SIFF 2008 -- Milky Way Liberation Front, Keronchong for Pak Bakar, After the Rain

Leaving the cinema after the end credits for Milky Way Liberation Front rolled, that was the end of SIFF 2008 for me. I was already tired when we sat down to watch that movie. It was a good way to end the festival. Milky Way Liberation Front was fun, a long string of gags that gently poke fun at indie filmmaking, film festivals and the people who participate in them.

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Like his first short Datura, Abdul Nizam's Keronchong for Pak Bakar is distinguished by impressionistic editing with strong narration and the use of vocabulary with religious undertones. There isn't a clear narrative or chronological momentum, but the mix of image and narration can be slightly hypnotic.

I agree with Tan Pin Pin's comments about the film: the work is concerned more with Abdul Nizam's relationship with Abu Bakar bin Ali than with the latter's past. In fact the documentary strongly suggests that the Abdul Nizam in the film is seeking a father figure identified with the golden age of Malay cinema. This search is expressed early in the movie as a search to know more about movie legend P Ramlee, through which Abdul Nizam discovers serendipitously that the man who lensed many of his movies lived just above him. At one point, Abdul Nizam expresses in regretful tones how he discovered too late that his hardworking father had loved film stars and movies. Throughout, Abdul Nizam is extremely respectful - even protective - towards Abu Bakar.

The material used in the documentary come from two major sources. The first is clearly the recorded footage from Abdul Nizam's conversations with Abu Bakar. The second is more mysterious -- footage of a train journey up Malaysia to Penang, ostensibly taken while location scouting for a feature film on P Ramlee's life (according to Abdul Nizam the project eventually fell through).

Empty spaces feature prominently here, partly illustrating Pak Bakar's current solitude. When I asked Abdul Nizam why he weaved in the silent, lonely sequences from his train journey, he indicated that it was partly to convince Abu Bakar to come out of his solitude more often, perhaps to work on film again.

That documentary left the audience with far more questions about Abu Bakar Ali than answers. Why did Abu Bakar stop working on films? Why does he mostly talk about technical matters -- for most of the documentary he is fiddling with an old Bolex handheld camera -- and nothing about himself?

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I'm still surprised that SIFF screened Royston Tan's latest short "film" After the Rain before Keronchong for Pak Bakar. Rose-tinted nostalgia and banal cliches (the father coughs to prefigure his eventual death) pliantly placed in the service of the government's ideological imperatives. This is an unabashed propaganda piece.

21st SIFF Trailer

By Victric Thng

"This Film Is Not Yet Rated"; Censorship Uncensored - 1 Feb 2008

Looks like Cathay has finally decided to put This Film Is Not Yet Rated on general release. They've had the print since 2006, when this documentary was first shown - once - as part of The Picturehouse's 1st Anniversary celebrations.

In what looks like a tie-in event, Cathay is organising "a panel of industry players" who will talk about their censorship experiences here. They're coy about the details though -- no word yet on who's actually going to speak.

Censorship Uncensored

FRIDAY 1st FEBRUARY at 7.30pm The Picturehouse Lounge
FREE & OPEN TO PUBLIC

Find out more about CENSORSHIP IN SINGAPORE for yourself! Curious about the whole film rating process? What are the steps a film must go through for a rating? What does an NC16 rating mean for a film? Join us at The Picturehouse Lounge for a open dialogue session with a panel of industry players who will breakdown the local ratings system and sharing some of their own experiences with the censorship process. Speakers include the Chairman of the Consultative Panel at MDA, a representative from a Major Film Distribution company and local independent film maker.

RSVP your place at thepicturehouse@cathay.com.sg to avoid disappointment. Subject line:RATED Explores.

Holy hexadecimal! - "Dystopia"

Singaporean directors tackleleth the 10 Commandments, and their fruits shalt be gathered into a feature film - Dystopia

Culturepush has an interview with Nicholas Chu, one of the prime movers behind Dystopia:

Dystopia is about a distant future, a very grim future that we are heading towards and in which people have forgotten about the very first moral imperatives known to men. This reflects on the current situation and the world that we are living in. And if we do not stop and reflect on our actions, we may just be moving to the world that is seen in dystopia.

The project came about when two other directors at apostrophe films and I started talking about the state of films made in Singapore. Most of the movies are either horror flicks or movies about heartlanders. We were kind of jaded that the audiences were interested in these two genres of movies and decided to expose them to something visually and content different.

After a year or so, we eventually decided to do something about it and roped in ten different directors for our Dystopia project; Jeevan Nathan, Mike Chew, Christina Choo, Boi Kwong, Randy Ang, Ric Aw, Bernard Tan, Lawrence Ong, Terence Teo, and myself.

Read the rest of the interview.

Two names ring a bell. Without resorting to the almightly Google -

- Ric Aw scooped first prize in the Professional Category in 2005's Panasonic-MDA Digital Film Fiesta with Buy Me Love.

- Randy Ang (together with Nicholas Chee) started Originasian Pictures, which made Becoming Royston and set up Sinema Old School.

Lucky 7 website up

The Singaporean anthology film Lucky 7 gets a website over at Wordpress. It's premiering at the Rotterdam Film Fest, and has been rated R21 without cuts and will be premiering at SIFF. Check their blog for more updates!

Singapore Int'l Film Fest 2008 website up

Just some basic info for now, but we're hoping this year's selection will be good. Head on over to http://www.filmfest.org.sg/

Akan Datang: Sundance 2008

What will we watch this year or even next year? Part of the answer will be revealed on 17 Jan when Sundance kicks off in Park City, Utah for 10 days. Although several cinephiles have deplored the increasing commercialization of Sundance (heresy to the defenders of the spirit of Indie), it has become such a permanent feature of the international film circuit, no one with a stake in the film industry can afford to ignore it.

From a cursory browse of the film catalogue, the offering this year is diverse. Of note, Michael Haneke is showing a remake of an earlier masterpiece of his, Funny Games. Although most of us won't be Utah, 10 short films will be streamed daily:

18 Jan - I Love Sarah Jane, Spencer Susser
19 Jan - Pariah, Dee Rees
20 Jan - Yours Truly, Osbert Parker
21 Jan - my olympic summer, Daniel Robin
22 Jan - Sick Sex, Justin Nowell
23 Jan - Because Washington Is Hollywood For Ugly People, Kenneth Tin-King Hung
24 Jan - Force 1 TD, Randy Krallman
25 Jan - Wind, Ten Years Old, Marzeih Vafamehr
26 Jan - Sikumi (On the ice), Andrew Okpeaha MacLean
27 Jan - Spider, Nash Edgerton