2002 was a relatively good year for Singapore cinema.
According to The Straits Times, theatrical attendance rose
by about 3% and box office receipts went up by 7%, to a
total of S$103 million (US$60 million). The difference was
probably due in part to the steadily increasing admission
prices. But the year also brought welcome progress in
terms of creative substance and quality. Singapore’s
annual output has now stabilised at 5 to 6 features.
Leading the top ten chart were, as expected, American
blockbusters. But an encouraging surprise was that the
two non-Hollywood movies on the list were Singapore
productions. Jack Neo’s satirical comedy I Not Stupid
stood at fourth place, while “pan-Asian” horror co-production
The Eye came in at number ten. Both represent a
triumph for Raintree Pictures which produced the former
and co-produced the latter with Hong Kong’s Applause
Pictures.
The Eye, directed by Hong Kong-born twins Danny and
Oxide Pang, tells the story of Mann, a blind young woman
who receives a corneal transplant only to discover that
she can see the dead as well as the living. Like the Pang
brothers’ 1999 Thai gangster flick, Bangkok Dangerous,
The Eye is visually stylish, aurally effective and in this
case genuinely creepy. Although the narrative could be
structured more coherently, the movie’s psychological
manipulation is light years ahead of Raintree’s earlier
supernatural melodrama The Tree. Shot in Hong Kong
and Thailand with dialogue in Cantonese, Mandarin and
Thai, the cast includes Malaysian-born Taiwanese actress
Angelica Lee and Chinese-Canadian singer Lawrence Chou
in the leading roles.
The film was a hit when it opened on 30 screens in Hong
Kong in May, grossing US$ 1.7million after four weeks,
making it Raintree’s most successful Hong Kong co-production
to date. A sequel by the Pangs is in the making,
as might be a Hollywood version. Eyeing the success of
Dreamworks and Japanese horror Ring, Tom Cruise and
his Cruise-Wagner Productions company have acquired
the English-language remake rights to The Eye.
Another local production that did well both at home and
internationally was Jack Neo’s I Not Stupid. In Singapore,
it became a runaway hit which generated much public and
private discussions. Its success at home spawned an 18-
part television series on the Chinese-language Channel 8,
a comic book, and even children’s vitamin pills.
Abroad, it remained on Hong Kong’s top ten grossing
movies list for six weeks - it is usually Hong Kong productions
that do well in Singapore. It was also warmly
received at Korea’s Pusan International Film Festival.
Korean audiences could easily identify with the problems
caused by a pressure-cooker educational system. In
Korea, Raintree scored another victory at the fifth Pusan
Promotion Plan when it was awarded US$ 10,000 by the
Busan Film Commission for its new film project Leap of
Love to be directed by Cheah Chee Kong (CheeK) based
on Singapore writer Catherine Lim’s e-novella of the same
name.
Raintree Pictures, the filmmaking branch of state-owned
broadcaster MediaCorp, was set up in 1998 to produce
commercially viable films for the local, regional and international
markets. While most Singapore producers are
forced to create television content to survive while scraping
up enough funds for the odd feature, Raintree’s relatively
secure financing has enabled it to make feature
films on a regular basis, helping it to become the dominant
film production company in the country. However, it
is clear that for Singapore to have thriving film industry,
there has to be more than just one state company
engaged in full-time filmmaking.
Aware of Singapore’s limitation as a market, Raintree’s
present strategy to find new audiences is to ride the current
wave of creativity in Asian cinema by cultivating
regional co-productions. To this end, Raintree tied up with
Hong Kong-based Golden Network Asia Ltd to make the
Thai black comedy Nothing to Lose (2002) about two
young people who meet as they are about to commit suicide.
Rather than die, the couple decide to live dangerously
à la Bonnie and Clyde. Directed by Danny Pang in
his first film without brother Oxide, the flashy style-oversubstance
crime orgy stars Thai TV actress Arisara
Wongchalee (aka Fresh) and MediaCorp’s Pierre Png in
the lead roles. Yvonne Lim, also from MediaCorp, plays
Png’s sister.
For 2003, Raintree has tied up with Hong Kong filmmaker
Johnnie To’s Milkyway Image and Hollywood’s Warner
Brothers, to produce Turn Left, Turn Right, directed by
Hong Kong’s Johnnie To and Wai Ka-fai. The movie,
Warners’ first Chinese-language feature, is an adaptation
of Taiwanese author Jimmy Liao’s popular illustrated
romance about a man and a woman living in the same
building but who never meet. The film features Hong
Kong stars Gigi Leung and Kaneshiro Takeshi. It will be
shot in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Mainland China.
For small countries such as Singapore, co-productions will
probably be a very important means, if not the only way,
to sustain the young film industry as well as to gain
invaluable experience in the art and business of making
movies. To underscore their support of co-productions,
the Film Commission launched, in April 2002, a Co-
Production Investment Fund which matches the Singapore
funds raised, up to S$500,000 (US$290,000). However,
it is obvious that the act of investing in a regional movie
by itself brings a country little acclaim from the viewing
public and is often hardly even noticed. To film audiences
and critics, it is the merit of the filmmaker and the stars
that count. Also, the danger of losing one’s identity in a
co-production “chop suey” is never far away.
Outside the shadow of Raintree, 2002 also saw the
release of two notable local features: Colin Goh’s 90-
minute Talking Cock The Movie was the only local movie shown at last year’s Singapore International Film Festival
(SIFF). It is an original and daring satirical comedy, poking
good fun at Singaporeans, their obsessions, history and
government. Produced and directed by husband-and-wife
team, Colin Goh and Joyceln Woo, this digitally-shot first
film comprises four humorous stories linked by comic
sketches. The movie is inspired by the popular satirical
website of the same name launched by Goh and his
friends in 2000.
A significant detail is its multi-ethnic character which, for
the first time, features Indians and Malays in lead roles.
Moreover, the multi-lingual dialogue including the use of
Singlish is perhaps the closest reflection so far of how
many Singaporeans speak in real life. The Hokkien expletives,
however, though playfully bleeped over by the directors,
were considered “excessively vulgar”, thus earning
the film an NC-16 rating (No Children Under 16). The
DVD version of the movie was cut by the censors who
also embargoed its release for six months with no explanation.
Song of the Stork (Vu khuc con co, 2002) is a feature
about the Vietnam war and the first Singaporean-
Vietnamese joint production; it was directed by firsttimers
Singaporean Jonathan Foo and Vietnamese
Nguyen Phan Quang Binh. Told from the Vietnamese perspective,
the story centres on five young men caught in
the war’s horrors. It concentrates mainly on the human
dimension of war, instead of ideology. For the first time
an international production team has been allowed into
Vietnam to shoot a film about the Vietnam war.
Documentary war footage is also used. (Lead actress Do
Thi Hai Yen also stars in Philip Noyce’s The Quiet
American.) According to its makers, it is not expected to
be released in Singapore because of high local exhibition
costs, despite festival exposure abroad.
Three new home productions will premiere at the SIFF in
April 2003. TV sitcom writer Esan Sivalingam’s road comedy
City Sharks tells a story about a young man who discovers
that his foster parents must shut down their
orphanage unless they can come up with a huge cash
payment. He and his two pals then set out to collect
debts owed to a dead loan shark. Their mad chase takes
them across two countries.
Homerun, a remake of Majid Majidi’s Children of Heaven,
is set against the backdrop of the local dramatic events
of 1965 - the expulsion of Singapore from Malaysia and
the declaration of the Republic’s independence. Shot in
Malaysia, it is produced by Raintree and directed by the
popular Jack Neo, who wants to bring Majidi’s beautiful
story to wider Asian audiences.
15 is the feature length version of director Royston Tan’s
prize-winning short of the same name. The cast of nonprofessionals
play themselves in this film which depicts
the troubled lives of three teenagers on the edge of
Singaporean society and their search for meaning and
identity. It is produced by filmmaker Eric Khoo’s Zhao Wei
Films.
Features like 15 emphasise the importance of short and
experimental film as a springboard for new generations of
film-makers. The Substation arts centre has played an
important part in promoting short film, for example
through its Singapore Shorts Festival which includes
international entries. Its 2002 winner was Singapore’s
Lau Chee Nien with Gong Gong (Grandfather). Other
Singaporean short film-makers have been participating
and winning at festivals around the world.
There is a consensus within Singapore’s creative film
community that the country ought to do more to help
young film talents. The onus falls to a great extent on the
Singapore Film Commission (SFC, established in 1998).
Its screening and funding process is often seen as too
bureaucratic. Starting January 2003, the SFC became
part of the new Media Development Authority (MDA). The
MDA is the result of the merger between the Films and
Publications department (censorship), the Singapore
Broadcasting Authority and the Singapore Film
Commission. The Commission is expected to continue
under the MDA with its own charter, name and logo. It is
too early for any results of this restructuring to show -
especially its impact on the Commission’s autonomy,
financing, and its now closer ties to the censors.
In fact, there has been unusually lively discussion about
censorship in Singapore for much of the last year, reflected
in the country’s media and spilling over even into a
special report by the BBC TV. In April 2002, a 22-member
Censorship Review Committee met for the first time to
recommend to the government changes to censorship
policies. The commission’s findings are expected some
time in March 2003. Considered strict by Western standards,
Singapore censorship is affected by three key factors:
the country’s multi-racial and multi-religious society,
globalisation and technological advances. The latter two
have brought about changes which the government now
has to tackle. It appears that easing of Singapore’s censorship
laws is inevitable. The question is, how far will the
government dare to go?
THE SINGAPORE 2002 TOP-TEN FILMS [from/da The Straits Times]
I 10 FILM DI MAGGIORE SUCCESSO A SINGAPORE NEL 2002
SGD USD
1. Spider Man (US, Action/Fantasy/Sci-fi) 5.3m 3m
2. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (US, Fantasy/Mystery/Adventure) 5.08m 3.3m
3. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (US/N. Zealand/GER, Fantasy/Advent) 4m 2.3
4. I Not Stupid (Singapore, Comedy) 3.8m 2.18
5. Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones (US, Sci-fi) 3.68m 2.11
6. Die Another Day (UK/US, Action/Thriller) 2.69m 1.54
7. The Tuxedo (USA, Action/Sci-fi) - with Jackie Chan 2.36m 1.36
8. The Minority Report (US, Action/Sci-fi) 2.33m 1.34
9. Men in Black II (US, Action/Comedy/Sci-fi) 2.29m 1.32
10. The Eye (Jian gui, Singapore/Thailand, Fantasy/Horror) 1.99m 1.15
Jan Uhde & Yvonne Ng Uhde