2005 proved to be an atypical year for the quantity (nine features), range, and quality of films produced. 2005's first feature was Jack Neo's I Do I Do, a S$1m comedy produced by Mediacorp Raintree Pictures. Starring popular TV actors Sharon Au and Adrian Pang, the film's story focuses on themes of love and marriage and the country's declining birthrate. Its release was timed to exploit the Chinese New Year and Valentine's Day atmosphere. Though Pang excels in his role as a rejected lover, and the film offers a few well-aimed digs at official efforts to increase the national birth-rate, the movie suffers from a contrived plot, and returned only S$1.8m despite heavy advertising.
Raintree's other major production was the first home-grown horror The Maid, (Singapore/Hong Kong/Philippines), the second feature of former critic Kelvin Tong. It stars Italian-Filipino actress Alessandra de Rossi as young Filipino maid Rosa, new in service in Singapore to a middle-aged couple in a Chinese opera troupe and their half-witted son. Arriving at the start of the Chinese Seventh Month, when the souls of the dead are free to roam among the living, she soon begins to experience a series of ghostly encounters in her employers' old dilapidated house.
The story of a domestic guest-worker's feelings of apprehension, loneliness, homesickness compounded by supernatural events is a fertile one, but here it is treated too superficially. We neither feel the depth of Rosa's plight as a young woman in a foreign land nor the terror of living in a haunted house. The film's Chinese opera setting is appropriately atmospheric though the overall result is less impressive than Raintree's earlier Asian horror co-productions The Eye and The Eye 2. This is in mainly due to relying too much on cheap shock tactics to scare. Nevertheless, the cleverly-marketed film, made for S$1.5 million and released in August to coincide with the start of the Chinese Seventh Month, kept the cash registers ringing with impressive local takings of S$2.16m. It seems Asian horror is still riding high - The Maid has been picked up by Fortissimo Films for international distribution.
Tong's next venture was his low-budget 1942, a Japanese-language horror-action shot in the jungles of Malaysia. Here, a group of Japanese soldiers lost in a Malayan jungle during WWII are haunted by a singing female ghost. 1942 has yet to be released in Singapore.
Since Eric Khoo's Mee Pok Man (1995), Singaporean filmmakers have attempted to depict the more down-to earth, gritty side of life against the officially sanitized image of their city. A recent example is US-based Singaporean director Djinn's Perth (2004), a film with a challenging theme and promising beginning that spirals downward to its bloody, over-the-top denouement. Nevertheless, the dark existential drama about a taxi-driver's dream of emigrating in search of a better life swept four awards at the 11th Lyon Asian Film Festival. It's certainly no bad thing for the fledgling Singapore film industry that its films are being noticed on the international festival circuit.
A feature that deserved its multiple accolades was Khoo's Be With Me, his third feature in ten years. It's inspired by the extraordinary and courageous Theresa Chan, a blind and deaf Singaporean in her sixties. She plays herself in a film that combines fact and fiction. The fictional tales revolve around an elderly couple separated by death, a security guard obsessed by an attractive woman, and two teenagers involved in a lesbian relationship. Despite the difficulty in the way Theresa's story is woven with the others, the result is quietly powerful ode to love, chance, and life. Chan is the only real-life character among a cast of non-professionals in this modestly-budgeted production. The film became a landmark in Singapore film history when it opened the Directors' Fortnight in Cannes 2005.
Back home, it was released uncut by Warner Brothers Singapore in September. It was also the first film from the Republic to be submitted for the Oscars, but was disqualified from the foreign language section because "English was determined to be the soundtrack's dominant language."
Another film to introduce a visually impaired character last year was the drama Cages, written and directed by American first-time feature filmmaker, Graham Streeter. The film's about a single mother, and her blind son who are forced to reunite with her father. It stars Singaporean stage and TV actress Tan Kheng Hua and nine-year-old Dickson Tan, who is blind. Shot on HD digital, the photography by Mark Lapwood is truly impressive but the film, set against a backdrop of the songbird culture in Singapore, seems to be a missed opportunity to depict effectively complex emotions between parents and their children. Cages premiered at Pusan but has not yet been released theatrically.
Some of the outstanding works last year were documentaries, signalling the growth of a critical perspective toward social and political issues. Tan Pin Pin's 55-minute video featurette Singapore GaGa, which screened at the Rotterdam and Nantes film festivals, records the sights and sounds of everyday life in Singapore - particularly those that are ignored, forgotten, marginalised or taken for granted. Among those featured are street buskers, the city's leading harmonica player, a veteran ventriloquist, and radio broadcasters who read the news in Chinese dialects that fewer and fewer Singaporeans understand. Made for a mere $100,000, this well-structured, amusing, yet pensive personal documentary offers a glimpse of Singapore seldom seen. Since its enthusiastic premiere at the Singapore Film Festival in April, the film has played to full houses outside the cinema circuit, and is scheduled for a theatrical release.
Another documentary of note was by first-time feature filmmakers Lynn Lee and James Leong who journeyed beyond Singapore's shores to make Passabe. A remote village positioned between East and West Timor, Passabe is the site of one of the worst massacres in the region after East Timor voted in favour of independence in an UN-supervised popular referendum in 1999. The film documents the impact on the lives of the villagers five years later as both perpetrators and victims try to come to terms with what happened in an effort to reconcile and move on. In particular, the film features a former militiaman who risks uncertain consequences by publicly admitting to his part in the massacre and apologising for his deeds at an UN-backed truth and reconciliation hearing. Carefully researched and beautifully photographed, Passabe was nonetheless banned from being shown at the Jakarta Film Festival in December 2005. The documentary has not been released in Singapore.
Back home, censorship made itself felt again when Martyn See's 26-minute documentary Singapore Rebel was forced to withdraw from the 2005 SIFF. The film offers a glimpse into the life of opposition politician Chee Soon Juan, secretary general of the Singapore Democratic Party and his foray into politics. The censors decided it contravened the Films Act which makes it an offence to make, distribute or exhibit "party political films". The filmmaker would otherwise risk a fine of up to S$100,000 or two years in prison. Ironically, the ban on Singapore Rebel (available on the Web) generated probably much more debate in mass media and on the internet than would otherwise have been the case.
Singapore's independent Malay-language cinema was represented by Adi Yadoni's feature Klise-Cliché, a drama-comedy conceived by the director and coproducer-actress Wahyu Rahman. Made at a minuscule cost of S$ 50,000, it premiered at the Royal Horticultural Halls in London in August.
The last local feature to be released in 2005 was Jack Neo's One More Chance, about the tribulations of three men attempting to integrate into the community after their prison release. Co-directed by Jack Neo and his friends, Michael Woo and Toh Lan Sin, the $1 million drama was produced by Neo's J Team Productions with the Community Action for the Rehabilitation of Ex-offenders Network. It stars Mark Lee, Henry Thia and Marcus Chin. One More Chance was prompted by the filmmaker's discovery that an astounding 11 000 ex-convicts are released from Singapore's rehabilitation centres each year, with many struggling to gain social acceptance. It is therefore more serious in tone than his usual comedies, though no less full of the sentimentality characteristic of Neo's style.
For the Chinese new year, in January 2006, Neo released I Not Stupid Too, the sequel to his 2002 runaway hit I Not Stupid. Whereas the original focused on the pressure cooker education system and its effect on primary school children, the new film explores problems of communication between parents and their teenagers. Real street gang members are roped in to appear as juvenile delinquents. Though panned by local critics, the film has been doing well at the box-office, becoming the fourth local movie to cross the S$3 million mark It was produced by Raintree for S$1.5 m with the support of the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports.
2005 also saw other significant developments involving Singapore and Asian cinema. The Asian Film Archive (AFA), a non-profit independent charity organisation was launched in January 2005 to preserve Singapore and Asian films. It issued its first DVD compilation of nine Singapore shorts in September.
Another initiative was the Southeast Asian Cinematheque (SEAC), set up by Raphaël Millet, Cultural and Audiovisual Attaché of the French Embassy in Singapore and Shirlene Noordin of Phish Communications. Its purpose is "to promote Southeast Asian films locally and internationally, by making them accessible to audiences through screenings, on-site research and exhibitions." SEAC was officially launched in January 2006 with the screening of a series of movies made in Singapore in the 1970s. Other screenings included the Lumière Brothers first film programme (1895) and early Lumière Asian movies shot in Japan and Indochina.
The Singapore History Museum, soon to be renamed the National Museum of Singapore, will launch its own National Museum Cinematheque equipped with a 250-seat Gallery Theatre. It aims to have a strong component in Singapore shorts and features and will take an in-depth approach to societal and cultural contexts.
An unprecedented event, Screen Singapore, was held in August to celebrate the nation's 40th birthday. Comprising the biggest retrospective ever of local cinema from 1965 to 2005, the festival was the brainchild of Raphaël Millet. 31 features and 15 shorts were screened throughout the month. Among them was the first Singapore screening of the 1973 Ring of Fury, a tribute to Bruce Lee, directed by Tony Yeow and James Sebastian, banned for showing gangsterism. Another well-attended movie was the female secret agent counterpart to James Bond, They call her...Cleopatra Wong (George Richardson, 1978). Cleopatra apparently became an inspiration for Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill heroine played by Uma Thurman.
Another new event was the Asian Festival of 1st Films in November. Its mandate is to be "the world's inaugural platform that honours the best of first-time films, producers, directors, scriptwriters, cinematographers, actors and documentary makers of Asian descent." The competitive festival presented more than 30 films over a week. The event was organized by entertainment company Teamwork Productions, supported by the film exhibitor/distributor Golden Village, The Singapore Film Society and the Media Development Authority of Singapore.
The government is clearly showing strong support for the film and media industry, especially since it hopes that the media sector could contribute 3% to the GNP within 10 years. The focus is on digital media, into which it will pour $1 billion. This type of investment has attracted the likes of Lucasfilm which set up its Singapore animation facility in June 2005. Hopefully there will be more good news for Singapore cinema in the years to come.
*All figures are in Singapore Dollars. 1 S$ = 0.512 EUR