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