JOEY, a video consultant from W.E.D (wedding education department), dedicates herself to promoting romance and lasting marriages to young Singaporeans through her unique videos. Now she is about to fulfill her own dream with GIN, a handsome music teacher whom she has been in a whirlwind romance with after casting him along side with her in a W.E.D video.
When Joey announces her upcoming wedding to Gin, her colleagues at W.E.D. are surprised; none of them has ever met Gin in person or heard of him until the video. But they are happy, as Joey was the only unmarried staffer at W.E.D. While Joey’s star is rising at W.E.D, the path to her own wedding is elusive. Joey gets stood up by Gin on her birthday and finds him out and about with a beautiful girl, CECILIA.

Crushed, Joey is desperate to find out what’s going on only to be met with rejection and refusal.

Is Joey delusional, in need of psychiatric help? Or is Gin just an irresponsible ex-fiancé who needs to be brought to justice? Either way, Joey’s unrelenting pursuit of Gin throughout shows us to what lengths a heart will go to get what it wants and if indeed, there is a winning formula to make love happen under any circumstances.
'Forever' on Screen Daily

About the Director

A graduate of Brown University (Class of '96) in America , with a BA in Art Semiotics, Li Lin also spent a semester in NYU doing “Sight and Sound”, an intensive filmmaking production course. Since her graduation she has been working in Singapore as a freelance television producer/director. She's an avid short filmmaker and has done several short films in Singapore so far, three of which have been award winners at the Singapore International Film Festival and two have won awards at American Film Festivals. In January last year the Singapore Film Society organized a retrospective of all her work for members and the public. This event was a first ever SFC retrospective of a local short filmmaker. In 2004, the Singapore history museum (in conjunction with the Substation) organized another retrospective of her work.

Since the middle of 2004, Li Lin has been hard at work on her first feature film "Gone Shopping" which was released in July 2007.

Taken from: http://www.aweething.com/index.html

*****

Grace (G): What inspired you to start on this project?
Li Lin (LL): A few years back I met a lady client who was involved in the promotion of marriage. She was intelligent and attractive but turned out to be anti-romance after her fiancé jilted her. I liked the irony such a character presented and the potential for a comedy that could be weaved around her.

Jeremy (J): It sounds like Her World/Female/CLEO on film. Do you intend it to be a very womanly film for gals?
LL: You can call it a romantic comedy with a twist or a psycho chick flick, as one of my friends puts it. I hope to be able to expand the horizon of the chick flick genre and also to expand on the type of females represented in singapore films.

G: How long did you take to make this film from the time pre-production started?

LL: From concept to the final shooting script, it took us 18 months starting from early 2008. After putting the finance in place and locking down the cast, we started the shoot in late November 2009. We finished the shoot in January 2010.

J: How did you manage to get Mo Tzu Yi to star in your film? And why is he your choice given that this film is set in Singapore?
LL: It’s always our plan to have our main cast consisting of both Singapore and foreign talents. We were really taken with Mo Tzu Yi’s quiet magnetism and boyish good looks when we had the opportunity to meet him. His film work in Taiwan is going from strength to strength and we were very happy that he really liked the story and the character of Gin. This is his first non-Taiwanese film. So we're honored.

G: Tell us more about "Forever" as a romantic comedy.
LL: "Forever" is about a woman following her heart at all costs and in our protagonist Joey's case at outrageous, wacky costs, which we hope the audience will find funny!


J: Do you have particular types of genres/settings/premises that interest you? I notice from your previous films, you have a keen eye on contemporary life of the middle to upper-middle class / executive types of Singaporeans, which is a breath of fresh air from the gritty, depressed stories we see from so many others.
LL: Thanks. I really enjoy satire and comedy but they are hard to do and i'm still learning. I tend to veer towards American films, as that's what i grew up watching plus I went to an American university where i did some film courses. American mainstream films tend to be more optimistic and idealistic, so that did rub off on me. But I also watched quite a number of American indie films during my uni days which were darker and more subversive and that also rubbed off on me.

J: I understand Charles, your husband, an artist himself has a significant contribution to the film. What was his contribution and how was it like working with him on the set? (especially when it is coincidental that the film is about love and marriage)
LL: Charles stepped in as my art director when all other options came to naught. We were both concerned about this arrangement as we have never worked so closely before but Charles is very talented and worked very hard on the film. He understands my humor and his level of commitment and quest for perfection is inspiring. Husband and wife team projects are tricky and we definitely had our challenging days, esp as Charles has never worked on a feature film set and I often expected him to know how to run things like a 'pro'. But we want to go through it again!

G: What are your views on the film industry here in Singapore?
LL: I think the Singapore film industry is growing at a steady pace but Singapore audiences are not growing at the same speed. The only local films that make it seem to need alot of money backing them in terms of A&P but most local films wont have that kind of money to spend.

G: Give us more insight to your upcoming works
LL: Im working on a play / film hybrid with one of my best friends, playwright Jean Tay, and I'm also working on my third feature concept.

Forever is scheduled to open in Singapore through Golden Village towards the end of 2010. Watch out for it!

Director of the Film:Derrick Lui

Introduction of Director and Casts
(From Left)Derrick Lui,Jessica Tan,Jeszlene Zhou(strategically positioned),Desmond Tan




http://www.whennightfalls-film.com/

This is a response to the Nearly got FOOLED on This,dated on Feb 17,2010.

The 1st impression that it gives me is that it is a series of old movie remastered into a DVD. But to my disappointment,in the DVD case,it is an empty case.

I was initially wowed by the DVD and thought "eh, CD-rama is a great store selling exclusive old movies in DVD,but got to know from the brochure that the 5 films on the case are old films which are "lost".

This is not real,but it is a Campaign.

This is a campaign as part of Asian Film Archive's 5th Anniversary and the ‘Save Our Film’campaign aims to raise awareness of Singapore's rich local film heritage and the importance of keeping it alive for our future. Targeting youth aged 15 to 35, the initiative shows them the value of local films and encourages them to seek out local film memories from their elders,thereby using local films to breach the generation gap through collective film memories.

Here are some events that are of the past and upcoming

1. 'Save Our Film' posters have been put up at Shaw, Filmgarde and Cathay cineplexes, the Substation and Sinema Old School until the end of February when the campaign ends.
Also,'Save Our Film' DVDs have been placed on the shelves of HMV, selected Popular CD-Rama and Gramophone outlets and Sinema Old School.These posters and DVDs promote five early Singapore film titles, with the twist that these films are lost. The public can share information they have on these and other missing films on the campaign website's Singapore Lost Films Wiki.

2. From 6 to 27 February, flash mob style 10-minute video projections will be screened at mystery locations every Saturday. The video features interviews with prominent community members who share their best film memories. Some of these personal tributes include Baba Peter Wee, First Vice-President of the Peranakan Association, whose grandfather owned the Alhambra and Marlborough theatres, Wong Han Min, a Singapore film memorabilia collector and Willy Why, former cameraman for Cathay-Keris Films with over 45 years of filmmaking experience.

3. Singaporeans are invited to share their film memories in the first-ever public Call for Memories. This can be done by recording a video of themselves or others sharing their memorable local film experiences and uploading the video on the AFA Youtube channel. This Call is open for the length of the campaign from 1st to 28th February 2010. The first ten best uploaded video clips stand a chance to win a free DVD of Singapore Shorts Vol. 2 as well. More details on the Call for Memories can be found on AFA's website.

4. The closing event of the ‘Save Our Film’ campaign will screen the best video clips from the Call for Memories on a roving television travelling down the length of Orchard Road and ending at The Cathay. At the same time, we will take this opportunity to engage the public in conversation with us to share the joys of watching local films.

Event 3 and 4 are the upcomings for the campaign.

For More Information,please go to http://asianfilmarchive.org/5th

Let us save our film,so that they will be enjoyed by the future Generations the way that the film were meant to be seen!

(My apologies if the photo is not clear...cos it is shot on a 2.0 megapixel phone camera.)

‘Don’t try too hard.’

Says jury member and Malaysian filmmaker Liew Seng Tat about the films he has watched at the recent Singapore Short Film Awards. Piqued by his comment, I decided to get in touch with him to ask him what he meant. This is his reply:

‘Personally I feel that a film should be made to feel that it's made effortless. I found some of the films I saw were trying too hard to prove themselves, thus making it very mechanical. Technique remains just technique if it doesn't marry with the story. Story remains superficial if the filmmaker is trying too hard to make a point.’

I remember helping out on a short film recently as a production assistant. The film took 9 days to shoot and the sets and props look like the crew coughed some blood making it. Is it really worth it when the story behind is simply about falling in love or remembering someone? I attended quite a number of screenings at the recent Singapore Short Film Awards. Like Seng Tat mentioned, I felt obliged to nod at how ‘complete’ each work is. What I mean by complete is that each film gets a tick in almost all boxes – properly graded visuals, clean sound, ‘soundtrack’-worthy music and how can we miss the snazzy opening and closing credits? Some even have car chases, period costumes and dashes of CGI! But ‘obliged’ because itching inside me was a feeling that I was only as entertained as watching a TV program. When the credits rolled, I found little to take home with me.




I have some suspicion that the ‘effortless’ storytelling that Seng Tat mentioned does not come naturally to us Singaporeans, unless of course you are a writer or poet. I guess what it means to be ‘effortless’ is like when you do not notice the painter’s strokes when you appreciate the painting. I must admit in writing this article, I am subject of what I am writing about. I have put in ‘effort’. I am conscious of what people will think of this article because many would be reading it and judging my own judgements on the films I write about. I want it to sound clever for fear that I would not be taken seriously. I must make sure I do not say anything too offensive otherwise the MDA will not give me money to further the interests of this blog or my own films.

Similarly among the films I watched, many seem to be too mindful of what a ‘good’ film needs and actually have them all thought out before even thinking of the storyline. For instance, you feel 2 people will fall in love because the script says so. But to be fair to the filmmakers, the films screened were made under a variety of conditions. Some were made as school-based assessed projects. These include La Salle shorts like ‘National Day’, ‘Outing’ or NTU shorts like ‘Respirator’ and ‘My Underwear, My World’. Many were SFC-supported ones usually require a much scripted approach. If we are looking for ‘effortless’ storytelling, perhaps the handful of shorts made under the Fly-By-Night and 48 hr film competition have something to that effect. ’10 Painful things about being a Tranny’ tickled me off my seat with its spontaneous camp. My heart echoed with the honest and poignant feelings evoked in ‘Mummy’. And Siang Yu displays a knack for comedy quite close to Jacen Tan (in his earlier Zo Gang, Zo Peng series) in ‘Is there Money in this?’ Watching these, you can almost imagine the filmmakers sipping up ‘kopi si’ in the neighbourhood coffeeshop while planning the shoot.

Looking beyond our ‘fly-by-nighters’, there is certainly no absence of good films that break the mould. But spontaneous and ‘effortless’, they may not be. Some of my personal favourites include the irreverent ‘Dirty Bitch’, the highly pre-meditated ‘Respirator’ and David Shiyang Liu’s labour of love ‘5 Films in an Anthology of a film in a month’. Look at our more recent crop of feature films like ‘Here’, ‘Invisible Children’, ‘In the House of Straws’ and ‘The Blue Mansion’ in the past year and you might agree with my use of the phrase ‘a heavy-handed approach’. In fact, when I compare them to films from our northern neighbours, I ‘ve got a Yin and Yang way of describing this – Singapore films seek to outsmart their viewers while Malaysian films seek to be outsmarted by their viewers.



Will we ever be like our Malaysian counterparts? Or should we accept the fact that the organic approach does not work for Singapore. There are certainly differences between the two countries that do not warrant an apple-to-apple comparison. Perhaps storytelling comes more naturally to Malaysians because life is tougher up north and recent events in the realm of politics, religion and race can testify to that. I dare say we have become such an ‘institutionalized’ society that we have forgotten how to say simple things in the most natural and human way. Authority and collective voices talk louder here than individuals.

A possible after-effect of the ‘institutionalisation’ is the ‘apeing’ of films of the celebrated by the younger generation of filmmakers. Ben Slater has written about this on Criticine a website for in-depth discourse on Southeast Asian cinema. He mentions a proliferation of short films that ‘pay tribute’ to the ‘Class of 2002’. This class includes Sun Koh, Eva Tang, Royston Tan and others (I would extend the class to include Boo Junfeng as well).


I caught a number of these ‘tribute’ or semi-tribute’ films in the SSFA batch. I daringly list them here to my own peril: ‘Letting Go’, ‘Dawn’, ‘National Day’, ‘Linger’, ‘Childhood Games’, ‘Mi’, ‘Man in Snow Globe’, ‘My Underwear, My World’ and ‘Distance’.

While some are giving new window-dressing to old bodies, others are pushing the envelope further abroad. This year, 11 Singapore films made it to the Rotterdam film festival this year, a mecca for the newest and most exciting films worldwide. The festival programmer Gertjan Zuilhof calls us ‘one of the most productive countries of Southeast Asian cinema’. The word is ‘productive’. It does not say whether we have made our mark abroad like Malaysian films have or are still doing. A quick look at the 11 films that will be screening in Rotterdam seems to point to something – we are just not born-storytellers and we more like philosophers or stylists. Considering only the more ‘properly-made’ short films at SSFA and you will find that stylists rule the day (with ‘Girl with the Red Balloons’ taking the cake).

So be it. We can’t tell stories. But we seem to be able to paint fantasies quite well. Victric Thng, another jury member at the SSFA said ‘Take more risks’. Maybe we have found our answer. The key to not trying ‘too hard’ is to take more risks! We are trying too hard because we are just too mindful of keeping up with conventions and expectations. Just let the monster in your film grow and it will still take you home after a helluva ride. And if the huge number of productions this year is anything to go by, this will be a year of exciting rides, other than the new ones at Sentosa.

Here is an interesting quote from Warren Sin, another member of the jury:

‘3 in 4 shorts reveal a certain fetishistic tendency towards the unreal, fantasy … attempts to escape the here and now … a contempt (even) for the present'

Still from Wesley Leon Aroozoo's 'A Lion's Pride', screened at SSFA 2010.