The world
premiere of ‘The Songs We Sang’ (我们唱着的歌) will take placetodayat the Esplanade, in conjunction with the
Singapore International Film Festival (SGIFF).
Singapore
filmmaker Eva Tang’s first feature documentary, The Songs We Sang is about the
journey of Xinyao (literally “songs of Singapore” in Mandarin). A powerful artistic
movement in the 1980s, Xinyao was characterised by its uniquely local Chinese
language songs about family, friendships and everyday life in Singapore. The
style came to be immensely popular among the Mandarin-speaking community in
Singapore and the region.
In
The Songs We Sang, Tang seeks to capture the spirit of this movement, which she
has described as a significant part of a nation’s collective cultural heritage.
“Xinyao
is our only music movement that was led by the students and originated from the
campuses. It tells the stories of youths, about idealism, about an age of
innocence. These ‘faces’ and ‘articulations’ are disappearing, which make it
more imperative to present this history with sensitivity and authenticity,”
Tang said in a Q & A on the film's official site.
The Songs We Sang features popular singers from the Xinyao movement, as well as younger Singaporean Mandopop singers such as Stefanie Sun
For
an indie Chinese-language local film, The Songs We Sang has already enjoyed
phenomenal success prior to its first screening.
In July 2014, Tang organised a “Xinyao Reunion”
concert at Bras Basah Complex. She invited key figures from the Xinyao genre
such as Eric Moo, Dawn Gan, Liang Wern Fook, Roy Loi, Koh Nam Seng and Pan
Ying. A crowd of over 2,000 people thronged the normally quiet mall in support.
The crowd at the “Xinyao Reunion” concert on July 6, 2014
Tickets for this evening’s screening of The
Songs We Sang sold out more than a month in advance, with all 1,400 seats
snapped up in nine days. For those who were unable to get hold of tickets to the
premiere, the movie will also have a theatrical release in Singapore at an unconfirmed later date.
Filmmaker and author of the book 'Singapore Cinema' Raphael Millet has the answer to who and what were the first ever films made in Singapore. In 1912-1913, while his brother Georges Méliès
was still filming “imaginary trips” in his Parisian studio, Gaston Méliès
undertook a ten-month long trip around Asia-Pacific, taking him with a team of
about 15 collaborators from San Francisco, to Polynesia, New Zealand,
Australia, Java, Singapore, Cambodia, and Japan. During this cinematographic
adventure, he produced no less than 64 fiction and non-fiction movies,
including some of the first ever films shot in Singapore (where he arrived on 10 January 1913 and
stayed three weeks). Among his “Singaporean” movies are two fictions,The Poisoned Darts filmed in
Pasir Ris, and His Chinese Friend
filmed , as well as what was then called a “scenic” (or "educational
picture") titledA Day at
Singapore. Moreover, Gaston Méliès was most likely one of the
first filmmakers, if not the first, to give fiction roles to Tahitians,
Maoris, Aborigines, Javanese, Malays and Cambodians. He did not return to the
USA but travelled straight back from Japan to France, where he died shortly
after, in 1915, quickly falling into oblivion, as the world was engulfed in
World War I. On the occasion of the centenary of his death, a tribute is paid
to this long-forgotten pioneer of the last days of early cinema, while taking
the few surviving images of his voyage as an opportunity to reflect upon
questions of alterity, identity and representation. Raphael made a documentary on this called 'Georges Méliès and his wandering Star Film Company', which will be screened at SGIFF on 5 Dec, Sat, 7pm at the National Art Gallery. Here is our interview with Raphael.
What inspired you to pick Gaston Melies as the subject of the
film?
My curiosity was first tickled when in 2000, while going to Polynesia for the
first time; I read a book about the history of film in South Pacific. In a
footnote, there was a very short and vague mention that some "G.
Méliès" had filmed in Tahiti in the 1910s. Really who was this G. Méliès?
Was the G initial for Georges Méliès? But I knew the famous filmmaker, often
referred to as the "Cinemagician", world renowned for his 1902 Trip to the Moon and his many other
"imaginary trips"; had hardly ever left his Montreuil studio, near
Paris... And, unlike the Lumière brothers, he, as far as I knew, had not sent
any cinematographer around the world to collect footage from distant and - to
the western eye - exotic places. But I left it there.
Then, when I moved to Singapore in 2002 and soon after started researching
local film history, in the course of some research I did in some North American
archive, a poster of a movie called A Day at Singapore suddenly surfaced. And
it said the movie was a "G. Méliès" production. What? This “"G."
Méliès” again? Could it be the same person? Digging a bit deeper, and starting
to connect a few dots, I figured out that it was not Georges Méliès himself,
but rather the American branch of the Méliès family, as I had found out such a
branch had existed in the USA in the 1900s and early 1910s. But I still did not
know that his brother Gaston had been the one heading this American branch of
the family. In my 2006 book titled “Singapore Cinema”, I briefly mention
this early Méliès production, but I indicated that it was very likely produced
by the American branch. I also left it open when it came to who could have
directed it. The funny thing is that following my book, quite a few people,
perhaps reading too fast, jumped to the conclusion that it was fully a movie
directed by Georges Méliès. Because, of course, it's tempting and rather exciting
to attribute one of the first movies shot in Singapore to one of the most
prestigious filmmakers in the history of early cinema. But this is clearly not
what I had written...
Two years after the publication of my book, I encountered another vague mention
about "G. Méliès", regarding Japan. This time, I decided I would get
to the bottom of it. Was this "G" standing for Georges or for Gaston?
Or perhaps even for someone else? So while I was back in Paris, I contacted the
Méliès family. Madeleine Malthête-Méliès, granddaughter of Georges Méliès,
kindly told me she had devoted her life to the "Cinemagician", and
that to find out more about Gaston, I should now speak to her own son, Jacques
Malthête-Méliès, the only one in the family who had sort of kept a record of
Gaston's life and works. To my great surprise, I learned from Jacques that
Gaston had been sent to the USA first to protect the copyright of the Méliès
trademark (known as the "Star Film"), had then started producing his
own American movies in the late 1900s (including some of the early Westerns!),
before finally embarking on a round-the-world trip that did not take him all
around the world (that was too long!), but that took him all around
Asia-Pacific. Gaston was the one who had been to Polynesia, Singapore and other
places. But this trip to the South Seas, Southeast Asia and the Far East had
largely sunk into oblivion, and apart from Jacques Malthête-Méliès great
grandson of Georges, hence great-nephew of Gaston, almost nobody knew anything
about it. Furthermore, a century later, the confusion was easily made between
the two brothers, because Georges and Gaston had obviously used the initial
"G" has it could stand for either one of them.
With all this information in hand, I started finding Gaston's life more and
more fascinating and particularly his cinematic journey across Asia-Pacific.
And I thought there might be a nice and interesting story to tell. This time, I
opted not for a book, but for a documentary, as I had slowly moved from writing
books about cinema to producing and directing documentaries about the history
of film.
One important thing to note is that Gaston Méliès called himself a "film
manufacturer". This made him more of a producer than a director. It was
the early studio approach, where only the studio name mattered: people spoke of
"a Gaumont film", "an Essanay movie", "a Vitagraph
film", etc. This was true of Méliès in the USA, and during the voyage
around Asia-Pacific. The movies made are "Méliès movies", but Gaston
did not necessarily direct them himself, even though he seems to have had a
hand in many things. As a film manufacturer, he travelled with what the press
called "a complete cinematograph outfit", and the truth is that he
had with him a director for fiction (Bertram Bracken) whom he rather quickly
got rid of as soon as he reached New Zealand, but also someone named Hugh
McClung, first labelled as "dramatic operator", who progressively
took over the directing. But as I said, Gaston had a direct hand in many
things, and he is obviously very involved in all aspects of the movies he
"manufactures".
Where did you get the archival footage from? What challenges
did your team face in collecting sufficient and credible information?
Apart from one of Gaston's movies shot in Japan which was preciously kept by
the Méliès family (but it had never been digitized, so I had to get it done
myself at Eclair studio in France, and pay for it), together with some
photographs that Jacques Malthête-Méliès had salvaged from the destruction of
time, there was nothing much. In early 2012, I got contacted by a film
collector based in Switzerland, David Pfluger, who had somehow found out about
my documentary project. I am most grateful to him for having made contact and
offered me to use his rather large collection of photographs and other
documents about Gaston's journey that he had managed to gather over the years.
Not all film collectors that I know are as generous as David Pfluger, I must
say. This was really fantastic, and, as you will see in the documentary, all
photos, old newspaper clippings, letters, etc., are much needed to put together
a proper narration.
But what I really wanted was to find more movies! So I started digging through
film archives around the world, from Amsterdam to Wellington, from Washington
to Paris, from London to Canberra, from Roma to Tokyo, etc. I wrote and phoned
everywhere I could. I even travelled to Wellington to see with my own eyes some
mysterious footage that the New Zealand Film Archive had and thought could be
attributed to Gaston Méliès. The print was had gone through a lot of
degradation, and sometimes it was hard to really figure out what it was. But,
in all honesty, I had to tell the NZFA that I really did not think this was
some Méliès' footage, based on the style of shooting, but also based on the
film perforations and a few other technical details. In the end, I was lucky
enough to find two movies at the Library of Congress in Washington. But here
again, they had never been digitized, so I had to request for it to be done.
Among these was the first movie of the trip, shot between San Francisco and
Tahiti! A gem! Then, I got lucky again with the Cinémathèque française. When I
had first approached the Cinémathèque in 2011 and 2012, the Archive Department
had replied that they did not have any copy of Gaston's films. But I tried
again in 2014, and, to my great delight, two prints had surfaced during the new
inventory process undertaken by the Cinémathèque. Both prints were fragments of
movies shot in Angkor Wat.
In total, I have "only" found 5 surviving movies out of the 64 films
made by Gaston Méliès during his voyage. This is very little. Just 7% of what
he had produced. But the truth is that this is in line with the "survival
rate" of silent films. This is what is commonly known as "silent film
loss". Film historians tend to agree that almost 90% of all movies made
prior to 1929 are lost. Gaston Méliès' productions are no exception,
unfortunately. Regarding Singapore, I have not found any surviving footage of
the four films that Gaston Méliès had shot on the island. This is one of my
main regrets. But my hope is that this documentary will revive interest about
him, and perhaps help public archives and private collectors look into what
they have and find some old "G. Méliès" print that they had
overlooked. It always happens with lost films. Some resurface, when and where
you least expect it. And if a print of his "shot-in-Singapore" movies
reappeared, this would be incredible, and would constitute a remarkable piece
of shared film heritage between France and Singapore. I'd be thrilled.
What were some of the most surprising or unexpected trivia
you unearthed about Singapore as you made the film? Or about any other
countries?
What I found most interesting about Singapore in Gaston Méliès' trip is that,
based on what he wrote in his letters to his son Paul who had remained in the
USA, is that, compared to some of the other places he visited like Java and
Cambodia, it seemed to him to be a very developed and modern city (even though
he did not find Singapore to have very good hotels...). But it was definitely a
major city on the map, bustling, with a busy harbor. A good place from where to
wire instructions and organize the rest of his trip, but also a place where to
process some of the reels shot in Java, and hire new crew members.
What's important to note is also that Gaston Méliès was possibly the first
major film producer to come to Singapore with such a large "cinematograph
outfit", and the first to film fiction on location, with local people.
Indeed, not only did he film His Chinese Friend in town, apparently
in Chinatown and in the harbor’s vicinity. But he also went all the way out to
Pasir Ris, a rather remote place in those days, to film The Poisoned
Darts, story of a shipwreck and with sailors rescued by some local inhabitants,
most likely, as shown on the only surviving photograph, some Malay people form
the nearby kampong. Involving the locals in his filming, and giving them real
roles on screen, would have been very much in the manner of Gaston. Indeed,
this is something he had started doing right from the start of his trip, as
soon as he had arrived in Tahiti. He had kept his western actors, traveling
with him, for the white roles, while trying to get the locals to play the local
parts. In doing so, he was quite a pioneer, moving away from what was then the
most common thing to do: have poorly made-up white actors play the roles of
Blacks, Asians, Indians, etc. Something Hollywood would go on doing for
decades, and sometimes still does. Gaston Méliès was smarter than that and
understood that having real Polynesians, Maoris, Aborigines, Malays,
Cambodians, etc., play on screen would be quite a novelty. And for this, credit
must be given to him. The truth is that he even found most of his white actors
rather lousy, and progressively got rid of most of them, sending them back to
the USA on the next ship, and retaining only a handful of them til the end of
his trip. He felt there was something more "natural" or
"spontaneous" in what local "actors" (even though
inexperienced, for most of them) brought to the screen.
What parallels do you draw between Gaston as a director in
1912 and you as a director in 2015? What's different?
Following in the footsteps of Gaston Méliès,
tracing his journey by going where he had gone, and filming where he had
filmed, helped me understand better what he did.
But it was no easy thing to do, even though, unlike him who traveled by sea, I
traveled by air. Still, one hundred years later, his journey was not an easy
one to replicate. I had to travel to Polynesia, New Zealand and Australia with
my director of photography and all our equipment. We were lucky enough to have
been provided some very high quality lenses by a French company called
Angénieux that produces some of the best movie lenses in the world. But
having these lenses with us was a challenge too, as they require very fine
adjustments and meticulous handling. Also, they are extremely costly, and we
were always afraid something would happen to them. For the rest of the trip, I
filmed on my own, in Java, Singapore, Cambodia, Japan, and even in Corsica
(where the film ends, as this is where Gaston Méliès' life ended, shortly after
he had end his trip around Asia-Pacific and come back to France). Planning the
flights, the hotels, finding the exact places where he had been (I even found
the exact beach where he filmed in Polynesia), all of this was quite a
challenge. At the end of it, I admire Gaston Méliès even more for what he did
and achieved. After all, in 1912-1913, undertaking such a 10-month long trip
meant jumping from ocean liners to sampans, from trains to horse carriages,
from oxcarts to rickshaws, while carrying heavy loads of equipment... And
Gaston Méliès was not that young anymore. He was sixty years old. The trip
exhausted him. This was his last cinematic adventure, the swansong of his
career.
How was it like editing this film? Was it challenging and
what were the challenges?
Editing was, as in most movies, one of the most exciting and most challenging parts of the creative process. I love editing, and I worked very closely Bertrand Amiot, an editor that I have been collaborating with for a few years, now. We isolated ourselves in a small village in the South of France, in Provence, and spent about five editing, and nothing else. It was perfect. And it was important to give much attention to the editing, as we had a lot of archival materials (footage, photographs, newspaper clippings, old maps from the 1910s, and so on) to pair with the contemporary images I had shot to complement Méliès' works (and fil the gaps). The final stages of post-production, such as colour grading and sound mix, were done in Paris, at Canal+'s facilities, as the TV channel that we partnered with for this documentary is called Ciné+, and is part of the greater Canal+ Group. This allowed me to really fine tune the colour and the sound of my film. And even though Gaston Méliès and His Wandering Star Film Company may look very classic in its form, a lot of work went into it, precisely to achieve this "classic" and "very clean" look. The reason being that what mattered to me was really to put Gaston Méliès' life and works first, and give him a chance to be "rediscovered" by modern audiences. This is also why, Bertrand Amiot - the editor - and myself, we adopted the following protocol when showing Gaston's own footage shot during his journey: we tried, as much as we could, to show, at first the footage in its original screen format, or aspect ratio, and speed so as to reinstitute it or display in its original form. And then, it's only once that was done, that we would zoom into it and eventually slow it down, in order to highlight a detail, and in doing so we would occasionally move into a more modern wide screen format, in order to also give it a chance to be treated and seen as images of today, and give the whole thing a different force and impact. This was enhanced by the music score composed by a Singaporean musician whom I have been working with for a few years, on my previous documentaries and a few other video projects. His name is Teo Wei Yong, and he really does a fantastic job. Two of his tracks have been used as the main themes, helping to connect different parts of the documentary, giving the feeling that we are travelling, with a touch of melancholy mood. It gives some sort of musical structure to the whole thing. And at the same time, I have decided, within each geographical segment, to use one specific track, thus giving each segment a special tone. Therefore, there's both great musical diversity, and solid unifying musical structure. In doing all of this, my overall aim was to give the avid cinephile a chance to experience these images a bit like in 1913, and a bit like now.
The curtains have risen at the 26th Singapore International Film Festival (SGIFF). Kicking off our SGIFF 2015 series of stories is one of the most well-known film makers in Singapore, Eric Khoo. The film that launched his film career, Mee Pok Man, will be screening at this year's SGIFF. But he also brings with him something new this year. His latest steamy portrait of life and relationships within the walls of a long standing hotel room is part of this year’s SGIFF.
Synopsis One of the most transitory lived spaces, the hotel room, becomes the vehicle that transposes a sprawling tapestry of stories in Eric Khoo’s vision of the history of Singapore. The film is anchored as a posthumous tribute to Singapore writer-musician Damien Sin, also the scriptwriter for Khoo’s first feature Mee Pok Man.
Starting off from the advent of Singapore’s occupation in 1942, two men meet for the last time in the hotel room before the Japanese arrive. In the ‘70s, a band celebrates New Year’s Eve fiercely in an orgiastic drug fueled party. Decades pass as stories unfold within the same hotel room. Reflecting Singapore’s history as an entrepôt, characters of diverse backgrounds and nationalities find themselves in the hotel room, as a spirit watches on, drawn to the suffering and tragedies expressed within it.
In the Room contains all the hallmarks of Eric Khoo’s oeuvre – a distilled nod towards his love for horror, an empathetic approach towards cruelty, and the constant search for the transitory moments of human tenderness. It is perhaps his most ambitious and personal feature film, and the perfect bookend to a year of jubilee celebrations.
Check out the film's synopsis and screening/Q&A session details at the SGIFF site here.
We sat down with Eric to hear his journey in making 'In The Room'.
Why sex? When you are in a nice private place, when you are in a hotel room right, the most intimate thing that can go on there right, because you feel safest, because of the space.
Actually, together with Jonathan, who was my writer, and Andrew Hook. We thought that it would be really nice to do a tribute to the Twilight Zone, like an anthology with little episodes and an interesting ending. And we thought using sex as a consistent motif running throughout the film was...well, interesting. Whether it is love, yearning, or the act of it, there is something a little bit more structured in a sense. As I was saying, as I wanted to do all the stories as different as I could, in a tonal way, so it’s almost like the 40s would be almost like film noir and how the camera works/rolls and how the actors perform. Then the 50s would be a bit more vivacious, even in terms of the look that, the colour. We try to achieve the technicolour look and with the 60s, it is something else. And… So a lot of planning actually went into the construction of this film, and um, one of my key guys is Arthur Chua, my production designer. He basically sat with me for hours – doing designs for the room. And I was thinking that if we were going to do this all in one room, it will be so wonderful to be able to construct the room and construct it in such a way that the ceilings can be removed, the walls can be removed so we can get different vantage points right. So the camera can float and play around. So after a while, Arthur came up with two beautiful mirror rooms and as we were filming one decade, Arthur will set up the next one. And then because my actors are all from Asia, they will come in blocks you know. My first lot was Josie Ho and the Malaysian girls, and that is two days. Then the next lot would come and we shift rooms.
Another very crucial person was my director of photography, Brian Gothong Tan. Brian is incredible because he is an artist, he does sculptures and he is also a technician, he can strip a camera. And he directs theatre plays, he directs commercials for our company and he’s got a great eye. And so he has a theatre background as well. I think Brian knows the script better than I do. So he can help me with all the shots and stuff right. And Meredith, our fashion coordinator, was also very good. I spent a lot of time with her going through the different wardrobes. So in the 50s I wanted cheong sam, so all these different girls, different bra size, everything had to be tailored. Right down to their underwear. Like those days you have the steel rings right, she had to build them. So we were very very specific. And then of course, for me, it was the music. The music is important. Different types of music belong to different decades right. So my son Christopher composed the main theme and then… And Christine Sham who does a lot of my movies, she also came up with a couple of melodies and arranged the whole score with real strings. My son Christopher, he has composed as far back as My Magic. When he was ten years old. And my second son James actually composed a song for me called In This Room and it is a pop song. And in the 60s it is a band with a pop song called Desker five. It is my take on The Quest and Vernon Cornelius has a cameo in the film. As the band’s manager. So we created all this characters. I didn’t know at the time who was gonna be my actors. A lot of my films in Singapore, I work with non-actors so I spend a lot of the time getting them into character. But this time, the foreigners I was gonna pull in, I needed people to act because I don’t have the luxury of spending time with them. Actually I just see them for two hours and then the next day we are shooting. Off they go, right? So Nansun Shi, she’s my producer, she contacted Josie Ho. And I am a big fan of Josie Ho because she is in one of my favourite films called My Dream Home. It’s a horror film. A slasher film. And so we sent Josie the script.
In fact, all the actors only got their story so they don’t know what’s going on in the other stories. So they will just come in and just concentrate. And how I met the Thais was really through Skype. Meet them, say hello hello, what do you think of the material, do you like it… And then the next skype call is running through the lines. Just to know how they sound like and that’s pretty much it.
And I read that you managed to do this entire film on a budget of $800, 000. That’s very low. Yea.
How did you manage to do it? Because I come from the school of budget film making. I think back now, Mee Pok Man, 20th anniversary and all that right, I think I only spent $20,000 on Mee Pok Man.
The great thing about In The Room is that everything was shot in one space, we didn’t have to travel. We shot everything in ten days. So they will come, they go. The actors.
And I think a lot of the actors enjoyed my previous films so they wanted to do this. And uh, so they didn’t charge alarming prices. And sometimes I also feel that with the labour of love projects, you can do it in a way to keep the budget down. So with the script, what was it like working with two different script writers? Okay, essentially Andrew Hook only wrote one story, which is about the Japanese housewife falling in love with a local. And that is set in the 80s. When we had about 40,000 Japanese in Singapore.
And the other stories I worked with Jonathan. And uh, sometimes even with the actors. Because sometimes Jonathan will write scenes that are really good but too long and at the end we really need to condense it, make it tight. I didn’t want anything with an excess of two hours. What was it like working with Jonathan? I have known him for a very long time. Ever since I did a tv horror series for media works, when they were still around. And I like his 'Chestnuts'. I think he has a lot of great ideas. And I need dialogue for my characters. If they are in a room together and they don’t talk, it is going to be damn boring. So Jonathan to me, was the best bet. And he’s very fast. You got a great pool of collaborators. How did you manage to get them to work with you? Nansun and I, we always meet up at film festivals. And I liked her because she always knew where to go to get free booze. Yea, the beer and the whiskey right. And uh, we have always joked about it you know, that we would do something together. And uh, you know, it was probably three years ago in Hong Kong when we were just drinking champagne and it was really nice and I said, actually those movies like Emmanuel, early 70s, soft- not really porn la, just sensual films. I kind of want to attempt something like that and she goes, why not. So she was here, and end of 2013 I kind of had a structure of this thing and she said let’s do it, so we shot it last year and then, yea. And Josie Ho was Nansun's contact. The Korean guy was through my other friend. Because I liked him on this series called The Rooftop Prince. So I thought it would look kind of nice. He looks slightly effeminate, soft. And the Korean lady, I met through Thomas Nam at a horror film fest, the Puchon film fest. The Thais… I have never met them before. But it was through my friend who is a talent agent there. So will you say like, the actors were casted according to the script or was it both ways, like actors inspired characters as well? You know, writing the characters, I saw them a certain way but I didn’t know the faces at that point. An exception was Sho Nishino, a very big star in Japan, an AV star who has been in the business for about ten years. She has also branched out into doing television and film. So I was keen and I got her from my Japanese contact.
So there are six stories in the film right? Any particular story you are especially drawn to? The one that I feel that I most like, after having to watch it so many times, is the Korean shot. The Korean story, I can say is uh, the most I can relate to la. The others are fun. In the room is also a chronicle of the time in Singapore.
Yes, because in the 40s you have the Japanese right? Then the 70s we have the Thai story and one character goes through a sex change operation. Singapore was the first country in Asia that performs sex change operations. See, nobody knows that. It was done by this guy called Ratnam. It was done in 1971. And you know, it’s almost like, if we look at the backdrop, it’s almost something like it is happening in Singapore. I mean, you look at the 60s version, we had bands that could beat The Beatles from number one. And it was nice to think of. And of course, we had Rose Chan, a stripper that’s very big in the 50s. What’s the most contemporary story out of all six? It is the 90s story. It will be the Koreans. Because that’s when we have Koreans in Singapore. More. You hear a lot of construction. We had a lot of construction works in the 1990s. The loud noises. And you know, you have one character giving his take on Singapore in a bit.
What were some of the interesting things or challenges that came up from doing the sex? I mean, in directing the scenes. Nothing much. It was more like, is it in focus. Hahaha. Has this film received any ratings? No, it is screening in the film festival uncut. But for general release, I don’t know yet. I am hoping for uncut with R21. Really, there’s nothing to cut if it is under R21. But if I want to be greedy and push it down to R18 then yea, some things need to be cut. But I am really hoping that it will pass through R21 without cuts. If cuts are needed, then maybe we won’t release it. We read reviews from foreign media and they were saying that they are not confident of In The Room being released in Singapore uncut. Yea. But we have sold the distribution so it will be released in France early next year and they renamed it as Hotel Singapura. In Hong Kong as well. And they are not going to cut it. As long as it is screened uncut, I am happy.
Interview by Dawn Teo and Jeremy Sing
*** A review of 'In the Room' from Le Monde, which was written based on a screening at the Toronto International Film Festival, called it one of the most beautiful movies screened at the festival and commented on Singapore censorship as well:
'National Service is compulsory in Singapore from the age of 18 for men. Legal majority is fixed at 16 years, just like sexual consent for girls. Sexual consent for boys is 17. But to view Eric Khoo’s online trailer, one of the most beautiful movies shown in Toronto, you must be 21. This level of censorship that targets violence and sexual movies is the highest in the world. '
Still from Ho Tau Nyen's 'Utama Every Nation in History'
At first glimpse, I was not sure what to call this project. To call it a screening of Singapore films seems reductive and ignorant of the dialogue that goes on beyond the constraints of a screening. While scoped within the parameters of an exhibition, the spirit of the project extends beyond these parameters, and many of the ideas presented are worthy of boundless, lengthy conversations. It is also possibly a French love affair with Singapore and Singapore art. Aptly titled Singapour mon amour, this is an event thatfeatured Singapore art in various disciplines including film, in Paris from 4 June to 12 July this year.
Works from 40 artists and intellectuals were brought together by a brilliant French-Singaporean team consisting of editor Mickaël Robert-Gonçalves, producers Patricia Cartier-Millon and Jeremy Chua and graphic designer Winnie Wu. In collaboration with musée du quai Branly, Centre Georges Pompidou, Église Saint-Merry, La Cinémathèque française and Point Éphémère, these works were given air time in Paris, opening up the eyes of the French to Singaporean works. Part of Singapour mon amour is its film programme called Singapore Electric Soul. As Singapore turns 50 years old this year, this showcase looks beneath the sheen of economic success and order and tries to find the latent voices hidden underneath sweeping rhetoric about Singapore and its identity. As a co-curator for this program, Nicole Brenez, a film scholar and professor of cinema studies at the Sorbonne Universityin Paris, describes the group of films presented:
'The usual representations of Singapore as a natural paradise or as a conquering city-state, a lookout for economic and architectural modernity, are yet challenged by more complex, elegant and sometimes unexpected propositions expressed by a generation of visual artists both critical and constructive.'
Here are some photo highlights of Singapore Mon Amour in Paris earlier in June.
The online publication of this homonymous interdisciplinary art project was launched at The Select Centre Bookroom at The Arts House last Saturday 21 Nov. It houses a more complete introduction to the project as well as statements by the curators. It retraces the artistic and intellectual achievements
collected during the visual arts, cinema, performance and research events in Paris
and features portraits, interviews, visual, sonorous and textual contributions by some of
Singapore's and France's most striking artists and cultural practitioners. Click here to get to the online publication.
SINdie caught up with Silke Schmickl, Curator of Singapour mon amour and Head of Lowave, to pry beneath the thought layers of this project.
Still from Rajendra Gour's 'Labour of Love'
Still from Ming Wong's 'Hong Kong Diary'
Still from Liao Jiekai's 'Before the Wedlock House'
Jeremy: I really like the idea of putting together these films that present a very alternative and perhaps critical gaze at Singapore, that are also edge in terms of style. How did the idea of curating a set of films like these films come about?
Silke: The four film programmes screened under the title "Singapore Electric Soul" which I curated together with Nicole Brenez, a film scholar and professor of cinema studies at the Sorbonne University in Paris, was part of a bigger art project called "Singapour mon amour". I developed "Singapour mon amour" as part of the Singapore Festival in France 2015, organised by NHB and Institut Français. "Singapour mon amour" (Singapore my Love) speaks about my love for Singapore, but also the complex relationship that many of the selected artists entertain with their home country, sometimes a love/hate relationship. In this regards, the title is also freely inspired by one my favorite films, "Hiroshima mon amour" by Alain Resnais, in which the encounter of the East and West is subtly developed through a personal love story that allows to look at the bigger history, the socio-cultural, political and historical background of these two lovers and their respective countries. The film demonstrates the urgent necessity of memory, the horror of neglect, and the capacity of speech to rise up the past in the present. Within the context of Singapore's 50s anniversary of Independence, the framework of this festival, the question of memory and how we can look at this past of modern Singapore, and also the present and future appeared as a key question.
Still from Rajendra Gour's Sunshine Singapore'
Still from Tan Pin Pin's 'Invisible City'
"Singapour mon amour" was composed of four modules dedicated to film, visual arts, performance and research, supplemented by an online publication which will be launched on Lowave's website by the end of this month. Each component had the objective to critically examine urban, socio-political and historical aspect's of the city state, and to pay tribute to alternative currents, individual and daring art initiatives and cutting edge culture in a broader sense. I wanted to provide an interdisciplinary platform where theory and practice could enter a dialogue, question, stimulate and enrich each other. It was in that sense a classical Lowave project as all our projects since 2002 have been developed at the nexus of cinema, visual arts and research.
My first entry point to the Singaporean art scene was the 1st Experimental Film Forum held at The Substation in 2010. During that event, I did not only see films that triggered my interest, but also met many wonderful filmmakers, artists and programmers with whom I stayed in touch and who made me discover more fascinating works over time. I slowly started composing programmes in my head, based on thematic and stylistic analogies and affinities that I sensed. This happened very naturally and long before "Singapour mon amour", yet this project provided the perfect opportunity to translate these thoughts into a concrete selection of films. Before presenting them in Paris we got the chance to show a smaller selection at ICA Singapore in January as part of Art Week 2015. The turnout of this event was fantastic, we had 800 spectators and this great energy carried us until Paris where the final selection was screened at La Cinemathèque française on 12 June and 3 July 2015.
Jeremy: Could you share about your curation process, e.g. how did you go about selecting these films?
Silke: The curation process took us almost a year. Based on a list of films I already had in mind we enlarged our research through various catalogues such as Objectifs' film data base or The Substation's film archive. I had a lively discussion with Wenjie Zhang who made me discover Rajendra Gour's beautiful films from the late 1960s and 1970s, as well as Zai Kuning's "RIAU". Ho Tzu Nyen made me discover Jason Soo's work. Other films were found on vimeo, such as Loo Zihan's "Autopsy" or Kevin Foong's "Sunsets of another world". I shared these films with Nicole who had a fresh look at them as she had not been working with Singapore before. With her unique expertise in avant-garde cinema, she analysed the works from a more international point of view and put them into a very interesting perspective. We decided to present the films in four thematic blocks: the geography and history of Singapore, everyday life and social issues, art as a moment of fiction, and a homage to Tan Pin Pin. The overall title "Singapore Electric Soul" alludes to Nelson Yeo's "Chinatown. Electric Soul #01". According to our respective curatorial practice, we both had the desire to present works originating from the art and cinema context, with a variety of styles ranging from documentaries to home movies, essay films and installation pieces. We were interested in examining various creative strategies employed by the artists, to speak, despite a restricted liberty of expression, critically and even politically about certain facts of Singapore's history.
Still from Zai Kunning's 'Riau'
Still from Loo Zihan's 'Autopsy'
Jeremy: What in your opinion are some of the most interesting films among your selection? Why?
Silke: This question is always difficult to answer as I like them all and for me each of the films is essential in the holistic composition of the programmes. I am definitively a fan of Ho Tzu Nyen's work and in this particular context especially "4x4 – Episode 3: Tang Da Wu – The most radical gesture", and in this same subversive spirit Urich Lau's "The Orators: Monologues", a very interesting collage film based on 3 cinema classics by Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles and Stanley Kubrick. Rajendra Gour's "Eyes", is also one of my favourites as an example of an early experimental film with a political dimension. I am attached to Jiekai Liao's personal approach and the silent beauty of his super-8 film "As winter escapes me". Zai Kuning's "RIAU" is a sublime and rare anthropological document on the world of the Orang Laut, a nomadic fishing village that lives around the islands of Riau. Sookoon Ang's emblematic and bold "Exorcize me" and Tan Pin Pin's beautifully choreographed montage in "9th August" are also personal highlights of the selection. Nicole was very interested in Tan Pin Pin's and Zai Kunings’ work and also "Peep" by Wesley Leon Aroozoo, "Solitary Moon" by Eva Tang, "Sunsets of another world" by Kevin Foong…
Still from Rajendra Gour's 'Eyes'
Still from Tan Pin Pin '9th August'
Still from Wesley Leon Aroozoo 'Peep'
Still from Eva Tang's 'Solitary Moon'
Jeremy: What's the general impression of Singapore cinema among the French? (if there is even an impression at all)
Silke: The programmes were very well received and were a real discovery for the French audience who got to see for the first time video art and experimental films from Singapore. If several of Pin Pin's films were shown at the Cinema du Réel Festival at Centre Pompidou before, and some other films here and there, it was the first time that such an important body of work was presented in one cycle, which was furthermore part of the month-long "Cinémas de Singapour", a programme curated for Cinemathèque by Warren Sin. It was important to illustrate, that beside the more commercial productions, there are other alternative and personal filmmaking styles in Singapore. Even if there is a local tone and cultural specificity in the presented films, they are universal enough to speak to anyone who is interested in audio-visual experimentations and avant-garde cinema, as well as Sout-East Asia. Pascale Cassagnau, an important figure for art films and the head of the audiovisual and new media collections at Centre National des Arts Plastiques, an equivalent of the National Arts Council, congratulated us after the screening for the high quality of the programmes. I would like to share this positive feedback with the local filmmakers as an encouragement to continue the essential work that they do for the development of a rich, unafraid and diverse art scene in their country.
Jeremy: I am quite intrigued that the experimental film forum sparked off your interest in Singapore film. Having to been to some of the past editions, many of the works are of a more esoteric nature that may not be the easiest way to get a feel of Singapore because the experiences are highly personal to the filmmakers. Could share more about what in the experimental films you saw sparked of your interest.
Silke: Seeing EARTH by Ho Tzu Nyen moved me deeply. I had never heard of Tzu’s work before but this film resonated very strongly in me as I had studied many of the paintings he alludes to during my art history studies. The experience was unique, this mixture of familiarity and strangeness, of understanding without knowing why. When we talked about the film later, we found out that we were reading the same books, for example "Absorption and Theatricality: Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot" by art critic Michael Fried, a great study on the place of the spectator and art perception theory. I also remember Wesley’s and Nelson’s films and was glad to see some films again which I really like such as Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s "Mysterious Object at Noon", "Mobile Men" or "Block B" by Chris Chong. Seing that there were parallels and intersections between The Substation and Lowave made me feel comfortable and as I mentioned before, the encounters with people such as Victric Thng, Low BK, Aishah Abu Bakar, Tzu Nyen, William Phuan, were as important as the works.
Jeremy: Name me your favourite Singapore film of all time.
Silke: This is another difficult question to answer as my knowledge of Singapore film is still rudimentary and I have not started to explore Singapore’s feature films, not even those of Jiekai, Boo Junfeng… If I have to pick a film that I really loved and discovered recently it’s Daniel Hui’s "Snakeskin", a brilliant work in many regards, with an extremely inventive and original cinematographic language. Definitively a film I would highly recommend. Here are some photo highlights of the online publication launch on 21 November:
