Considering the restrictions of a city-state with limited financial resources and audience base, 2011 brought some pleasant surprises. The most noticeable was Eric Khoo’s Tatsumi, an animated tribute to the life and work of the well known Japanese manga artist Yoshihiro Tatsumi, creator of the gekiga (dramatic pictures) style of alternative comics for adults. Artistically, his basic 2-D animation was a drastic improvement over films like Zodiac: The Race Begins (2006) and Legend of the Sea (2007), Singapore’s first attempts at making feature-length animated films.
Khoo’s film became one of his successes. Tatsumi was invited to the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes and was chosen to represent Singapore at the US Academy Awards in 2012. The film takes inspiration from Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s autobiographical work A Drifting Life and five of his short stories. The result is a confluence of Khoo and Tatsumi’s aesthetic perspectives. Khoo started his career as a comic artist and both he and Tatsumi share a propensity to explore the dark aspects of life and human misery. The Japanese narration is provided by Tatsumi himself. The animation work was contracted to Indonesia, and that helped to keep the budget at about S$1m (US$800,000).
Khoo’s international succès d’estime was complemented on the home front by the encouraging box-office success of several commercially oriented local productions. For the crucial Chinese New Year season, the state-supported Raintree Pictures joined forces with filmmaker Kelvin Tong’s Boku Films to make It’s a Great, Great World (Tua Seh Kai). Directed by Tong, the film presents a nostalgic glance back at the Great World, one of Singapore’s amusement parks that saw its heyday in the 1950s and 1960s. Singaporeans remember with nostalgia its cabaret shows, cinemas, rides and food. They flocked to see the reflection of simpler days on the screen. This lifted the movie into the top 25 of the local box-office charts, and it took S$2.4m (US$1.9m). Although this recreation of the past seems somewhat contrived and the sets look cheap, the film uses Chinese dialects commonly spoken back then. This is a pleasant surprise, as the use of dialects in films released in Singapore has usually been restricted since the Speak Mandarin Campaign was launched in 1979. Hopefully, the media authorities have become more accommodating to the way Singaporeans really speak (or spoke), instead of confining the verbal communication on the screen to the officially promoted Mandarin.
It’s a Great, Great World was not the only local movie that inspired Singaporeans to buy tickets. The episodic The Ghosts Must Be Crazy blends the popular genres of horror and comedy. A part called The Day Off, directed by Boris Boo, is set in an army training camp. It recounts the strange things that happen to two would-be pranksters on reservist training. The Ghost Bride is about a man who seeks the help of the spirit world to make his fortune. The filmmakers try to squeeze, with limited inspiration, a few extra drops of sap from the episodes of Where Got Ghost, the “hor-medy” directed by Boris Boo and Jack Neo in 2009. Despite its shortcomings, audiences liked the movie and it grossed S$1.43m (US$1.13m) at the local box-office.
Similarly, Lee Thean-jeen’s Homecoming, the first production of Homerun Asia, owned by former Raintree Pictures’ CEO Daniel Yun, crossed the million dollar mark, taking S$1.38 (US$1.1m). This Chinese New Year-release comedy, co-produced with Singapore filmmaker-star Jack Neo (of J-Team Productions) and Malaysia’s Double Vision, revolves around characters who find that the way home to the annual family reunion dinner is far from smooth. Among them is Neo in a cross-dressing role as Karen, a middle-aged mother caught in a madcap journey as she travels with her son from Singapore to Malaysia for the family reunion.
It seems the army and ghosts were in vogue in 2011, as proved by Gilbert Chan’s 23:59, a horror feature produced by Eric Khoo’s Gorylah Pictures and Clover Films. Set on a deserted island’s military training camp, it found inspiration in the real-life spooky stories conscripts tell one another at night to pass the collective boredom and anxiety. The unconvincing plot of 23:59 involves the spirit of a woman who, as the rumour goes, died on the island one minute before midnight and comes back to seek revenge on the young soldiers. When a recruit who believes he will be the next victim is found dead, his buddy decides to investigate. Released in early November, it managed to take in S$1.5m (US$1.2m) by the end of the year, placing itself behind the front-runner It’s a Great, Great World. Another surprise hit was Michelle Chong’s Already Famous. First-time director Chong also plays the main role of a small-town Malaysian girl whose dream is to become a big star in Singapore. The film opened on December the first. By the end of the month, it had joined the ranks of the top home-grown movies of the year, having made S$1.26m (US$1m).
The increased interest in local productions has not escaped local critics, one of who exclaimed, “It finally happened. In 2011, Singaporean audiences showed up in droves to support our local auteurs.” Although Hollywood and Hong Kong blockbusters still rule Singapore’s screens, the public’s growing awareness of local production is welcome. Unfortunately, Khoo’s auteurist Tatsumi, undoubtedly the best film of 2011, was virtually ignored by the mainstream audience, taking in only about S$12,600 (US$10,000) in ticket sales.
It is worth noting that the neighbouring Malaysia offers Singaporean filmmakers not only the natural landscapes Singapore lacks, but also cheaper labour and growing professional know-how. Some Singaporeans can even communicate in Bahasa Malaysia. So the number of co-productions between Singapore and its closest neighbour, such as Homecoming and 23:59, has been increasing. This co-operation draws on the two countries’ common cultural and historical roots. At present, Singapore and Malaysia are working on a co-production treaty which is expected to be ready in 2012.
Singapore productions appeared to be divided along the lines of ‘mainstream’ and ‘arthouse’ filmmaking. This is a familiar cultural phenomenon worldwide – only in Singapore such divide seems to be particularly trenchant. Whereas the mainstream movies tended to be grounded in local sensibilities, staying with the tried and true genres of horror and comedy, alternative films told their stories through drama, documentaries and animation, receiving praise and viewers’ appreciation more abroad than at home.
This separation is also a reflection of the local audiences’ own preferences. To improve this state of affairs would require dedicated repertory cinemas with quality programming and vigorous promotion. The opposite direction was taken. The centrally located Sinema Old School dedicated to local and non-mainstream films closed its doors in December 2011 after only four years. The repertory programming outlets of the two main Singapore commercial operators Cinema Europa (Golden Village) and The Picturehouse (Cathay) have quietly downgraded their profile, advertising and programming policy.
Traditionally a most important source of the country’s quality programming and diversity, the Singapore International Film Festival (SIFF) moved its 24th edition to September 2011, after a lacklustre 2010 and changes in key personnel. Hamish Brown and Quek Kon Hui joined festival founder Geoff Malone as new festival directors. 144 features were shown (compared to 87 in 2010). The film line-up was generally appreciated. But its organisation, riddled with glitches, was severely criticized in the media as well as privately.
One of the most popular sections at the 24th SIFF was the Singapore Panorama. Of the nine titles featured, eight were sold out. Among them were Helmi Ali and Razin Ramzi’s Ignore All Detour Signs, a music documentary that chronicles the struggles of local band I Am David Sparkle in overcoming obstacles, financial and otherwise, to perform at the 2009 South by Southwest Music Festival in Texas.
Set further afield is Tan Siok Siok’s Twittamentary, an innovative documentary made in the United States about the social media and microblogging platform Twitter and it’s impact on the lives of its users. It is also by way of being a Twitter film experiment as the stories, characters and production crew were all sourced via Twitter, and even the narrative was shaped by Twitter feedback at beta screenings.
Where the Road Meets the Sun is another independent film made in the United States. Yong Mun Chee’s directorial debut is set in Los Angeles, California, where the filmmaker is presently based. The story introduces the intersecting lives of four men from different backgrounds and cultures – an uprooted New Yorker, a Japanese gangster, a Mexican illegal worker, a British playboy – all staying at a run-down hotel.
Meanwhile a new venture, the Southeast Asian Film Festival (SEAFF), curated and organised by Philip Cheah and Teo Swee Leng, former directors of the SIFF, was established in 2011 under the auspices of the Singapore Art Museum (SAM). Focused on Singapore and Southeast Asia, and preferring quality over quantity, the second SEAFF (2 to 31 March 2012), featured 20 challenging works by Southeast Asia’s key and rising filmmakers.
There was also welcome news for the Singapore film industry when the Media Development Authority (MDA) announced the streamlining of funding programmes from the existing 46 to just 5. The new funding schemes cover development assistance, production, marketing, talent support and enterprise development and will apply to all media sectors. Particularly significant is the government’s decision to switch from the practice of co-investment to the awarding of grants. It is hoped this new arrangement will allow for better content development and help companies fully own their work. Consequently, any profit made need not be shared with the MDA.
2012, the Year of the Dragon, opened with two feature releases. Jack Neo’s We Not Naughty (Hai zi bu huai), a Singapore-Malaysian comedy-drama about two good friends involved in problems at school, at home and with the police. The plot is structured according to the time-proven ‘Neo formula’: a blend of melodrama, comedy and didacticism, decried by critics but still successful at the box-office. It made S$2m (US$1.6) in four weeks since its release on 19 January. The other premiere, Dance Dance Dragon (Long zhong wu), directed by Kat Goh and produced by Kelvin Tong’s Boku Films with Raintree Pictures, is a situational family comedy about a grandmother’s wish to get a grandchild. Dance took S$1.1m (US$875,000) in 24 days.
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(February 2012 exchange rate:1 S$ = 0.794527 US$)
Yvonne Ng Uhde and Jan Uhde