Despite the general economic downturn, the government’s long-term strategy to develop Singapore as an Asian media hub has remained firmly on track. In fact, as part of the ambitious Singapore Media Fusion Plan (an extension of Media 21, the national media blueprint 2004-2008) unveiled in 2009, the government is allocating S$230m (US$160m) over five years to the Plan on top of the S$500m (US$350m) already committed to interactive digital media research and development. The initiatives in the Plan include an International Film Fund to encourage co-productions with global appeal involving local and international companies; a Stereoscopic 3D Development Fund in which Singapore has committed to co-produce three 3D films, targeted for in production by the end of March 2010; and Mediapolis @ one-north, a state-of-the-art studio complex which offers sound stages, digital production, post production, broadcast and distribution facilities, currently under development.The first stage of the project is expected to be completed by 2011 and the remaining part by 2020. By then, it should span 47 acres (19 hectares) and serve as a catalyst for film, television, animation, video game and emerging new media production.
The multi-pronged pursuit of international co-operation involving Singapore’s media industry resulted in the signing of a US$10m deal by director Kelvin Tong and his production company Boku Films with Korean Chungeorahm Film, to co-produce a sequel to the 2006 Korean monster feature The Host. Another well-known Singapore director and producer Eric Khoo launched a new production company, Gorylah Pictures, in 2009 The name is a pun using the term “gory” and the ubiquitous Singlish exclamatory particle “lah”. Gorylah was established by Khoo’s Zhao Wei Films and the production, post-production and animation company Infinite Frameworks. The aim is to create an independent action/fantastical/horror label. The new company aims to produce films that capitalize on the uniqueness of South East Asian stories, beliefs and myths, and introduce them to the world.
As far as quality is concerned, 2009 was mostly a year of middle-of-the-road productions for mainstream Singapore cinema. About a dozen features were released - half the number compared with the preceding year. Traditionally, at least one commercially oriented Singapore movie is launched during the Chinese New year holidays. This was the case with Love Matters (Xing fu wan sui, 2009), co-directed by veteran filmmaker Jack Neo and newcomer Gilbert Chan and budgeted under US$1m. The story revolves around three couples of varying ages coping with problems of romance and sex.
Neo and his movie went head-to-head with The Wedding Game (Da xi shi), a romantic comedy by Thai-born, Singapore-based Ekachai Uekrongtham. It featured reallife celebrity couple Fann Wong and Christopher Lee as movie stars who fake their romance for fame and profit.Although both movies were accompanied by shrill media hype, The Wedding Game, taking advantage of a bigger budget (US$1.5 m) and a pair of glamorous local stars, proved more popular than Neo’s familiar comedy fare.Jack Neo’s first 2010 release (4 March) missed the lucrative Chinese New Year holidays this year. Being Human Being, starring Mark Lee and Yeo Yann Yann, tells the story of a dishonest slimming centre operator Max (Lee) who disregards well-meant advice, until a number of unhappy events make him change his ways.Predictably, Being Human Being follows Neo’s familiar didactic-comedy formula.
Singapore mainstream cinema thrives mostly on comedy, horror and action, and 2009’s feature output was no exception. For his August release, Jack Neo combined the two genres of horror and comedy in the Chinese-language Where Got Ghost? (Xia dao xiao) which was codirected by Boris Boo. Comprising three separate tales, the film plays upon local superstitions. But it delivers few scares and no surprises - it’s Neo’s usual blend of laughs, tears and moralising.
The Halloween season saw another ghostly tale, the English-language Blue Mansion, directed by Glen Goei.The director returned to filmmaking more than a decade after his successful retro-musical Forever Fever. Blue Mansion, a beautifully photographed US$2m independent production, is set in a 19th Century UNESCO heritage mansion in Penang, Malaysia. The story about a recently deceased pineapple tycoon who returns as a ghost at his own wake and tries to uncover the cause of his death fuses black comedy with a whodunit à la Agatha Christie. It features an experienced Singapore-Malaysian cast of wellknown stage names who deliver competent performances.The down side is that the film’s thin subplots are spread among too many characters. The dialogue-saturated style also reveals the director’s theatre background.
Chai Yee Wei’s action-filled feature debut Blood Ties (Huan hun), based on his eponymous short, is the first film completed under the Singapore Film Commission’s feature film fund. The gory nonlinear narrative involves a murdered policeman whose spirit returns to possess his younger sister to exact vengeance. The film stars veteran Hong Kong performers Kenneth Tsang and Cheng Pei-pei.Singapore independent filmmakers usually bypass the generic straightjacket, exploring more contemplative subjects, often receiving honours at international festivals and competitions. In his original 86-minute experimental feature debut Here, multimedia artist Ho Tzu Nyen examines the idea of inner and outer imprisonment.A man called He Zhiyuan (the director’s Romanised name in Mandarin) strangles his wife and is sent to the bizarre Island Hospital for the criminally insane. There, he and other inmates undergo a “videocure” as part of their treatment. Ho’s sensitivity to visual design and sound is apparent throughout the movie.Here was invited to premiere at the 41st Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes.
Non-fiction films set the tone of Singapore production in 2008 and remained an important component in 2009.This Too Shall Pass, the 61-minute feature documentary by Ang Aik Heng, is a unique visual testimony which pre- miered at the 2009 Singapore International Film Festival (SIFF). Shot in 2006-2007, it records the last days of a terminally ill man and complex circumstances involving his family. The original idea for the cinéma vérité film came from the dying man’s daughters who wanted to have a record of their father’s last wishes on the division of his estate. Although a depressing, sombre look at death, and the preparation for it, Ang manages to approach his uneasy task with exceptional sensitivity.
Kan Lume, the co-director of the courageous and formally accomplished Solos (2007), examines this time the female friendship and rivalry in his Female Games, featuring two naive young Singapore models who venture into neighbouring Malaysia to advance their careers. The film traces their relationship from strangers to friends and enemies, culminating in a vicious catfight. The censors requested cuts in the film’s Sapphic finale, causing it to be withdrawn from the 2009 SIFF programme.
Brother No. 2, directed by Jason Lai, is a thought-provoking documentary feature set in Cambodia about those who suffered under the Khmer Rouge regime. It’s the story of Soy Sen, a prison camp survivor. The film includes an interview with Nuon Chea, Pol Pot’s secondin- command, who is currently awaiting trial by an international tribunal.
A sign that Singapore cinema has arrived on the international film map was the major retrospective of Singapore and Malaysian cinemas at the Centre Pompidou in Paris (18 December 2009 - 1 March 2010). Entitled Singapour, Malaisie: le Cinema!, this extensive programme included 45 significant films made during the last 55 years in the two historically and culturally intertwined countries. It incorporated productions made before their political separation. The retrospective was jointly presented by Cathay Organization, Shaw Organization and the Singapore Film Commission (SFC).
It included Invisible City by Tan Pin-pin, I Not Stupid by Jack Neo, Forever Fever by Glen Goei, Eating Air by Jasmine Ng and Kelvin Tong and Be With Me by Eric Khoo.In Japan, the inaugural Sintok Singapore Film Festival Tokyo (September 5-13) took place with a collection of Singapore shorts and features. In addition, an unprecedented 11 films from Singapore were officially selected to screen at the 2010 International Film Festival Rotterdam.
A key change took place at Singapore’s prominent MediaCorp Raintree Pictures studio. Daniel Yun, Raintree’s managing director since its foundation in 1998, gave up his post and announced the forming of a new production company Homerun Pictures in partnership with local distributor Festive Films. The new company aims to produce “borderless, mid-budget movies” of between US$5m to US$15m that can travel beyond South-east Asia. Under Yun, Raintree produced or co-produced many of the local top-grossing films .These include Jack Neo’s Homerun (2003), a remake of Majid Majidi’s 1997 Children Of Heaven and the inspiration for the name of Yun’s company, The Maid (2005) by Kelvin Tong, Neo’s I Not Stupid Too (2006) and Royston Tan’s 881 (2007). These films, like most Singapore productions, were made for under US$2m.Yun’s position is currently filled by media industry veteran Man Shu Sum, former CEO of Mark Burnett Productions Asia. Man also served as a former director of the Singapore Film Commission and the director of Strategic Relations for the Media Development Authority of Singapore.
Unexpected personnel changes also took place at the Singapore International Film Festival management in 2009. Only one year after being appointed as SIFF programmers, Zhang Wenjie and Wahyuni Hadi, together with board member Jasmine Ng, announced their resignation from the festival, citing fundamental differences with the remaining festival board members Philip Cheah and Geoffrey Malone. The 2010 edition of the SIFF will be run by the academic, critic and poet Kirpal Singh and his team who must face the substantial challenges of keeping the chronically underfunded but well-loved festival alive.
Though she was a Malaysian filmmaker, the unforeseen death of Yasmin Ahmad (1958-2009) sent shockwaves through the Singapore film community as well. The respected director of Rabun, Sepet, Gubra, Mukhsin, Muallaf and Talentime, often tackled her country’s delicate crosscultural relationships. She was a familiar face in Singapore, where her films found an appreciative audience and where they occasionally found a launching pad when social and religious pressure prevented their release in her native Malaysia. At the time of her death, Ahmad was planning to direct a film based on the life story of Singaporean Thaddeus Cheong, a teenage triathlete who died after completing the June 2007 SEA Games time trials. It will now be helmed by Tay Teck Lock, director of Money No Enough (1998) the highest-grossing homegrown movie in Singapore. The film, Go, Thaddeus! is targeted for release in August in celebration of the 2010 Youth Olympic Games in Singapore.
Yvonne Ng Uhde e Jan Uhde