It began with telling a story with two women. On a random day of the year, what would one be expecting out from the ordinary lives of two women? Inspired by a deaf friend who raises a hearing child on her own, 7th of July was thus born.

In what circumstances was this film conceived?
It was an academic requirement that this film was conceived. I chose to tell a story from a hearing-impaired mother's perspective because I wonder what it must be like to raise a child as a handicapped mother raising a child who was not handicapped. How would they deal with the psychological, physical and social ramifications of such a unique arrangement? Would they feel like they would have to overcompensate on their physical inadequacies? And what would be the dynamics of a relationship of this particular kind? Parental love can be expressed in many ways but what I was interested in was specifically how this particular character would express her love for her daughter. I often wondered how it would feel like sleeping in bed with the prospect of never being able to hear your child calling for you. I could go on and on, but at the end of the day, I could only make a short film on this subject matter and hence the story I wanted to tell had to be considerably simplified.

So, how did you go about writing this script?
We began working with several treatments as the biggest challenge was simplifying the story with such a complex subject that is being targeted on. Upon locking down our final treatment, Jeannie Chia the writer began working on the script which was further developed as we continue to research on the deaf society such as meeting with an Audiologist who assisted us on perceiving the deaf world and reading up various articles on true stories of CODA, Children of Deaf Adult. The research was intense as we both had to discover a world that was not within our boundaries to begin with.

I must say it's hard to miss the fact that you have gotten such a stellar cast, featuring Yeo Yann Yann, as one of your leads! So how did you go about casting for 7th July?
She was god sent to this film. Yann Yann chanced upon the Casting call in Lasalle and the next thing we knew, she nailed the audition and was on board with us in this production. Casting for the deaf mother was certainly the biggest challenge for the film as it was not easy for the actor to deliver a sensitive yet realistic and close to heart character of a deaf person. From signing to singing with a deaf voice, the chosen actor must go through an intensive series of rehearsals and workshops to deliver a natural performance of a deaf character like Lyna. I must say I am very grateful that Yann Yann took the time to participate with me in this as she was also juggling with another rehearsal at the same time.

Being dubbed as "Probably the most sentimentally-engaging film of the showcase", could you share more about what goes behind the scenes which constituted to that?
Spontaneity and improvisation from the cast would probably be the catalytic factor that drove the scenes within the film to a different dimension.

How was this film made possible?
The Puttnam School of Film from Lasalle which groomed everyone of us into capable filmmaking students gave us the opportunity to create this film and of course, the support of the cast, crew and sponsors which gave us their time and energy for this production.

What were your biggest challenges you've met during production and how did you managed to overcome them?
Time and cast constraints, as we had to shoot day scenes in a location which was mainly available only at night for us. We also had to plan the shoot schedule strategically as both our lead actors have their own respective rehearsals to attend. With the help of our very capable team mates during pre-production, things just fall into place on its own as very thorough planning really promises a smooth shoot throughout the production.

Any interesting anecdotes to share about the production?
Battling with 40 cockroaches in the middle of the night while shooting on set and having to pray everyday to ensure good weather and a smooth shoot. Overall, we've been really blessed in many ways throughout this shoot.

How do you feel after graduating with your thesis film?
Great sense of achievement and feeling really relieved.

Any future plans?
Taking 7th of July to the film festival circuit and if another lucky day comes by,perhaps someone might like to further develop this film and bring this short film to the next level!

Film is no longer about seamless, immaculately planned shots pieced together with dramatic music cued to set you sitting on the edge of your chair and one brilliant mind behind the camera playing God. It extends beyond the emotionlessness of plastic buttons, black wires and the various devices into a world of fantasy and trance. Organised by Esplanade, Bitesize presented Understanding Singapore Cinema on 19th June, alongside with the Asian Film Archive. The talk not only delved into the origins of Singapore Cinema, it also highlighted the artistic and cultural achievements of key Singapore filmmakers like Rajendra Gour, Eric Khoo, Glen Goei, Jack Neo etc.

This little heritage tour back to our cinematic roots has certainly stirred up much appreciation for those lost and forgotten and of course the beauty of such never failed to enchant the audience, for instance like the ever hilarious snippet from Seniman Bujang Lapok directed by the Malaysian maestro, P Ramlee or the slightly uncomfortable scene where the sudden suicide occurred from 12 Storeys directed by our remarkable Eric Khoo. The talk has definitely provided an encyclopedic perspective of national cinema and the immense value and influence it possesses till this very day. However, this talk would not been made possible without this very man - Mr Tan Bee Thiam, the speaker of the day! So before we end this entry, SINdie had a brief interview session with Bee Thiam to find out more about Asian Film Archive and their works.

So tell us why hold a talk on Singapore Cinema?
Bitesize is a series of talks and workshops organized by Esplanade to introduce various aspects of the arts to the general public. When Esplanade approached the Asian Film Archive to do a talk, we thought it'll be interesting to do an introductory session on Singapore Cinema in the last 100 years.

How do you guys managed to find films that date all the way back the 1930s and restore them?
For old films, we rely on the traces of information we find to track things down. It's a bit like film archaeology, doing research, looking for materials, tracking down the rights-owners and making an ask for their donation so we can share them with the public. Luckily too, there have been a wonderful bunch of scholars and collectors who have done excellent work in this field and always willing to share them with us.

Some of the earliest Singapore films we hold today include Orang Minyak (directed by L Krishnan, 1958) and Sumpah Pontianak (directed by BN Rao, 1958) - both from the Asian Film Archive: Cathay Malay Classics collection. It was a donation from the Cathay Organisation. With the support of the National Archives of Singapore, we have been doing film cleaning work so they are maintained and preserved well.

Unfortunately, we do not have all the films I talked about. Some of the titles, we only have memorabilia (posters, film magazine articles, etc) of them. A major memorabilia collection was donated recently by an avid collector.

Only a very small number of films is selected so far for restoration work because it is very expensive. One of them is Moon Over Malaya directed by Chun Khim, a 1957 film shot in Singapore and Malaysia. It took us close to 2 years to get this restored.

We 'raised the bar' literally on our series of interviews by bringing our filmmakers to the top of an old building - Pearl Centre. We found this deserted carpark by chance and rather befitting to set the mood for interviewing David Liu and Linus Chen, makers of Steadfast, an action movie. Here we are caught in the action...

The sensationalistic hook of Scot Free's synopsis makes the film seem much worse than it actually is. That sounds like damning praise, I know. But when you sell your film on the basis of two French tourists in Singapore accidentally killing someone and trying to dispose of the body, you do it at the expense of belittling your film's intelligence and subtle ambitions. Thankfully, wedged between the blood-slathered Vengeance: The Death Wish and Director's Cut in the Substation's First Take June screening, Scot Free couldn't get off with its comparatively muted killing, allowing its laudable attempts at comic absurdity (however few and half-successful) to shine through.

See, the ballyhoo'd killing in the synopsis only happens around the halfway mark; if you're waiting for it, the stuff before that might feel like a dreadful bore. If you shed those preconceptions, though, it becomes apparent that Scot Free is trying to be a lot freer with where its plot could run up to that point, and even after. The initial sight of the two French tourists in a cut-rate hotel lobby, one of them asking for directions to "westearn foood", prepares us for another stale fish-out-of-water story where the tourists are no more than conduits for the filmmakers to sniff and sneer at the more "exotic" aspects of our local culture. And this does happen somewhat, notably when they end up at an Indian food joint, and one of them wrinkles her nose as curry is plopped onto their plates.

But it turns out that Scot Free has more up its sleeve, especially when it comes to the nose-wrinkler of the duo (on the right in film still). As they talk over the food, she drops a few hairline surprises—surprises to us, anyway, because of our false preconceptions: The baby we thought she was worrying over in an earlier phone conversation turns out to be something else. She mentions a man she's bringing home for Christmas, but then tosses off a joke that lets us realize they're not romantically involved. She makes a remark that has us assume she is accepting of queer folk, but then she curtly protests when her friend refers casually to a male-to-female transsexual as a "she". These might not amount to much for other viewers, especially with the uninspired shot/reverse-shot editing and the actresses' slightly inorganic line deliveries, but I found that these conversational revelations prepared me to be surprised by where the story would take me.

Certainly, if not for the synopsis, I wouldn't have been prepared for a drunk German tourist stumbling into their hotel room at night, and it's even funnier that the actor playing him does it in a kind of fazed, slow-mo walk, rather than an angry zombie lurch. But let's not place all blame on the synopsis, because the film also falls prey to that now-clichéd trick of starting at the end before looping back to the events that got them to that point. This doesn't work for Scot Free because, as I have suggested, the film relies most on projecting a certain unpredictability to whatever happens next.

Nonetheless, it manages to avoid not preparing us too much for the tourists' instinctive, alternative use of a local fruit; or the choice of vehicle they flag down to flee the law; or the mishap that the vehicle itself gets into, suggested mostly by the briefly-espied sight of a spinning bicycle wheel; or the way that it never seems like the police are even after them at all. Near the end, there's even a brief tender moment when one of the tourists offers to take the blame for the other, even though it's unsolicited and we get the feeling they weren't that close to start with, and it's a tiny injection of feeling into the scattered bits of chaos. I wanted more, a lot more, and given how I leave some films wanting none of it, that's not at all a bad thing to ask.

'Scot Free' was Chia Pei Zhen's graduate thesis film at Ngee Ann Polytechnic. It was screened as part of Substation's First Take this month, and was among the Singapore Panorama Shorts slate at the Singapore International Film Festival last April.

Asked why she chose to make a horror film for her final-year project, director Ting Shin Mei replied that the genre allowed for "more effects", which made it "more easy to score". One can only stand in awe of such brutal honesty, so rare among filmmakers eager to champion their films' depth. Nor could one have better summed up Vengeance, whose appeal lies solely in its lurid effects. The film pulls out the usual low-fi horror tricks: long takes on soon-to-be victims with an open doorway in the background; rapid match cuts from various women to the "angry ghost" that replaces them; bloody make-up and half-obscured angles that simulate the "ghost's" knife carving into her victims' skin.

If these money shots depict the vengeance of the title, the film's attempt at a "story" supplies its death wish. Vengeance starts not too dissimilar from a traffic awareness ad, as a woman running across the street gets knocked down, cutting to a close-up on her pocket watch. The same watch winds up on the shelf of some odds-and-ends store: no wonder some customer actually (gasp!) wants to buy it, despite the storeowner's insistence that it's not for sale. (Perhaps he feels self-conscious about lifting items off traffic-accident victims and putting them up for display.) When the customer persists that the storeowner should name a price, any price, a bald man walks over and warns her not to buy it. At this point she should have listened; I certainly would heed any omen uttered to me in a thrift store by some random bald man, though I'd suspect that he's eyeing the same object for himself, or that the two are in cahoots to fleece me for more than it's worth.

But the genre being what it is, she buys it anyway. This triggers the easy-to-score effects-laden scenes to which Ting referred, as the woman transforms through a simple cut into the "angry ghost" and tortures and kills the guy in the bedroom with her. And then, with no clear explanation, the timepiece finds its way into the hands of some other woman: rinse and repeat. There's no rhyme or reason to why these men die or who these women are; after the screening, one viewer actually asked who they were, and while the director claimed some relationship with a later character, none of it is evident from the film. Nor does it matter. The pulse of a schlocky horror film like this comes from how it makes us wince, and as the ghost drives a scalpel into her victim's skin, it achieves this goal just fine.

Yet there are other moments where we wince for the filmmaking, such as when the ghost, having carved a word onto her victim's face, asks him if he can see what she's written. It's a rhetorical question, of course, and she makes a huge fuss about bringing out a hand mirror. You'd think this would lead to a horrifying reverse-image in the mirror, but then she just tells him. "H! A! T! E!" Like a cheerleader gone wrong. The campy-ness of the whole thing undercuts the horror, so the only thing we're thinking when we finally get a full look at the ghost's handiwork is that her penmanship is pretty good.

Really, given the filmmakers' avowed reasons for making the film, it's the last kind of film that needs any pretense at a connective story, and is the worse for it when it tries. As it turns out, the ghost's last target is some guy she used to bed, and her pocketwatch was the "heirloom" he bequeathed to her (and yes, he calls it his "heirloom", in undubbed English). Fleeing from her ghost, he takes refuge in a multistorey carpark and dials not the police, but his pastor. Better, the ghost extermination service pastor turns out to be the same random bald man who was skulking around in the thrift store earlier. The pastor proceeds to vanquish the ghost with some inappropriate cross of Christian catechism and voodoo-ish hand-waving, and then absolves the guy of his sins in a church that looks suspiciously like a lecture hall.

Later, when asked what she thought about the audience's laughter in her horror film, Ting gave perhaps the classiest response that this situation could afford: "Maybe it's a failure for a horror film... but I'm glad that everyone was entertained." Entertained we might have been, but no more than we would otherwise for a film that weren't, in more ways than one, so "easy to score".

Ting Shin Mei is a graduate from Singapore's Institute of Technical Education (ITE). 'Vengeance', her final-year project, won Best Director and Best Editor in ITE's graduation showcase. It was screened as part of Substation's First Take this month.

Aaron Wilson is an Australian filmmaker based in Melbourne but his connection to Singapore is his previous Objectifs Filmmaking Residency and more importantly his upcoming film, Triple Happiness. This is a film spanning 3 different periods and tries to tie the collective memories of Australia and Singapore together. It is also a collaboration between Chuan Pictures and Finer Films.

Synopsis
21 year old Jim is an Australian airman lost in the jungles of northwest Singapore. It’s February 1942 and the Japanese have begun invading the island. His plane has been shot down. He is suspended from the jungle canopy in the harness of his parachute.

Night falls and he makes his way through the jungle. He intercepts a young Singapore-Chinese soldier, Seng, separated from the rest of his battalion. Unable to speak the same language but with a common foe and survival goal, a connection is formed in the intensity of the situation. They seek safety in the undergrowth, comforted knowing they have each other to ensure they remain alert – but when dawn arrives, loud voices wake them. Japanese soldiers grab Jim and quickly drag him away from a terrified Seng. A single shot echoes through the undergrowth. Jim looks back but can only see jungle. He stops struggling, prepared for his own fate, as the two soldiers drag him out of the jungle.

The story continues 28 years on (in 1970) as Jim’s war experience continues to haunt him. He is living alone on his farm in rural Australia after having not ever truly reconnected with his family upon his return. Following this, the film explores his dealing with the newer times and coming to terms with his memory of that fateful night. But the after effects of the war do not just affect Jim. There are others around in his life will continue to live with the legacy of the war.


Director's Bio
AARON was born in rural Australia in 1976 and has been writing and directing short films since 2003, with a passion for understated human drama that has proved successful on the international film festival circuit. His films include the award-winning RENDEZVOUS (‘03), TEN FEET TALL (‘05), FAUX PAS (‘07) and LEAP YEAR (‘08).

In 2006, Aaron took part in a filmmaker residency program with The Objectifs Centre for Filmmaking & Photography in Singapore. His short film FENG (WIND) was created as part of this residency and was awarded Best Short Film at the prestigious Kuala Lumpur International Film Festival in 2007. His most recent short film, AHMAD’S GARDEN (08) was produced in association with Screen Australia and premiered at the 2008 Melbourne International Film Festival. For further information, visit Aaron’s website.


Jeremy (J): So what’s it got to do with Singapore?

Aaron (A): I had a script idea at hand when I applied for the residency with Objectifs. They needed something with a Singapore link. My story is about this Australian soldier during WWII. In the opening of the script, there is an encounter with an Australian and a Singapore soldier. So Objectifs was interested to develop this script with me. And offered me the residency. At the same time, I also made a short that carried the themes of that feature film. (pause)

This script was really about me telling a story that connected Australia with its neighbours. We don’t often make films that connect us with our borders and definitely not our neighbours. So that was very important to me.

J: What I find interesting about is perhaps the Singapore soldier because whenever you film someone in the SAF uniform, it carries a lot of connotations, it conjures a lot of ‘feelings’ in young Singaporean men, mostly negative (laughs).

A: Actually these were the original soldiers, the Straits Volunteers Forces, not the modern day ones. They were men who grouped together at the 11^th hour because the Japanese were heading south to Singapore soon. They were also Kuomingdang loyaliststs and wanted to fight the Japanese. Their uniforms were put together last minute. They used leftover shirts.

SYNOPSIS

In a food-obsessed nation, the power of food manifests in our lives in myriad ways. A patronizing food critic unknowingly affects a promising female chef through his review. Forced to question her culinary career, she reexamines her relationship with her hawker mum while the withdrawn young son of the critic uses food as a means of connecting with his father.

As a drama about the quiet ironies of life, we journey through the film with the protagonist, Shu An, the young chef. Both daughter and son find themselves threading down the same path as they struggle to gain acceptance from their respective parents. While food inexplicably extends beyond taste, the two different families confront their inner selves without them realizing how their lives intertwine.

‘Kitchen Quartet’ ultimately shows how certain events are more than mere coincidences of life but causal effects of our actions. The characters in the film all journey on separate paths to find themselves reaching a destination that is ironically their true selves and that unites all four of them.

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

The most subtle acts to me, are the most meaningful when it comes to elucidating a person’s character and food is a basic necessity of life that feeds the soul as the old adage goes. When we cook and eat, it is a ritual by which we sit together and partake in a meal that brings us together without the need for words.

I believe that food has the paradoxical power to pull different cultures together and concretize the innate connection that exists between people of different ages, backgrounds and expresses my belief that a commonality exists despite societal or cultural differences. Food has both a social and personal history that makes for a very significant commentary on the lives of people. In the two very different families portrayed, we see how their paths intertwine and affect each other and ultimately remind one about the choices we decide upon in the paths we choose.

Kitchen Quartet shows how the power of food manifests in our lives; when the two families confront their inner selves as their lives overlap. I have always has a deep-seated love for cooking while taught family recipes as a child. I always relished the idea of possibly making my parents a little happier with my food and more so, it was communication of sorts between me, my mother and father. I wanted to illustrate in the film’s moments of reticence and quiet, how the unsaid emotions of these characters reflect upon the very profound relationship between a parent and child of today’s Singaporean society torn between material expectations and filial piety.

Nicole's website






What started the idea behind Kitchen Quartet? Are you a food enthusiast yourself?
How long did it take for you to make this film?

I am indeed a food enthusiast as a result of my family background and this carries over to the theme in my film, which revolves around how people from different societal backgrounds can be obsessed with a simple dish that is synonymous with Singaporeans. Being taught how to cook by my Japanese grandmother as a child and observing the way the adults in my family were enamoured with food really intrigued me. As a filmmaker, I’m fascinated by the dynamics in families with a dysfunctional bent and also relationships, which parallel one another. I started writing the script in late 2008 and shot it in Dec 2008. We completed the postproduction of the film in May 2009.



I understand it was done as part of yr final year student project? Was this a constraint in your content?

In terms of content, I wouldn’t say I constrained myself in terms of content but perhaps in terms of the scope of the production, I had to cut back on things like production design, the number of shooting days. But I had a marvelous crew who were all fellow students from my school, the film majors at the School of Art, Design & Media at NTU. I didn’t work with anyone in the professional industry partly because we couldn’t afford it and also I enjoyed the process of working with my peers, creatively there was always a dialogue going on and my camera assistant Hanafi was also my editor and sound designer! I owe a lot to these people.



How did you manage to get a kitchen to shoot in?

I tried many avenues including SHATEC to no luck, and went looking around a lot of restaurants and tried my luck and finally found this restaurant at Duxton Hill. The owner was really nice and refused payment from me, only agreeing to accept my card of thanks. In terms of physical challenges, the amount of time we had at the locations were very limiting for us and as you know, the downsides that come with location filming include bad audio especially at the hawker centre and the kitchen of the fine dining restaurant. Everything was shot on location so there wasn’t the privilege of shooting in a quiet studio.



How was it working with an experienced actor like Gerald Chew?

Directing experienced actors are a rather different realm from directing less experienced actors, but neither one is better or worse. When I threw him an adjustment, he knew very quickly what I wanted.Its different working with less experienced actors when I usually have to warm them up before going for a rehearsal take or actual take (yes haha.. when you shoot on film, the need for rehearsals is magnified quantum fold before you actually roll) But that to me is also where uncanny magic happens, for me, it was the scenes between the mother and daughter, played respectively by Sally Poh and Shu An. They had this undeniable chemistry which caught on from prior rehearsals and it was lovely for me to direct the both of them. On the whole, I got most of my performances within the first couple of takes.



Who are your target audience (or who would you be interested to show this to?)
My original target audience would definitely be Singaporeans, because who else can relate better to Hokkien mee or hawker food in general? However, I’ve also shown it to non-Singaporeans, including some people I’ve showed it to overseas when I was in Berlin for the Berlinale Talent Campus earlier this year and they could relate to the film even though the iconic dish was lost on them. To me, I simply wanted to tell a story that showed how food could do much more than just whet appetites but connect people. The audience I have in mind really doesn’t belong to any particular group, although it will help if they have a soft spot for food.




What were some of the biggest challenges in the production?
If given more money, how could you have made this film differently?

Budgets are always a problem for productions and producing my own film meant that I had to keep a close watch on expenditure which I felt was very limiting for me as a director. If I had a bigger budget, I would have scheduled the shoot to be spread out over more days so that there was breathing space for shots and we did not have to rush. Then again, such constraints really challenge you and force you to take risks which you might not have taken if you had all the time in the world.

What other stories, projects are you on to now ... or have in mind?

I’m currently writing a short film of my own now and I will be directing a music video for a local band. Asides from my own work, I’m also freelancing as an assistant director and screenwriter for local production companies.

What are the top 5 movies you wish you'd made?

Top 5 movies I wished I made.. hmm that list has constantly evolved, I would say they include, Cries and Whispers by Ingmar Bergman, Festen by Thomas Vintenberg, Adams æbler by Anders Thomas Jensen, Au Revoir Les Enfants by Louis Malle, Dare Mo Shiranai(also known as Nobody Knows) by Hirokazu Koreeda, of which the last two made me bawl my eyes out and I wish I could make films which elicit such visceral emotions.

Kitchen Quartet was screened under the Singapore Panorama Shorts category at the Singapore International Film Festival 2010