21^st Singapore International Film Festival — Short Film Finalists 20080

Keluar Baris (2007) — Boo Junfeng

In the time span of two days, Keluar Baris is about 18 years old boy’s con­tem­pla­tion toward National Service (NS), espe­cially since he just returned home from Spain for a hol­i­day. His father does not under­stand his son’s detest toward NS and failed to pre­pare him men­tally for NS. The boy’s grand­mother pro­vides much of the comic relief, being naggy and mud­dle­headed. Keluar Baris reflects the atti­tudes of the many males in Singapore toward NS. Unlike some of Boo Junfeng’s work, Keluar Baris took on a real­is­tic and unre­fined look, using hand­held cam­er­a­work and jump cuts. During a short inter­view, he men­tioned that the dia­logue between the boy and his friend in the National Stadium were impro­vised. Keluar Baris won for SIFF Best short film for SIFF.

Wet Seasons (2007) — Michael Tay

Lurid as the title sound, Wet sea­sons sur­prised the audi­ence the true nature of film, though there were scenes of a sperm slith­er­ing about. Wet Seasons pro­vides snip­pets of the rela­tion­ship between Michael and some­one unknown, rep­re­sented by a skele­ton. Michael nar­rates his yearn for this skele­ton, despite of the ups and downs. The choice of shoot­ing Wet Seasons as a stop ani­ma­tion adds a sense of quirk­i­ness that I very much enjoyed. The rev­e­la­tion of who the skele­ton is made it touch­ing as you thinks back on Wet Seasons.

Love Me, Love My Dogs (2007) — Lincoln Chia Zhicheng

Love Me, Love My Dogs doc­u­ment a woman’s obses­sion over her dogs. Her life seem­ingly revolves around the dogs, if she shops, she would “shops for dog’s cloth­ing’. Her love of dogs gets unhealthy when she high­lighted that she loves her dogs more than her hus­band and son. Unlike many doc­u­men­taries, Love Me, Love My Dogs is engag­ing for me as she is a very fas­ci­nat­ing sub­ject and arouses my curios­ity toward her. Other than her obses­sion, she seems to be a man that under­went sex-change surgery as her fem­i­nine appear­ance con­trasts her coarse and deep voice and she often refers ‘her’ hus­band as my man.

Para Asia (For Asia) (2007) –

Fran Borgia Though Para Asia left the weak­est impres­sion for me, out of the entire series, it has a very pow­er­ful mes­sage to spread. It was shot in black and white and tells the story of a man bemoaned the lost of his loved one. Unsatisfied with just the mem­o­ries of her in his mind, he wanted to keep mem­o­ries of her as alive as pos­si­ble. He goes to com­pile as strips of film with her in it and string it into a film. He brings it to a the­ater and projects it on the screen. She was mov­ing within the images as though she was still alive. This exem­pli­fies the power of film as it com­forted the sor­row­ful soul of one man.

My Home, My Heaven (2006) — Muhammad EySham Ali

My Home, My Heaven explores the vicious cycle of delin­quency within the Muslim com­mu­nity. Recently dis­charged from boy’s home, a young Malay teenager attempted to turns over a new leaf by work­ing for his father, an elder in a mosque. His father con­tem­plates to rec­on­cile with him as he was too fixed on his nar­row impres­sion of his son. The young Malay found out that his younger brother was steal­ing bike parts. He real­izes that his brother was going down to the same path as him. Toward the end, his brother was going to be caught in the act by his father. Doing what a good brother would do, he took the fall for his brother. This re-affirmed his father’s thoughts and he unques­tion­ably pun­ish him. His effort was for naught when his friend chal­lenged him the idea that his brother would not be repent. My Home, My Heaven was proudly made by a group of Ngee Ann Polytechnic stu­dents from FSV for their final year project and it won them the SIFF Special Achievement Award.

Kallang Roar (2007) — Cheng Ding An

Kallang Roar re-tells the strug­gles of Uncle Choo, an unsung hero in Singapore foot­ball his­tory. Mr. Ganesan, the chair­man of the foot­ball asso­ci­a­tion goes all the way to Johor to coax stub­born Uncle Choo to return and coach Singapore foot­ball national team. The film unfolds the rea­son Uncle Choo was hes­i­tated to return and coach. Ding An effec­tively used only two loca­tions through­out the film: A gran­ite table in a gar­den and a locker room.  Kallang Roar would be my favorite film among the SIFF finalists’

film series. I enjoyed watch­ing Mr. Ganesan and Uncle Choo bick­er­ing about the cur­rent game that was been played as though they were hus­band and wife. Uncle Choo brushed off Mr. Ganesan and dished out bits of wis­dom, using kueh lapis as a metaphor. The style of the dia­logue seems some­what con­ven­tional and long-winded at times. It con­sid­er­ably did well enough as a short film that the direc­tor is planned to turn it into a fea­ture film.

 

Silent Girls (2007) — Ric Aw

Drawing inspi­ra­tion from the Infamous Tammy sex video, Ric Aw made a film that fol­lows the jour­ney of two teenagers girls in search of love. However, their gullible out­look of love fails them. The open­ing scene shows a girl to ask her friend how to make a love bite demon­strate just how gullible these girls are. The girl goes to arrange to meet and sleep with an older man, whom she chat online. On the other hand, her friend was video-tapped by her boyfriend of her strip­ping. She was reluc­tant ini­tially but let down her guard when he mut­tered the three mag­i­cal words to her: I love you. When they have sex together, the set designed to be pure in white and visu­ally dreamy empha­siz­ing her friend’s fan­ta­sized idea of sex. The video of her strip­ping inevitably leaks into the Internet. When she con­fronted him, only to for­gives him imme­di­ately when he used the same trick she fallen for the last time. The film does offer hope when she ques­tions what is love, prov­ing that she did learned this inci­dent. I found Silent Girls hard to shal­lows as such accounts does exist in Singapore, despite the title of Silent Girls implied such accounts are hush-hush in con­ser­v­a­tive Singapore.

Reviewed By Marilyn Wong

Photos are from http://www.filmfest.org.sg/singapore-shorts-finalists.php