'I am a beautiful beached whale by the Straits' by Ng Xi Jie
The event was ‘Silver Films’, a collection of 5 films
relating to or featuring senior, curated by Objectifs. The film was, Lost Sole,
an old grainy short film by Sanif Olek shot on DV camera at least 8 years ago.
Throughout the film, while the usual film-going crowd steered their attention
towards the nuances and philosophical undertones in the film about losing
direction, 2 senior ladies behind me guffawed non-stop at the thought of a
person losing his footwear at a place of worship and being stranded by the loss
of it.
That was perhaps the ultimate connection point between
‘Silver Films’ the event and the silver crowd themselves, seniors identifying
with simple familiar moments rather than the metaphorical journeys presented in
the films.
The laughing got particularly annoying after a while. Sabtu,
the old man, who lost his slippers after Friday prayers at the mosque registers
a look of worry after discovering the loss. The women chuckled uncontrollably.
Camera focuses on his barefeet, which he is shy to show passers-by. They burst
out in roaring laughter. Daughter comes looking for him and upon turning her
head towards his feet, camera closes up on his barefeet again. I stopped
turning my head backwards.
'Lost Sole' by Sanif Olek
Strong laughter coming from behind me (I am in the foreground wearing wooden spectacle frames)
The unintended response from the audience seems to serve to
remind filmmakers that sometimes, filmmakers make films for themselves more
than for any other apparent target audience. It certainly wasn’t director Sanif
Olek’s intention to create a comedy out Sabtu’s search for his missing slipper.
In fact, going by the quotes from the Quran presented in the film and the
tribute note his father, this was pitched at something more spiritual.
The same can be almost be said for Sun Koh’s contribution to
the collection of 5 films – The Secret Passion of Mdm Tan Ah Lian. Commissioned
for this event, Sun Koh’s film is about a married woman who is nearing
retirement age and still working hard at a café. Or so it seems, to her
husband. What she really is doing is living double life as a writer and she
already has a book published. In a spirit no different from
housewife-turned-celebrity cook Julia Child, Mdm Tan listens to her instincts
and filters out noise from her husband who tries to frame her back into her
role as a traditional mother. Except that she needs to live her desired life
undercover.
'The Secret Passion of Mdm Tan Ah Lian' by Sun Koh
The film is pitched at a semi-idealised reality with the
juxtaposing of a woman rich in ideals in a Singaporean working class home, and
the depiction of the pains and tedium she goes through just to fulfill her
writing ambitions, something possibly far fetched for the common man on the
street in Singapore. Look deeper, her husband is the token singlet-wearing, boorish
middle-aged man with the vibes of a taxi-driver and some strong hints of MCP
(male chauvinistic pig). What on earth convinced this writer or
artist-at-heart-of-a-woman to marry him is a mystery. Ultimately, these points
all serve to deliver an intended subversion or play some kind of advocating
role, with the likely subject of advocacy being empowerment. It is interesting
to note that, like Lost Sole, the bigger meaning behind the film speaks less to
the senior crowd and possibly more to the average adult who can appreciate some
healthy doses of idealism and aspiration.
The intended audience of a themed set of short films hereby
becomes an interesting question. In a year where ‘Pioneer Generation’ has
become a buzz word, one might ask if ‘Silver Films’ is a film event to expose
seniors to short films, a seniors event to keep the minds of seniors occupied
through cultural activities like film or a film event for film fans to explore
the psyche of seniors.
This is where films like Kat Goh’s Swimming Lesson and
Royston Tan’s Popiah seem awkwardly placed. Swimming Lesson offers a slice of
family drama that occurs on the day a young Singaporean girl departs for
overseas studies with didactic messaging. The girl’s doting mother nags up a
mountain of pent-up frustration in the girl, who is lost on why her mother is
fussing over seemingly inconsequential things like bringing boiled bird’s nest
for consumption on the plane. Through the visual metaphor of a swimming lesson
awkwardly inserted into the drone of TV-drama-like character-interplay, we, the
audience, get nagged at as well about the message in the story. The only
silver-haired character in the film, the quietly- wise grandfather, is just
there to offer the last word on the battle of words between the family members.
But he remains the proverbial fairy godmother, someone who has some omnipotent
presence but we know little about.
'Swimming Lesson' by Kat Goh
Royston Tan’s Popiah takes the form of a typical MCYS video
laden with a moral message and doses of tear-jerking melodrama. The tedious
chore of preparing Popiah distances a young man from his family but eventually
brings him closer again, not without the coercion of his relatives and rousing
orchestral music, seemingly for befitting of a war epic.
'Popiah' by Royston Tan
Like Swimming Lesson, Popiah is a closed-ended, water-tight
moral-laden short film that wants to have the last word, more than opening up
the conversation with seniors, which is potentially a challenging thing. Not
many want to be challenged at this age! One thing the curators could have
considered is, rather than loosely grouping films with senior characters
inside, they could instead try to find films with points of connection and
relevance with the seniors, regardless of whether there are grey-haired
chatracters within. Two films I highly recommend are Tan Pin Pin’s Invisible
City and Sun Koh’s Singapore Panda as I anticipate they will titillate the
memories of the elders, stir up some inner conversations within themselves and
also, laugh a dozen at the familiar as well as the helplessly cute foley
attempts in Singapore Panda.
I am a beautiful beached whale by the Straits by
installation and performance artist Ng Xi Jie, is the other commissioned piece
other than the other mouthful-of-a-title The Secret Passion of Mdm Tan Ah Lian.
This film crams a lot of material into its spiritual and mental confines. The
two elderly ladies in this semi-documentary share a tonne of information about
themselves and open for us, the doors to their hearts and inner aspirations.
Interjecting the expositions on the daily lives of the two women are hazy
dreamy scenes that feature their alter egos, strangely dressed in girly pastel-coloured
clothing that subverts the way we see them and tries to reclaim a bit of lost
innocence. Other than these awkward alter ego scenes, the real-life expository
segments are the most accurate mirrors, among the selection of films, to the
lives of the senior audience watching the films. Yet they drew relatively
little attention, a far cry from the incessant chuckling over a missing slipper
in Lost Sole. It is not clear whether the film is too much of a day-to-day
mirror of their lives or they just don’t know what to make of a middle-aged
lady dancing like a ballerina at the beach. 
Written by Jeremy Sing
'Film's over, time to ponder over our real lives'.
More information on the screening dates and venues can be found on this poster here:
