of trying to act to the best of their abilities but it could have been more animated especially trying to setup comedic moments or puns. With a new young cast of non-professional actors and actress part of the film, the fresh new faces presents the film in a new light but sadly the acting skills becomes too apparent on screen and it reeks of awkward reactions and uneasy line executions. It seems Chen Tian Wen is truly pulling off all the acting skills he has been amassing over the years. Portraying as the Lion dance troupe master, father figure and friend to his disciples, he captures all the stereotypical traits perfectly especially pulling off the expressions and line exposition for the various scenes, definitely stole the show.

A true delight to view is to watch the opening scene to ""The Lion Men". Aerial shots to capture the traveling Lion Dance troupe in their lorry to well angled shots to capture the stunts of the Lion dance on stilts presents a wondrous insight to present the emphasis on Lion dance culture in Singapore.

In conclusion, J team has placed the film at the perfect occasion to open the film. As the nation goes into a full blown Chinese New Year mood, "The Lion Men" is in for a huge crowd of film audience ready to catch movies over the long weekend. Although my suggestion is try to give a blind eye towards the over the top blatant product placements in the film which became more of an eye sore as the film progresses, go ahead and break out in laughter with some well-timed funny moments and gravity defying stunts might alleviate the pain of paying a full priced weekend movie ticket.

Review by Deitrich Mohan

Photo Credits : J Team Productions

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Production Talk with Ler Jiyuan and Lee Thean-jeen on 'Gone Case'

January 30, 2014, 7:47 am

≫ Next: ShoutOUT!: Nominees for the 5th Singapore Short Film Awards

≪ Previous: Review - The Lion Men by Jack Neo ( J Team Productions )

Synopsis

Based on the critically acclaimed novel by Dave Chua (winner of the Singapore Literature Prize Commendation Award), Gone Case is a heartfelt, coming-of-age story that revolves around twelve-year-old Yong, who struggles to cope with the tumultuous events that take place in his life as he approaches his PSLE exams - the death of his grandmother, the decaying relationship of his parents, the rigorous demands of school, run-ins with a neighborhood gang, his first crush and taste of heartache, and the tensions between him and his dysfunctional best friend, Liang. Like the HDB estate that the main characters reside in, Gone Case features a myriad of characters that weave in and out of Yong’s life, forming a poignant mosaic of Singapore heartlands in the 90s.

Directed by Ler Jiyuan and produced and adapted for television by Lee Thean-Jeen, SINdie's Thong Kay Wee took the opportunity to chat with them about their thoughts on taking on one of Singapore's acclaimed literary novels, right before its premiere on the small screens.

Q: Why take on Dave Chua's 'Gone Case'? What is it about the novel and project that attracted you?

TJ:

I got my start in TV/Film adapting works by local authors to the screen with AlterAsians (2000 & 2001) and The Singapore Short Story Project (2003, 2004, 2007). Quite frankly, I'm surprised it didn't occur to me to adapt Gone Case much earlier. But it was Ler who suggested the book one day over coffee. Coincidentally, I had adapted another work of Dave's - The Drowning - not for screen, but for stage, a couple of years back and in the process had the opportunity to reconnect with him. So I messaged him and told him we were interested in adapting his book. His response was, go ahead and good luck!

Ler:

What immediately attracted me was the "realness" of Gone Case. This novel was not a caricature of what it was like growing up in the 90s. It was a very authentic portrayal of the life and times of that era. And it is a great story.

I grew up in the 90s, and under very similar socio-economic circumstances as Yong, the protagonist: three-room flat, living with my grandmother, studying in a neighborhood school, the devil-discipline master, an absent father. I really connected with whatever was happening in the book, and I hope many people will too. Many of us would know how it feels to lose a grandmother, get bullied by the neighborhood Ah Beng, the pangs of first love, lose a best friend, bear witness to bickering parents.

The book has it all. Like Yong, I even climbed to the rooftop of HDB blocks with my friends, smoking and drinking E33s. When I read Gone Case I thought …this shit is so real. The only difference was, most of us possibly had these experiences over a period of time as we grew up, but Yong had to experience all this in the span of one year, and during his PSLE year!

It was a tough journey for Yong, and I really felt for him and wanted to tell his story. So when the call-for-proposals came along [the telemovie is funded under MDA's Contestable Funds Scheme], I brought the idea to TJ. We had previously worked together on several other projects (The Pupil, Code of Law, Zero Calling) and enjoyed very good chemistry. I am in awe of his screenwriting ability.

Q: How did you negotiate the difficulties and go about adapting a novel to a screenplay, considering the pressures of the book's success and the challenges plaguing ink-to-screen adaptations usually?

TJ:

I think the main challenge of adapting Gone Case the novel into a telemovie was its episodic structure. It's a tapestry of people and events that weave in and out of the protagonist's life over the course of one year. So I had to focus on one throughline - in the end, it was Yong's relationship with Liang (his dysfunctional best friend) - and then try and weave in the other threads (the deteriorating relationship of his parents, Yong's crush on Liang's sister, the boys' interaction with Gao the neighbourhood ganglord) as organically as possible.

As for the pressures of the book's success, sometimes when you transform a work from one medium into another (and a mainstream one like television), you have to try and start with a blank slate. For every person who has read the book and will be looking out for his favourite moments in our adaptation, there will be someone coming into Gone Case with fresh eyes. It's a fine line to walk on, but it can be quite liberating as well.

One remarkable aspect of the novel is its simplicity and honesty in the way it tells the story of Yong. It's very observational, and lucidly so. That's one aspect I tried to bring across in the adaptation.

Q: How big was the graphic novel adaptation (illustrated by Koh Hong Teng) an influence on this project visually, or can the audience expect a new visual perspective in your screen adaptation?

Ler:

I believe it will be a new visual interpretation. Film also combines different disciplines and elements: spoken word, performance, cinematography, music, sound design, and so on. Each element impacts and works in tandem with the others, stewing in the same pot and resulting in the final film. The universe we are creating is very different from that of the Graphic Novel, which has its own rules of storytelling and aesthetics.

I actually read Koh Hong Teng's Graphic Novel before the book. In fact the graphic novel was what made me interested to read Dave's book. It's really great stuff. Koh Hong Teng captured the soul of Dave's book in the graphic novel medium so well.

However, I didn't actively refer to the graphic novel when I was approaching Gone Case. My inspiration for the visuals I finally developed were Dave's book and TJ's screenplay. There were some kickass frames in Koh's graphic novel, like those of the boys at the rooftop and it was raining like mad. I wish I could have replicated those, but we didn't have the time and resources to do so. Another distinct difference was how Yong wore glasses in our telemovie and not in Koh's graphic novel. It was only mentioned briefly in Dave’s novel, but since Chu Yeang wore glasses, we thought, why not stick to that.

Q: Did Dave Chua, the original author, give you guys any advice or suggestions before the start of production?

TJ:

We sat down once with Dave before we started the production, just to pick his brains. But he was very cognizant about how different mediums - novels, film, television, even graphic novels - have their own way of telling the same story. So he effectively gave us his blessing and a free hand. In the end, however, we ended up sticking very closely to the novel!

Ler:

Dave was pretty chill about it. He knew TJ from way back and trusted him to do a good job. Dave didn't know me then, but I guess he trusted TJ's trust in me, haha. TJ is an amazing director and writer who is in many ways also my 'shi fu' (master). So I guess Dave felt pretty safe to let us do whatever we wanted.

One thing I remember though....Dave said not to make the telemovie too happy because, well, it's not a happy story. And I was like, hell yeah. I know exactly what he's talking about.

I liked him immediately.

Q: With the trend of notable local films like 12 Storeys, Singapore Dreaming and most recently, Ilo Ilo, depicting a realistic portrait of Singaporean HDB heartland living, how do you think Gone Case as a project compares and what do you think it has to offer?

TJ:

Each of the films you mentioned depict a different aspect of Singaporean HDB living in the 90s, and each filmmaker brings their own perspective to the table, even when the subject matter might seem similar. 80% of Singaporeans live in HDBs, so naturally there are many stories to be told, and from different eras. These stories form part of the collective memory of who we are.

I think Gone Case is ultimately a story about what it meant to be an average twelve-year-old kid, living in an average HDB flat in an average HDB estate in the 90s.

Ler:

Gone Case is a telemovie, while the rest were films made for the big screen. The craft involved is same same but different.

For Gone Case, we had to work within the parameters of TV. Resources were more limited than if it was a big screen production. The way it plays out on screen is different as well, because of the commercial breaks. We had to streamline the story due to time constraints. We also had to be aware of the pacing because in television, viewers can switch you off the minute they get bored. There were also several moments in the story that I felt would have been more authentic in Singlish, or even dialect, but that is not permitted on Singapore television.

However, all things being said, I look at it this way: the parameters you work with are part and parcel of our job as storytellers. We work with the medium and the genre. Our job is to tell the story and express it in the most truthful, most awesome way possible, within the framework of the medium we inherit. And for Gone Case, our challenge was to keep the heart of the story intact, despite the challenges of the medium. I believe we have done so.

With Gone Case, we had a special story to tell, and we had our own way of telling it. We really tried hard to close the divide between film and with this one, I hope people will like what we've done.

Q: How was it like working with acclaimed local musical talents like Joe Ng and Leslie Low (from The Observatory)? How did you convince them to come on board this telemovie project and what did you feel they bring to your work?

Ler:
AWESOME. Joe is a very good, personal friend of mine. We used to play in the same band together. So, it was easy to court him to do this job. We just bought him a pint at Harry's and he was on!

Joking aside, Joe is a very seasoned film composer whom I deeply respect. I learned a lot from him. We were most fortunate to have him compose the music and sound design for Gone Case. His score elevated the story to new emotional heights which I didn't even foresee. I took his lead when it came to music. His dedication was also amazing.

Me and a few other buddies privately call Leslie Low "The 神" (The God). We've been huge fans of his since his Humpback Oak days. I also did a couple of experimental videos for his band The Observatory. Till today, we still play his songs on the guitar during house parties. "West Coast" is a heartfelt song that recounts Leslie's younger days, the times he spent in the West Coast, where his grandmother stayed until she passed away. The lyrics are beautifully simple and share similar themes with the story we were telling. So, it was a natural choice to marry the two.

Towards the end of audio post, Joe suddenly came up with an idea to add additional string arrangements to the song. I was like ... yes! I secretly wanted to do this Miss Misery thing all along. The results were so cinematic.

Q: How does this telemovie project differ from your normal television work in terms of the approach taken?

TJ:

This telemovie took almost a year to produce! From the time we sat down with Dave to tell him we were doing it till just last week, when we were just putting the finishing touches on it. Granted, it was not a year's worth of continuous work, but I think the novel struck a chord with all of us working on it, and I believe we worked very hard to try and retain its essence.

Ler:

TV or not TV, my personal approach to storytelling is always the same: it's about bringing out the heart of each story. This always helps me focus when I get lost in the whirlwind of production. So in that respect, my storytelling approach towards Gone Case didn’t differ much from other projects.

The main difference, compared to my other TV work, was the amount of attention to detail we gave this project. I believe this was a special project for many of us, including our Producer Wenn, my longtime AD Tiffany Ng, Sound Recordist Jenn Hui, Production Manager Cecilia Koh and Editor Andy Tseng. All of them were very passionate about this project and gave it an important energy.

TJ and I were pretty much on the same page when we started. Dave’s story guided us on how it needed to be shot and treated. We went for naturalistic performances and a grittier style of camerawork, predominantly handheld. Glenn Chan, who also shot Code of Law, was our DOP and he added so much to it. For him, the shots had to mean something, and was always asking me what I wanted to say with each shot. This process disciplined me to shoot in a more meaningful way for Gone Case as well. I was grateful to have him on board.

Our editor, Andy Tseng, also deserves a big mention for meticulously putting Gone Case together. A lot of people don't realize it, but the editor spends a lot more time with a project than most people, and is probably the only member of the team who knows every single frame of the show. Andy insisted on watching the edit again and again - I told him I was going to vomit if I saw it one more time. Like Joe, he is a meticulous man (same star sign in fact), who cuts with his 'fewling'.

Q: How was the experience like working with seasoned actors Yvonne Lim, Zheng Ge Ping and Sunny Pang and then a new kid actor like Lim Chu Yeang?

Ler:

To be honest, I do not like directing kids. I did one kid’s drama very early in my career and I swore I wouldn’t do another one ever again! So when Gone Case came along, I was secretly terrified.

I decided we had to have a number of rehearsals with the kids before we started shoot. As a result I also grew close to them. This made directing them on set a lot easier. In the end, I am satisfied with their performances. I am especially thankful for Chu Yeang, who was a really unique kid. He has a maturity way beyond his years, which made things a lot easier. He could understand the deeper and darker themes we were trying to express, although in his own special way.

With Yvonne and Ge Ping Da Ger, it was a breeze. There were no airs to them. Like all great seasoned actors, they slipped into their roles and the genre of the film effortlessly. They acted naturally, with subtlety and sophistication. I really respected them and their professionalism, as well as their ability to evolve and adapt based on each story.

Sunny had a small scene in this show, playing Yong’s uncle. His role was originally bigger, but as TJ wrote the script we realized this was a story thread we couldn’t indulge in. Working with Sunny was, of course, easy. We worked together in two seasons of Code of Law! This guy is one of my favorite actors to work with and a friend who looks after you.

Q: What do you think of such cross platform collaborations between the local literary and cinematic / television scenes? Could that be a direction local television and films can consider taking more?

TJ:

There is so much published work by local authors, I'm actually quite amazed that we don't see more of this. Perhaps it's the challenge of doing an adaptation. Or maybe filmmakers here just want to do their own thing. But it's very rewarding to find a book or short story that you can really connect with and transform it into another medium, like with Gone Case.

Ler:

Personally, I really dig adaptations for one reason: the characters are deeper and more multi-dimensional.

A novelist, in all likelihood, does not face the same time constraints that TV, or even film, writers face. You can take years to write a novel, but for mediums like the big and small screen, you are always working to a deadline if you are a professional writer. Gone Case the novel came to us already populated with rich characters, possessing individual quirks, histories, dreams, aspirations. Bringing it to the screen was made more efficient in the process. We were in a position to enhance, breathe life into and bring meaning to what was already good. So should we do more adaptations? Hell yeah!

Catch Gone Case on Feb 2 (Part One) and Feb 9 (Part Two), 10pm, on MediaCorp Channel 5.

Trailer for Gone Case (Part One)

By Thong Kay Wee

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ShoutOUT!: Nominees for the 5th Singapore Short Film Awards

February 1, 2014, 9:38 pm

≫ Next: LUNCHBOX #12: Golden Girl of Singapore Cinema, Yeo Yann Yann

≪ Previous: Production Talk with Ler Jiyuan and Lee Thean-jeen on 'Gone Case'

The Annual Singapore Short Film Awards is here again. This year, it will be on the week of 24 February from 24 February to 2 March. A total of 111 short films were submitted to the awards and all will be screened throughout the week. The nominated films will be screened on Friday and Saturday night. Genres span from documentaries to drama to experimental films.

Here are the nominees!

BEST FICTION

Abang

Bird

Detour

Dill Doe

Tightrope

BEST DIRECTOR
Daniel Hui for Animal Spirits
Dzafirul Haniff for Abang
Kristen Ong for Bird
Michael Kam for Detour
Wu Linfeng for Tightrope

BEST DOCUMENTARY
Animal Spirits
The Kings
On Such and Such A Day, At Such and Such A Time

BEST ANIMATION
The Ant and The Frog Fly With Me
Milk

BEST PERFORMANCE

Jaden A. Zander and Muhammad Zulkifli Bin Mohammed Salleh for Abang

Maxi Lim for Dill Doe 

Michael Chua, Presley Lim and Yolby Low for Detour 

Michelle Lo for Bird 

Nadiah M. Din and Nafisah Anwar for Tudung 

Wang Lu Ying and Ren Xing for Tightrope

BEST SCRIPT
Kristen Ong for Bird
Lauren Teo for The Lying Theory Michael Kam for Detour
Nadiyah Rahmat for Tudung
Wu Linfeng for Tightrope

BEST EDITING
Adam Choong for Bird
Ho Wei Joey for The Kings
Nelson Yeo for The Story I Forgot To Tell
Song Ying for Tightrope
Teo Qi Yu for On Such and Such A Day, At Such and Such A Time

BEST SOUND

Burtt See and Inch Chua for Sunshine  
Joshua Conceicao and Nicholas Chia (Original Music) for Giselle  
Kristen Ong and Lincoln Yeo for Every Single Night 
Shawn Wang for Bird  
Teo Wei Yong and Nelson Yeo for The Story I Forgot To Tell

BEST ART DIRECTION

Adam Choong, Kristen Ong and Thilagan Narayansamy for Every Single Night
Martin Hong for Giselle
Tang Hui Huan for Tadpoles 
Martin Hong for Orbits 
Tracy Marie Lee for Pinch

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Kelvin Chew for Giselle 
Lincoln Yeo for Bird 
Nelson Yeo for The Story I Forgot To Tell 
Teo Qi Yu for On Such and Such A Day, At Such and Such A Time
Wong Xing Jie for Dill Doe

The 5th Singapore Short Awards is presented by The Substation Moving Images, Co-organised with Objectifs: Centre for Photography and Film
Monday 24 February to Sunday 2 March 2014
Weekday screenings from 7.30pm
Weekend screenings from 12pm
The Substation Theatre
Admission: Entry by donation

↧

LUNCHBOX #12: Golden Girl of Singapore Cinema, Yeo Yann Yann

February 6, 2014, 7:29 am

≫ Next: New Year, New Team, Say Hello to the people behind SINdie!

≪ Previous: ShoutOUT!: Nominees for the 5th Singapore Short Film Awards

(Photo courtesy of Cannes Film Festival 2013)

It was at just one out of many similar jobbing actor roles - playing a character in the back scene of a movie - when I first met this heavily pregnant actress walk in and sit herself down exhausted from a morning of shooting. Unassuming and with no airs, she tried to rest while waiting for her call to set. It was obvious she had been working hard so I did not approach her. Cut to 30mins later, now waiting for my call to set, I watched as the magic started - lights, camera, action - it was mesmerizing to watch a complete master at work, measured yet full of emotion, it was obvious she knew exactly what she was doing. I stayed watching for as long as I could…

Today we know the film as the multi-award winning ILO ILO by Anthony Chen and the actress as Yeo Yann Yann, Golden Hourse winner for Best Supporting Actress.

Yann Yann beaming her brightest smile after winning the Best Supporting Actress Award at the 50th Golden Horse Awards

I never got the opportunity to speak to her personally so when SINDIE presented a chance in a lifetime of a one-on-one interview, I could not say no, even if it meant meeting her completely jet lagged - I was not going to miss another opportunity to speak to this amazing actress.

Ivan Choong: I actually first met you on the set of Ilo Ilo.

Yann Yann: Oh? Where?

I: I was a complete extra on the set. I was the one who kicked the dustbin. (pause) You were heavily pregnant then and I was really amazed how you went through that.

Y: It was very fun and everyone treated you like a ‘queen’ so it was ok.

I: It must have been so tough. How did you cope?

Y: Actually, I just go ahead and do it. And whenever there is a chance to rest, I just find a chance to rest. You always see this ‘big’ woman sitting there like a Tua Pek Gong. (Ivan giggles) I always felt like one, cos I could not even cross my legs anymore. All I could say was ‘ya ready?’ ‘you need me now?’ ‘oh sure’ from the place I sat. It felt like I never had such big legs before. (pause) My usual size of shoes is size 6 but on the set, I asked them to buy size 8 and it was tight and my legs were so swollen. But it also inspired me in a way.

I: You know, there is so much that’s been documented about how Anthony changed the script to suit your ‘circumstances’, but at the start, what was it that really pulled you into the role?

Y: I had actually worked with Anthony before in ‘Ah Ma’. And when I saw that film. I saw it on the big screen. Seeing it on the big screen allowed me to see all the details. And it made me think: ‘Wow I would love to work with him again.’ So basically I just kept in touch. So when he called me, I immediately said yes and flew back here for a day even though I was in the middle of work.

(pause) Then when I got pregnant, he told me he didn’t want me to act in it. I was really really disappointed because I waited for this for a long time. And after he confirmed me as the mother, I also waited for a long long time. There was a time, he wanted to recast the film. We had a chance to meet when he was back from London and he told me he could not find an actress. So I thought to myself, maybe I still have a chance. I told him, I don’t see any issues with a pregnant mother. But he said his biggest concern is my health. Then I told him the doctor said I have to continue to work. Don’t stop. It’s bad for a pregnant lady to stop working.

I: Cos it’s better not to change any of the routines.

Y: Yes. And when the hormones start stirring you, you may start to think of all sorts of crazy things. So I had to work, and I wanted to work. So I sat there with Anthony, really hard-selling myself. After the session, I told my husband, I have never done such hard sell before in my life. (giggles) And I don’t regret it!

I: Of course!

Y: After that, he was still considering!

I: Oh wow!

Y: Yes, I kept sending him messages and whatsapping him from KL I was actually working in KL again. During that time, I had a friend who owned a boutique and I would go to her place to try on some clothes, take photos and send him to prove ‘See! I didn’t change much! I can still pass off as working mother.’ I even told him, even if I looked like a fat mother, I am fine too. Then it took me about 2-3 weeks of repeating this before he finally said yes.

I: I see the hard selling worked!

‘Yann Yann is easily one of the finest of her generation of actors from Singapore/Malaysia and she completely deserves the recognition she has earned for what I think is her career best performance so far in ILO ILO.’

Anthony Chen, director of ‘Ilo Ilo’

Y: And after that, I started eating a lot. I ate and ate all the time. By the time, he saw me, he was like, ’What happened to you?!’

I: But of course, it worked so well!

Y: Yes the pregnancy worked.

Yann Yann on the set of 'Ilo Ilo' sharing a joke with co-star Angeli Bayani

I: I mean not just that, but your expressions and all the nuances. (pause) Did you really think, after shooting it that it would do so well?

Y: Not really. I only thought it was a wonderful film, but I didn’t think the box office would be too good. I never thought about awards, the possibility of being in Cannes, being in Taiwan for Golden Horse, winning in Russia…

I: You’ve travelled the world for this.

Y: Not really. Not all the places. (pause) I spent a lot of time with my daughter cos I have become a mum.

I: Has winning the awards changed you as an actress?

Y: (laughs) I am more experienced in the awards ceremonies now! Hahah!

I: Learning how to walk the red carpet.

Y: Don’t wear a tail. Your cameraman might step on you!

I: That is true! You end up cleaning the carpet right?

Y: That’s what happened to me in Taiwan during the Golden Horse. When you walk down, the cameraman will follow you. There was a moment I turned to the camera. My friend said wow you turned to smile to the camera. I said he stepped on my tail (laughs) and I almost fell! (pause) That’s why I turned.

Dolling up for galas, like acting itself, is also an art (Yann Yann prepares for the Golden Horse Awards here)

I: Do the awards make any difference to the work? Or to you?

Y: To me, I dare to take some rest now for a while. (beat) Perhaps it gives me opportunities to work overseas because it opens up doors for me. (pause) It also shows to many other filmmakers out there in the world that we do have actors you can work with from Singapore or Malaysia. When you look at Asia, it’s not just Taiwan, Hong Kong or China. (pause) I think one of the best things about the win is that I won the award with a local film which also took the Best Film at Golden Horse. (pause) I think it helps keep our dreams alive. And I am sure it gives many other local filmmakers, actors, and everyone who’s in the industry that hope that dreams do come true! That hard work does pay off. (thinks for a second) I felt really grateful and happy when some of the co-actors in the film came to tell me ‘Hey Yann Yann, you really gave us dreams, and makes us feel we can do it.’ (pause) It also shows that as an actor, you don’t necessarily have to go out of Singapore to make it. You CAN work with a local story.

I: I understand what you mean. Many of us in the industry know how hard it is here, not just to get financial support, but socially as well. Many people still see it as not easy to make a living out of this as a full-time job. So thank you for showing us.

Y: I think it’s a collective effort. In fact, any kind of performance, whether film or TV or stage, you cannot achieve anything by yourself. It is the coming together of so many people’s efforts so that we performers can stand there and deliver. We are able to focus on just doing our job of acting out the character because many pairs of hands come together to build this safe platform for you. So we owe this success to everybody.

I: Do you think coming from a local theatre background makes a difference? I know you are from Intercultural Theatre Institute (ITI) (formerly the Theatre Training and Research Programme (TTRP)).

Y: The school experience really did change how I think. It trained my body and trained my mind. I would say the school process was wonderful. It is what helped me a lot. But I don’t think everybody has to go through the same path. It doesn’t mean everyone has to study. You have to slowly discover what you need and then go for it and work on it. And give it some time. I think nowadays a lot of people don’t give enough time. Some people may think 3 years is a very long time but actually it is not. There is an old Chinese saying ‘台上三分钟，台下十年功’ (behind every 3 minutes on stage is 10 years of hard work). I still believe in that, even though I also go through new forms of performing arts.

I: A lot has been documented about you and Kuo Pao Kun’s influence. I have attended some of the classes conducted by people in your class. And it strikes me that not everyone has gone through enough of that kind of training in Singapore.

Y: Yes, training is not enough. After training, you need to search for yourself. And the world is changing all the time. You need to adapt too. Cos we are never perfect. The craft will never be perfect.

I: Do you travel a lot? Like I know Peter Sau (from you class) has his travelling group.

Y:I wanted to but I could not. But I always try to and I think it is important because with every character that you act, you are filling yourself up with that. So when you are done with that character, you need to throw that away. You have to come back to yourself again. It’s like a glass, you need to empty yourself before new things can be poured in. (pause) Now, my daughter is the one thing that brings me back to normal life. Being a housewife, being a mama.

I: I hope she looks as you as the mama and not the actress.

Y: Yes, I am the crazy mama. (pause) Many people ask me whether I would let my child go into acting. I feel if she wants to, why not? And vice versa. I mean I chose my path. And my parents let me. So why should I say anything different to my child?

I: Speaking about that, you came to Singapore when you were very young to pursue the arts. How did you find the courage do that?

Y: Actually, my mother was so angry with me when I told I her I wanted to go to Singapore to study. This was because before that, I already went to school. I was studying Mass Communications. But my results were very bad and my heart was in performing theatre. That was what I really wanted to do. So it was challenging and I had problems getting the permit to stay in Singapore. (pause) So I met Kuo Pao Kun. He was the one who helped me and I was doing a show with him at that time. Then it continued. And I really bumped around, working with different theatre companies. I know I tried very hard then, but no matter how hard I tried, I was not able to achieve what I wanted in my mind. Or achieve what the director wanted. So one day, Pao Kun asked me if I wanted to go and study. I thought it was not a bad idea. But I said I didn’t have money. He said ‘Don’t worry, I am going to set up a school. You just wait.’ So when he finally set up the school, he asked me to come for an audition. I went and I got in. But I didn’t have money. So he said he will write me a recommendation letter and asked me to apply for a scholarship. So I told my mother and she was like ‘no.’ ‘What is this? There is no certificate, no degree or anything.’ (pause) And you know, when you are young and stupid, you are lazy to explain. (pause) My brother actually dragged me aside and said ‘I support you’. So I went ahead. (I really want to thank Lee Foundation and Georgette Chen Scholarship).

‘Singapore Dreaming was probably the first feature to give Yann Yann a really meaty starring role. She definitely blew us away during the audition and on set. She brings a combination of sincerity, intensity and intelligence that is hard to find. We're so happy to see she's finally getting the adulation we've always known she deserves. We're very honored to have been part of her journey.’

Colin Goh, co-director of ‘Singapore Dreaming’

I: When I speak to a lot of actors who are starting out, I see that many actors are still going through the exact same struggles.

Y: Yes. But at the same time, it helps with life-experience building. I remember when I was studying, the campus was in Jurong East. I used to stay in school till 3 or 4 am. just to go through my English text because I was so bad at it. I am a ‘Chinese-act’, so it was a struggle. So I had to use a lot of memorization. Even now, if you ask me to do a Shakespeare, I might have to memorise it to get the rhythm. You know every language has its own rhythm, Mandarin and English are so different. And because I stayed near school, I walked home and I am back in school at 7am again. (pause) I had a certain do or die kind of feel at that time. It was like if I can’t make it, forget about going back to Malaysia. (laughs)

I:Do you think that sets you apart from the rest?

Y: I think actors work very hard. You think we are always hanging out and having coffee? Haha. We are actually all hiding at home, memorizing the scripts and doing our homework. (pause) But we have fun too! When we are in the rehearsal room, we put away our scripts that play a bit with each other. That’s why it’s called ‘play’. So our job is fun too, even though it is sometimes frustrating. (pause) For certain…. Ok, maybe I speak for myself, I play with a conscious mind. You are very into it but at the same time you are very conscious.

I: That reminds me of a comment a senior actor mentioned. She mentioned that ‘These days, in a normal production, rehearsals are four weeks flat, unlike the older days when there was more time to rehearse. So she feels something is lost. Do you agree with her?

Y: (In thought) I think it depends on the type of production. Probably before the four weeks, actors already have time to do their homework, instead of during the four weeks. So they have to get their lines down before the four weeks. (pause) Actually for me, I can’t. I have to walk around. I have to get the momentum before I can get my lines. Sometimes, it’s my body, or my hand that I remember. Sometimes, it’s the emotion that I remember. Or my co-actors. I can’t really memorise the whole thing until I get the scene.

I: You went from theatre to film. How different are these two for you?

Y:Actually I don’t find it that different. You always have to go into a character and then come out. (pause) I think there is also a difference in energy level. If your audience is this small, you don’t have to talk that loudly but the amount of energy used is still there.

I:So you don’t really have a preference between the two.

Y:I love performing.

Yann Yann, through the years, in film...

as Mei in 'Singapore Dreaming'

as Big Papaya (right) in '881'

as Michelle in '18 Grams of Love'

as Jia Li in 'Love Matters'

as Zhu Er in 'Being Human'

as Zhung Li Chun in 'Petaling Street Warriors'

as Hwee Leng in 'Ilo Ilo'

I:Do you miss going back to theatre?

Y:I would love to go back sometime. It’s a place that really gives you time to rehearse, think and take in a lot of things, a lot of people’s ideas. In the rehearsal room, everybody just loses themselves, without being selfish. In films, the rehearsal time is shorter. A lot of time you are lonely, doing your own preparations. In Ilo Ilo, we had many rehearsals, but still not as much as theatre. In theatre we can spend 8 hours a day at theatre to perfect something. And at the end on stage, nothing is perfect. We need to go from the starting point to the ending point. Everyday, you find new things.

‘雁雁目前是新加坡唯一能把drama和comedy都演得精彩的女演员。’

(Yann Yann is currently the only actress in Singapore who can do both drama and comedy really well.)

Han Yew Kwang, director of ‘18 grams of Love’,’When Hainan Meets Teochew’ and ‘Rubbers’

I:If given the chance, would rather act in English or Mandarin?

Y:If I can, I would like to do both. (pause) Especially, in Singapore and Malaysia, it is important to be able to use both English and Mandarin, because we are both multi-lingual countries. My Malay is not very good but I try to at least hold two languages well. I worked very hard on my English. Every day for half an hour, I would be reading to my teacher. There was this teacher from ITI(TTRP) who was willing to help me for half an hour every lunch time. And recently when I called him, he told me my English didn’t go too bad. I was like ‘Thank You!’ because I haven’t been speaking English for a while. When I am Malaysia, most of the time, I am speaking Mandarin or Cantonese, for TV and film. People around me there don’t really speak English. Only when I am back in Singapore, then I speak, but it’s also Singlish. And people who speak proper proper English to me have already left the country! (laughs) But your tongue becomes lazy. And some of the scripts. You really cannot perform in Singlish! Our Mandarin also has an accent and in some scripts, you also cannot perform in that accent. (pause) I kinda miss Pao Kun’s plays because you always have people who speak different languages. It’s very rare in Singapore these days.

I:I think it’s good that you know what you are doing and love what you are doing. And you don’t happen to want to try other things like directing right?
Y: Somebody said to me before ,’Just act properly la!’ It was a cold, deadpan statement and I accepted it! You know, ‘can act, just act la!’ So basically, just do what you think you like now. (pause) I really like, love acting. I actually decided that I love acting when I was 27.

I: Having been an actor for so long, what would you consider the most difficult part of your career?

Y: (in deep thought) Of course, there were difficult times. Like you go to the bank and you realise there is only $10 left, and you can’t even draw out the money. (pause) But you always have friends who come and help. Like my high-school friends. We still keep in touch. We used to live together and whenever there was someone in need, pockets nothing, we would help. It’s just how we went through that period of time. And you keep your life very very simple. Even now, I keep the feelings of it. (pause) My teacher told me something, This is the teacher who helped me with my tuition. He said ,’Save some ‘Fuck you’ money’. With your first job, you save money. And when you find time when you really want to rest, just say, ’Fuck you.’

I: (laughs out loud) That’s a very good one!

Y:A lot of ITI(TTRP) students know who said that. (pause) I mean freelancers, I myself, I have been a freelancer for 16 years now, still save money.

I: I started in the industry late, and my instinct was to take everything single job that you can squeeze into your calendar. And then after that, you realise you just cannot do it physically.

Y:Yes, you need to take time to rest. (pause) Some people ask me… Wah Yann Yann you rich, you no need to work? It’s not that. I don’t mind living a very simple life. When I need to rest, I rest. Don’t force yourself to do. If you don’t feel anything for this project, then don’t do la. Don’t force yourself, because I see a lot of people do and whine, and end up being unhappy about what they are doing. It’s unfair to yourself and unfair to the production too. When you have the chance to rest, just rest. It’s really luxurious for us here. I mean, many people in L.A. have to double up as a waitress. Here, we don’t have to. We can teach, we can do many other things.

I: What would you say is the most important thing that new actors should learn?

Y:I think at the beginning you actually don’t have time to think about rest. You just have to do and do and do. And don’t do just for the sake of doing, Examine yourself. We are always examining ourselves. That’s what we learnt in school. Where’s you body? Your hand? Your legs? How do you stand? You body is your tool. And because you need the money to survive, just take it and do it with a full heart, and be thankful that somebody wants to work with you.

I: There is one question, we ask all our guests on LUNCHBOX, so I would have to ask you as well – Would you starve for the sake of art?

Y:I did! (beat) I really did. (laughs) Well, not for the sake of art. I think I was young and silly, but I really really enjoyed what I was doing. And I wasn’t even thinking whether I was starving or not. My mum actually thought I was starving. But it doesn’t matter whether you are in arts or not, when you are starting to work, or when you are studying, a lot of people are starving too, for the love of what they were doing at that time. So I did and I think many other people did too.

Having completed the interview, I can only say I remain if not am more in awe of Yann Yann. She was gracious, open, honest and unassuming - ready to share stories and lessons with a newbie like myself. I will always remember this interview and am sure I will continue to watch her career go from strength to strength. Perhaps I can hope that one day I might even have an opportunity to share screen time with her, but nevertheless for now I am very grateful for I have learnt much from a true actor today - I have also learnt to start saving some fuck you money!

Photos by Mohan Deitrich

Transcribed by Jeremy Sing

***

Ivan Choong (who conducted this interview) is a singer, theatre actor, academic, teacher, volunteer, budding entrepreneur, and last but not least, SINdie contributor. Always staying close to the performing arts, he can be seen in various stage productions, short films and the odd TV commercial thrown in. It would have taken a natural disaster to try to stop him from meeting and speaking to Yeo Yann Yann.

↧

New Year, New Team, Say Hello to the people behind SINdie!

December 30, 2013, 11:07 pm

≫ Next: ShoutOUT!: ciNE65 wants to give you a mentor and some money!

≪ Previous: LUNCHBOX #12: Golden Girl of Singapore Cinema, Yeo Yann Yann

Aditi Shiva

Thong Kay Wee

Raymond Tan

Deitrich Mohan

Haswani Sungit

Joseline Yu

Tay Huizhen

Gwen Xu

Gwen is very happy to be writing for SINdie because it marries her love for film and words.

When not reading, writing or making short films with friends during her spare time,

Gwen plays Michelangelo and designs the next piece of artwork that is to be painted on her nails.

Dawn Teo

Yiz

Colin Low

Jeremy Sing

↧

ShoutOUT!: ciNE65 wants to give you a mentor and some money!

February 19, 2014, 8:31 am

≫ Next: ShoutOUT!: Change the World in 4 Minutes with 'The Good Story Competition'

≪ Previous: New Year, New Team, Say Hello to the people behind SINdie!

Still from last year's ciNE65 winner 'Priceless' directed by Kenny Tan

For all budding filmmakers or wannabes, here is another way you can take a first step towards making a film. ciNE65, the short film competition organisers are putting together a mentorship programme where you can be guided by veterans and experienced hands and minds from the film industry. This is the ciNE65 Mentorship Programme 2014 where you get to be mentored and also receive a production budget to make a short film! The ciNE65 mentorship programme is open to past participants of the ciNE65 short film competition and students studying film and related courses in local institutions.

How Does the Mentorship Programme Work?

• A maximum of four teams will be shortlisted for the mentorship programme.

• Each team is to produce a 3-minute film based on the theme from Total Defence 2014 (TD14), “Because You Played A Part” . Teams can also use any of the stories featured at the TD14 Experiential Showcase from 15 Feb to 23 Feb 14 at the National Museum of Singapore as points of inspiration for their stories. You may visit (www.totaldefence.sg) for more details.

• Teams will be selected based on their proposed treatment and script.

• Selected teams will be paired with an established filmmaker who will serve as a mentor and guide the team through their production.

• Each team will be provided a production budget of S$6,000 to make their film.

• Completed films stand a chance to be featured on platforms in relation to the ciNE65 Short Film Competition.

And who are the mentors? Here they are:

Fran Borgia

Fran Borgia studied filmmaking in London, Barcelona and Singapore. In 2004, he wrote and directed his first short film, Asia. He shot his second short film, Para Asia, in 2007. Fran co-directed and produced The King Lear Project, a three-part theatre performance commissioned by Kunsten Festival des Arts in Brussels and the Singapore Arts Festival in 2008, and in 2009, he wrote and directed Film-Faust for Singapore's Esplanade Theatre Studios, a theatre production inspired by Goethe's masterpiece. He was the Producer and Editor for Here, Ho Tzu Nyen's first feature film that was presented at the 41st Directors' Fortnight, Cannes Film Festival 2009, and for the medium length film, Earth, presented at the 66th Venice Film Festival 2009 and the 39th International Film Festival Rotterdam 2010. He has also produced Masala Mama, a short film presented at the 60th Berlin International Film Festival 2010 and Sandcastle, Boo Junfeng's first feature film that premiered at the 49th Critics' Week, Cannes Film Festival 2010.

Kat Goh

A veteran of television production, Kat Goh is one of the few female filmmakers to emerge from Singapore. Cutting her teeth on epic TV productions during an eight-year stint at both MCS and Channel U, Kat's work on the small screen includes the highly rated comedy series Durian King (2004), which won three PROMAX awards including Best Actress. Kat was also Assistant Director for Kelvin Tong's blockbuster hits such as The Maid, Rule #1 and It’s A Great Great World. In 2008, Kat made her directorial debut in film with Swimming Lesson. The tender and surprising short film about a mother's love competed at the 2009 Singapore International Film Festival and won both the Best Short Film and Best Director awards. It also won the special jury mention award in the 7th Vladivostok International Film Festival "Pacific Meridian". Kat was commissioned by the Singapore Writers Festival to create a short film under its pre-festival event, Utter 2013. She made her directorial feature debut with Dance Dance Dragon in 2012.

Boris Boo

Boris has been in the industry for 16 years. He was a scriptwriter with Mediacorp Studios Chinese Drama Division for 6 years, during which he conceptualized and wrote more than a hundred scripts for various local sitcoms, dramas, and short films. During his tenure with J Team Productions from 2003 to 2011 as Creative Director, he was involved in most of the company's movie screenplays and played a pivotal role in all the J Team TV productions. His work Just Follow Law(2007) was nominated for Best Original Screenplay in the 44th Golden Horse Awards and The Ghost Blog (2008) came in third in the Film & TV Co-Production Meeting organised by the Golden Horse Awards Committee. Boris made his directorial debut as a co-director to Jack Neo's Where Got Ghost? in 2009. From 2005 to 2009, he was invited to become one of the critics for Lianhe Zaobao movie column, where he wrote close to a hundred articles. Boris is also a guest-speaker with the 'Good Morning Singapore' movie segment. In 2011, Boris left Jack Neo's production house and is currently an independent filmmaker.

Sanif Olek

A graduate of Film & Media Studies dept (Film, Sound & Video) from Ngee Ann Polytechnic and Media & Communications from Murdoch University in Australia, Sanif Olek is an accomplished and versatile television and film director. Since 1996 Sanif has received multiple 'Best Director', 'Best Drama Series', 'Best Magazine Series' awards for his television work. His short films have been screened internationally at major film festivals, won awards and showcased at museums, such as the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, Singapore Art Museum and National Museum of Singapore. He is the head consultant at reeljuice, a collaborative creative agency actively promoting effective storytelling as means to enlighten the human condition. He made his first feature film Sayang Di Sayang in 2013.

For more details on the Mentorship Programme, visit www.cine65.sg

Entries must be submitted by

5 March 2014

↧

ShoutOUT!: Change the World in 4 Minutes with 'The Good Story Competition'

February 21, 2014, 7:44 pm

≫ Next: 1400 - A Derrick Lui Film About Love and Life.

≪ Previous: ShoutOUT!: ciNE65 wants to give you a mentor and some money!

Change the world in four minutes. That is the call by Our Better World, who has recently launched The Good Story Competition – a celebration of creative and compelling video storytelling of everyday people in Asia doing good to improve the lives of others.

Our Better World is a digital initiative of the Singapore International Foundation. Since starting Our Better World about one and a half years ago, it has uncovered many inspirational stories of hope and courage and wants to celebrate the stories of these unsung heroes, and get more people involved and coming alongside to play their part. If you know people who are quietly helping to make lives better, you can help cast a spotlight on the difference they are making by joining The Good Story Competition. With your video story submission, you will help raise awareness of the cause

There are two categories, Open and Professional, with over S$25,000 of prize money. Winners not only get a cash prize for themselves, but also for the social enterprise, non- profit organisation or inspiring individual featured in their videos. Professionals are individuals or groups with filmmaking background.

Rules and Regulations
1.         Competition is open to individuals or groups with no professional filmmaking background,    e.g., Students or hobbyists in the Open Category; and to people who derive income from          filmmaking in the Professional Category.

2.         Each entry must focus on inspiring people making a positive impact in the community,        improving lives of people in Asia. The goal of the video should be to inspire everyday people to contribute in tangible ways to benefit the non-profit or social enterprise     featured.

3.         All entrants must be at least 18 years old on the date of their submission, or must have          attained contractual age in their respective country on the date of submission.

4.         Each entrant must fill out and submit the registration form here:

5.         An entry is eligible if it meets one of these two requirements:
            a.         It is a new, original      video produced and filmed for this competition.
            b.         It is an existing video filmed, produced and shown no earlier than 1 January                                   2013, with the call to action still relevant for the non-profit / social enterprise                                  featured in       the       video, and meets the other submission requirements of                                   the competition.

6.         Each entrant must submit only one video. Each entry can be submitted by an individual      or a group. If it is submitted by a group, the entry must be represented by one person in the group.

7.         Our Better World has the right to watermark, sign off and distribute all entries. The     filmmaker will be credited. All intellectual property rights will remain with the filmmaker.

8.         The filmmaker must get all necessary permissions and releases, and clear all rights, in          writing, for materials used in the video, including music, images and logos, for the        potential publication and distribution of the entry.

9.         The entry must not be obtained through unlawful means or contain any libellous,     defamatory or indecent matter and must not infringe any right of privacy or any other right         of any person.

10.       Any statement, statistic or piece of information presented as fact within the entry must be     truthful.

Prizes

Top Prize
S$4,000 (Open)
S$8,000 (Professional)

Finalist Prizes
(Four winners)
S$2,000 (Open)
S$2,000 (Professional)

Audience Choice
S$1,000 (Open)

↧

1400 - A Derrick Lui Film About Love and Life.

February 24, 2014, 10:16 pm

≫ Next: Production Talk with Randy Ang on 're:solve'

≪ Previous: ShoutOUT!: Change the World in 4 Minutes with 'The Good Story Competition'

After sharing with everyone the beauty of his short film ‘Colours’ back in 2006, director Derrick Lui is now back with a new film ‘1400’. With ‘When Night Fa11s’ as a loose prequel to this up-coming film, Derrick is ready to share this new journey with us.

Done in a different style from his previous films, 1400 will be a film with four stories being told instead of the usual one. Derrick explained this fresh direction for this project: “In the early days of my career at MTV Asia, I digged fast cuts and fast motion stuff. However, as I grew older, my work evolved and my style became ‘slower’. Think that’s the difference, haha.”

About seeking for love and little snippets of life, the audience can see the interwoven stories of the seven characters unfold on screen in a hotel as they go through different phases of their lives and meet the different people that impact them in their never-ending search.

“I came up with the concept after being surrounded by friends who have gone through heaven and hell in their relationships. Some couples broke up, some divorced. I have been some sort of uncle agony ever since my school days,” shared Derrick, who spent five years coming up with the concept and polishing it.

1400 is a compilation of his own observations about love from his friends. Told from his point of view, he hopes that the film will connect with the audience and that they will understand, appreciate and go home to spend more time with their loved ones.

So what are his personal thoughts about love?

“I think Love is something very sacred. Something that every living being in this world needs. Love can exist between, couples, family and friends. Love is the most precious intangible thing we can ever have,” Derrick told us thoughtfully.

After all the hard work and planning, filming is almost complete and this is definitely a dream come true for the director and anticipating fans of his work. However, there were hardships to overcome and that delayed the production of this project such as a lack of script. But the most difficult obstacle, as Derrick shares with us, will be money.

“The process has been fun, but more difficult and more hectic than I could ever imagine. Main problem being no budget, which results in no time. So I’m director, producer, coordinator, location manager etc all in one!”

Tiring but a satisfying journey, Derrick hopes the final product will reach out to audiences and bring these five points across: that love is not about possession, true love is unconditional and hard to come by, to treasure loved ones especially when they are still around and last but not least, that it may be best to let go sometimes.

To follow up on up-dates to find out more or to support the film 1400, do go onto their Facebook page to ‘Like’ it as well as their website and keep yourself in the loop of this homegrown film that promises to touch your heart and keep your mind thinking.

Article written by Teo Dawn

Photo credits: Derrick Lui

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Production Talk with Randy Ang on 're:solve'

February 27, 2014, 5:14 pm

≫ Next: Will Singapore ever win an Oscar Best Foreign Film Award?

≪ Previous: 1400 - A Derrick Lui Film About Love and Life.

Randy Ang's "re: solve" has been marketed as Singapore's very first action thriller film and presents a welcome break to the low stakes action of Chinese New Year film. SINdie catches up with Randy Ang ,the director himself, and Jimmy Wong, the executive producer, to tell us more about the creative decisions involved in the making of the film and how it has contributed to Singapore's film vocabulary.

Synopsis

Serious Crimes Unit Inspector Chen Shaoqiang (Chris Lee Chih Cheng) tries to figure out a series of daring armed heists and seemingly unrelated murders. Shaoqiang must revisit his troubled past as a member of the elite Special Tactics Unit, after a botched raid seven years earlier that shattered the unity of his team, taking the life of his mentor Wu Tianle (Sunny Pang). The resulting cover up destroys his relationship with Tianle’s sister Wu Qizhen (Mico Chang Wei Chun).

Shaoqiang’s past collides with the present, as heists are targeted at financial firm BWB Capital, where Qizhen and another former team mate, Wang Zhengming (Jimmy Wong), now work. Shaoqiang, and his new partner Yan Yongcheng (Yuan Shuai), must race against the clock to the catch the perpetrators as the heists escalate into a tense hostage situation, where the stakes not only involve the nation’s security, but also the lives of his friends.

Why do you think it has taken so long for a Singaporean Action Crime Thriller to be made when countless of crime television dramas have been aired?

Firstly, anyone who has attempted to make a film here will realise the difficulties for any independent production to obtain the required clearances and permits to shoot. Even more so for one that involves explosives and gun firing. We are blessed with a team that never gave up that fight. Much like the spirit of what the film represents. When we were all geared up and we know what we want to achieve - we never took "no" for an answer.

And secondly it is the believably of the situation. We tried to create a suspended reality that focuses not on the country as a country but as the backdrop of a striving Asian cosmopolitan city. The language, the styling and backdrop became a bit poised and deliberate. This of course became a double edged sword because some audiences who wanted something grounded in a lot of reality found it difficult to connect with the characters. But for those we just let go and enjoy it as intended, they will just sit back and enjoy the ride.

How do you balance between depicting dramatic emotional scenes and action sequences?

We didn't want to do action for the action's sake. The action has to be connected to the characters. Everything is relative. A shot fired in the past can haunt someone in the present. That's the way I see it. A lot of things to do with karma and repercussions.

How did you choreograph the action sequences, what difficulties did you face?

The fight choreography was done by Sunny Pang, who has another role as one of the main cast. The tactical movement was choreographed by Douglas Lam and the stunt team from DASH. The first and foremost consideration was safety and that will also be the last consideration.

The actors and the stunt team went through weeks of training and conditioning. Jimmy Wong, who plays Wang Zengming, went through three months of intensive training with Sunny and lost 27kg as a result. It wasn't all attributed to the training but also his personal determination in case you are thinking of taking on Sunny's diet course.

The movie looks expensive, mind telling us how much it costs to produce?

The production value is about 1.2million dollars, which seems likes a lot. But it is actually close to the price tag of most high end locally made dramatic narrative films, maybe just a little more. It is no way near to anything in the established Asian markets.

The team really tried to stretch as much as they can with the production to try to deliver a style and positioning that is different. Jack Tan, our Director of Photography and the camera crew really tried to pushed the envelope and really delivered some truly breathtaking cinematography. Alistair Chang, the gaffer, and the lighting crew were also very inspired well over the course of the production to achieve something unique. In fact, every department - Art, Wardrobe, Makeup and Production - really pushed each other towards a common vision to create something magical and that we can be proud of.

What is the reason behind the stylization of the English title "re: solve"?

Haha, glad you've asked. Firstly, it wasn't intended to be that way. Just simply - resolve. But it was very close to a name of another film on IMDB.

We've got the really cool Chinese calligraphy done and wanted to insert the English title in to form a visible title block. Graphically, it felt more balanced to split the word.

Then it felt like "RE:" - when you type a letter. So you can read now read the English title in two ways.

So the English title became a little bit more cryptic and that can relate to the thematic continuity of a crime thriller. We like to keep details like these.

Does anyone involved in the production have prior firsthand experience with the Singapore Police or Defense Force? How did you keep the roles of the policemen authentic?

I was an Inspector in the Police Force during my National Service. But authenticity wasn't something we were striving for. But more so the morality code and the spirit of the Police officer.

We edited the film with Iceberg Design and made the offline cut in Malaysia. The comments received there was, your cops are more gentlemanly than other countries. That's really true... And I guess that was the spirit I was talking about. We may be gentlemen; but we are also no pushovers.

How do you make the conflict uniquely Singaporean in such a way that it is difficult to alter the context (for example, setting the movie in a seemingly triad-infested Hong Kong)?

Hong Kong is not really triad-infested in the way we have been viewing it on screens for so many years. I feel really safe walking in the colourful streets even deep into the night in HK. It is just that they have taken so much liberties with it for so long.

We do have murders and kidnappings here. It is white collar crimes that defines us; and we really challenged writers Olivia Loh and Matthew Roy Ing to be able to create a scenario that has to be carefully calculated, very deliberate and smart and done with certain swagger.

Do you hope to break new grounds in the Singapore film industry with this movie?

I didn't want to think that far. We just strive to do the best we can, when given the chance. Personally, I hope to see us really try more genres. Offer the variety so that audiences can really have a choice of works to Like and Unlike. We cannot make everyone like us and what we do.

And the talent here is really ripe. We just need more opportunities to create new concepts.

What do you hope the audience would take away from watching this movie?

Never accept "No" if you believe it is right.

Catch re: solve in theaters from 27 Feb 2014 and check out its Facebook page.

Trailer for re:solve

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Will Singapore ever win an Oscar Best Foreign Film Award?

February 27, 2014, 8:38 pm

≫ Next: Winners for the 5th Singapore Short Film Awards

≪ Previous: Production Talk with Randy Ang on 're:solve'

This Sunday, the 86^th Academy Awards will be announced and the world of film, with its ardent fans, will be celebrating (and lamenting) losses and wins. Explanation for this is somewhat needless; the Oscars (pet name for the Academy Awards – a disputed title with unresolved history but for the sake of this article be used interchangeably) is undeniably one of the most prestigious awards for film; it does for film what the Grammys do for music and Tonys do for theatre. And awards, even in domains where quality is subjective, such as art, do much for the human reward system, motivating film-makers to create better works in bid to win the esteem titled of nominee or winner of said prize.

The Oscars were first given out in 1929, and the ceremony has been broadcasted subsequently from 1930. There are five nominees in each category, and there are up to 25 categories, of which the Best Foreign Film Award which Singapore has contested for will be further analyzed in this article. Films which call themselves Academy award nominees are also recognized to have been submitted from 1956 onwards as there were no nominees from 1947 to 1955 when there was only a single wining Best Foreign Film per year.

Nominees for the Best Foreign Film category are determined through a two-step process which sees several hundred Los Angeles based Academy members screen the original submissions and pick the top six, then three additional selections are voted by the Academy’s Foreign Language film award executive committee, leading to a shortlist of nine films, which will be announced to the public. At a later date, these nine films will be narrowed down to five nominees, earning the spot as contenders for the award.

A foreign language film is defined as a feature length motion picture produced outside the United States of America with a predominantly non-English dialogue track. Singapore geographically distant from the States, with its four official languages finds itself contending for Best Foreign Film award due to obvious reasons. Having submitted seven films since 1959, Singapore had yet to pick up a nomination. Most recently, Ilo Ilo by Anthony Chen which won the Golden Horse award for Best Picture, undisputedly Singapore’s best bet in so far, failed to make nomination as well. Ironically, it had inched out The Grandmaster for the Golden Horse Award, but The Grandmaster managed to get shortlisted for the Oscar.

So, what are the chances of Singapore ever winning a Best Foreign Film Oscar? We look in a few directions. First, looking at how Asian films have performed through the years, as well as the type of foreign films which have won at the Oscars might help us understand this better.

Out of sixty-five awards handed out by the Academy since 1947 to foreign films, fifty-two have gone to European films, five to Asian films, three to African and three to films from the Americas. French, Italian, German language films take top spots for having the highest nominations in the sixty-five year span. By rule of probability, it comes to no surprise that the Italian and French language films consist of a large portion of winning entries at ten out of sixty five and thirteen out of sixty five submissions respectively.

Perhaps due to a slower start in participation (other than Japan), Asian films from countries such as China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea have not had much of a presence in the nominations list. Japan heads the Asian film pack with twelve nominations and four wins having actively participated right from the beginning of the Academy Awards and Taiwan lags behind at one win in 2000. The most recent win by an Asian country, Departures by Japan in 2009 is a Japanese drama film which concerns the historic ceremony of mortification. Not surprisingly, many other winners and nominees of the BFF have also been dramas encompassing elements of history. Could this possibly be a winning genre?

Here is more food for thought. What we have here are two tables describing the language and genre of films which got nominated or won, for these six years

Language of nominated and winning films for the Academy’s BFFA from 2007 to 2012

Language	Nominated	Winners
German	13.3%	16.67%
Russian	3.3%
Hebrew	9.9%
Polish	6.6%
Mongolian	3.3%
Japanese	3.3%	16.67%
Spanish	13.3%	16.67%
French	23.3%	16.67%
Danish	6.6%	16.67%
Greek	3.3%
Persian	3.3%	16.67%
Dutch	3.3%
Norwegian	3.3%
Arabic	3.3%

Nominated and winning films’ genres for the Academy’s BFFA from 2007 to 2012

Film Genre	Nominated	Winner
Drama	70%	83.3%
Historical/Epic	10%
War	3.3%
Crime	10%	16.7%
Biopic	3.3%
Documentary	3.3%

From the above findings, French language films have been the most popular nominee in the past six years. Also, although film genres overlap (e.g.: crime films are sometimes sub-categories of dramas), the above classification has been done noting the general story plot as well as the category its film-makers listed it under. Therefore, the drama film genre is undisputedly the most common genre nominated for the BFF. This observation is similar to that of critics of the Best Picture Award; that dramas, non-fiction war films and biopics generally perform better for such competitions.

To get more of an industry viewpoint, we spoke to Juan Foo, who has made and produced several Singapore films and was part of the Singapore film resurgence in the 1990s. According to him, the Oscars tend to look for foreign films that represent the zeitgeist of the country and the quality of the country’s filmmaking culture. They may also look for some form of strong cultural and societal resonance of the country.

So who has been selecting these Singapore submissions over the last few years? According to Juan, a lot of mystery remains how the recent Singapore entries have been submitted. However, he offers his perspective on what could be an ideal way to select.

‘Anthony's ILO ILO seems to come the closest in contemporary Singapore cinema that seems to universally capture international attention and domestic curiosity. Perhaps this is a small but significant coming-of-age milestone for Singapore cinema as a cultural product to be taken seriously from all sides. And these 'sides' being - International scrutiny from a sense of sovereign branding, artistic achievement in World cinema, and general audience reception. Sovereign branding, for lack of a better phrase, is really about cultural, societal and heritage representation in cinema from a nation's perspective. World cinema achievement is more talent driven and a nod to anthony chen himself first as a filmmaker, and then as a Singaporean achieving accolades and recognition. The general audience reception, international, regional and local, is a yardstick of resonance and engagement. If we can somehow triangulate these three perspectives, into an approach to select Singapore's representation to international film awards such as the oscars, I think there is a possibility that we can 'pre-select' our own representative to the oscars and satisfy everyone ?

Let us also be aware our cinematic maturity and market is very fledging, still. A few years ago i was asked in IS magazine what was THE quintessential Singapore film, and I replied that there probably isn't one yet as we can really still building critical mass. So without a critical mass of good films it would be a simple mathematical challenge to select something that best represents Singapore. The sampling is pool is so small. Filmmakers who want to make culturally significant films should just doggedly continue and Singapore should do their best to support them.’

While Anthony’s film did not get into the final 5 nominees list, it has certainly made a winning trail in the film festival circuit, picking up awards like the Cannes Camera d’Or and Golden Horse Awards. In the same vein, Pieta by celebrated Korean director Kim Ki Duk bagged the Golden Lion but failed to make nomination for the Oscars. Elite Squad failed to make the final Oscar shortlist, but won the Golden Bear in 2008 and was a huge commercial success and made a cultural phenomenon in its home ground. The Milk of Sorrow by Claudia Llosa nabbed the Golden Bear but did not win the Oscar though it was nominated.

The global film festival circuit certainly gives filmmakers enough of a reason not give a damn about Hollywood. And Hollywood does not always see eye to eye with the rest of the world. Here is an interesting look at how Best Foreign Film Oscar winners in the last few years fared in reaching for the golden palms, bears and lions. Some stood less tall than others outside the Oscars.

Year it won BFF Oscar	Film Title	Other notable awards won
2007	The Counterfeiters	-
2008	Departures	32^nd Montreal World Film Festival – Grand Prix des Amériques
		17^th Golden Rooster Award – Best Picture
		29^th Hong Kong Film Award – Best Asian Film
2009	The Secret in Their Eyes	-
2010	In a Better World	68^th Golden Globe Award – Best Foreign Language Film
2011	A Separation	61^stBerlin International Film Festival–Golden Bear for Best Film
2011	A Separation	69^thGolden Globe– Best Foreign Language Film
2012	Amour	65^thCannes Film Festival–Palme d’Or (Golden Palm)
		70^thGolden Globe– Best Foreign Language Film

Will Singapore ever clinch the coveted Oscars? Maybe people should stop asking that question. In the spirit of art, it would be hilarious to imagine Singapore submitting a film tailored for the Oscars’ preference in terms of its genre and language. On an ending note, Juan adds,’Winning awards seriously should NOT be the reasons Singapore filmmakers make films. If that is the sole purpose and drive, then it is a motive of pure egoism, which detracts from the purposes of cinema and shared cultural phenomena in the first place’.

Singapore's 2007 submission by Royston Tan

Singapore's 2008 submission by Eric Khoo

Singapore's 2011 submission by Eric Khoo

Singapore's 2012 submission by Michelle Chong

Michael Haneke walks away with the Best Foreign Film Award for 'Amour' at the 85th Academy Awards

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