Where do you draw the line between film, TV, reality-TV and
content you feed on from YouTube? Is the Blair Witch Project really YouTube
genre that got lucky on the big screen? But hey, we’ve seen some films which
are arguably brilliant in the most rigorous definition, on YouTube. A case in
point was the recent graduation showcase by the 2015 graduating digital
filmmaking class of the NTU ADM Film School. 10 short films were presented at
the showcase and they spanned a whole spectrum of genres from narrative to
documentary to experimental films. They are so diverse in style and content,
sitting through the screening reminds you of the experience of surfing YouTube,
a sort-of freewheeling ride through a multitude of experiences, often
sensational and some crossing the line between film and that YouTube quick fix
we need at the end of a working day.
The last film of the evening ‘Happily Ever After’ by Shaun Neo, Apple Ong and Pek Hongkun, an
experimental film, stood out as the ‘maverick’ piece among the rest for its
lack of a story and its very touch-and-go approach to observing weddings
through the generations. This is either a very poorly-conceived experiment or a
single-minded pursuit of certain visual aesthetics. The film is cleanly parted
in three, with each segment showing family members at a wedding getting in line
for a family photo. The stylistic and behavioral differences between the
generations (60, 80s and current) are starkly portrayed and each segment takes
us through the same routine. The punchline in the film seems to be last segment
which tries to show disconnect between the young couple and the parents, a
reverse from the state of closely-knit big families in the 60s. However, the
rather anemic delivery of this punchline, made this film seem like incomplete
in its conceptualization. There is also very little exposition of the
characters beyond just ‘period-clothes-horses’. Yet, this film is what sits on
the intersection of the film format and the consumable social media format,
something you certainly would feed on and share with your friends. Flaws and
all, it’s click-worthy.
Another film that sings its own tune is ‘In Search of
Memories’ by Daniel Chong. This film, though not inventive in its genre, is deeply personal and
largely esoteric in its approach. The film takes us on a mental road trip with
the narrator, through her musings, dilemmas and questions. The film has quoted
a brilliant line from French filmmaker Chris Marker’s film ‘Sunless’ – that the
human eye captures images at one-24th of a second, very much like
film, implying that the lines are often blur between what’s in film and what’s
real to us. The lines are thoughtful in this experimental piece and so are the
images captured. Straddling between Singapore and somewhere in Europe and
Japan, the filmmaker has an eye for capturing the poetic and lyrical in his
travels, from people to even paintings. However, this combination of wanderlust
and navel-gazing is akin to a train going nowhere. The ride is breath-taking
but you question the point of it. For me, I question the narrator’s voice – a
languid female voice that sounds like a teenager who is sick of school. Does
life have to be as fatalistic as she sounds? It could be if the context of this
is explained in the film. If.
The documentary film ‘Invisible Voices’ by Liu Longhao explores the life of
migrant workers in Singapore. While most of it sounds like another
run-of-the-mill peek behind walls of their living quarters, the film inserts an
additional angle to the film, the point of view of Kavan Lim, a young financially
successful man who lives in Sentosa Cove. The choice of planting a stimulus
like this borders on breaking the rules of documentation. It reeks of reality
TV where the audience feeds on the meeting of unlikely characters, often to
sensational effects. However, the film actually pans out like any other
documentary as the presence of Kavan seems inconsequential. His interaction
with the workers is a kin to the filmmaker interacting with them, drawing the
expected responses and in some talking head interviews with the workers, the
lines are blurred between watching Kavan conversing and the filmmaker
conversing with them. The film however, succeeds on achieving a high degree of
intimacy with its subjects, getting them to be comfortable with expressing some
genuine feelings about their situation. Particularly eye-opening is the tour of
the workers’ quarter, a world hidden from the common view of Singaporeans but
brought to light by the conscientious efforts of these filmmakers.
The other documentary in the evening’s line-up, ‘Children of
Mon Mot’ Rachel Siao is another labour of love, shot entirely on the island of Alor in East
Indonesia, the film is an interesting peek into the lives and psyche of the
Abui tribe on this island. The tribe’s means of passing their ‘endangered’
language is through the telling of folktales and the film is centred around one
folktale about a gigantic snake that ate up the whole village and how the
village fought back. This is a very polished attempt at a documentary with technically-accomplished
cinematography, editing and not to forget storytelling, pun intended. The
villagers take turns to tell the story and their accounts are interjected with
snippets of the drawings, which are highly evocative of the imagined mystical
world of this snake. The entire experience, with the men’s long whiskers of white
hairs and weathered skin and the intensity of their accounts, is authentic and
intimate. This is really a safe attempt, treatment-wise, at a documentary, set
off the beaten track, but immaculately framed for an audience spoilt on National
Geographic.
I remember ‘Little Maud’ by Petrina Anne De Souza, as the film with the
subtitles appearing like picture captions on a condominium TV ad. This film,
which straddles between reality, memory and fantasy is a stylistically strong
attempt at telling a story about the relationship between a father and his
daughter. The premise of a father who is watching his daughter grow and fearing
being alienated when she is mature, is both familiar and potentially affecting.
However, the film suffers from production design overkill. The dreamy treatment
with soft-focus filters and pastel colouring fails to cover up for many visual
clichés in the way their relationship is being portrayed. Perhaps it was an
attempt to visually interpret the source of this story which is a actually an American
poem ‘Little
Sleep’s-Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight. But the foreign context of this got a little lost,
not in translation, but in the whiffs of fairy dust clouding most of the film.
Review by Jeremy
Sing
Our reviews of
the other 5 films from the NTU ADM graduation film showcase will continue in
another post.
