Projection 08 — A short film review0

The night was the crown­ing moment for grad­u­at­ing Film Sound and Video stu­dents, a screen­ing of the grad­u­at­ing projects lov­ingly and devot­edly carved by many aspir­ing and soon to be film-makers. Similar to past screen­ings that have been tra­di­tion for final year stu­dents, Projection 08 should likely stand proud amongst it’s pre­de­ces­sors with its wide range of qual­ity short films. From human dra­mas, to heart­warm­ing tales to inspi­ra­tional and char­ac­ter dri­ven sto­ries, the night indeed brought to audi­ences a wide array of short films to enjoy and appre­ci­ate. Paper Stars, The Investigators and The Road That Follows, explored the depths of the human psy­che. While Paper Stars and The Investigators dealt with the con­trast between the phys­i­cal world and the inner strug­gles of its char­ac­ters, The Road That Follows por­trayed psy­cho­log­i­cal strug­gles of three entirely dif­fer­ent peo­ple in soci­ety. Though mostly of a grim nature, Paper Stars and The Road That Follows added life in each scene with inter­est­ing use of a vari­ety of locales and of color.As men­tioned, the night was not just about inner strug­gles; it was also about tug­ging on the heart­strings of the event’s audi­ences and bring­ing smiles to faces with heart­warm­ing sto­ries. Uncle Downstairs and Sakkarangal took on this man­tle and brought to view­ers sto­ries of friend­ship between unlikely char­ac­ters. Uncle Downstairs did so while includ­ing the use of dia­logue that was both charm­ing and enter­tain­ing, quite so because it is firmly rooted in real life sit­u­a­tions between sim­i­lar per­son­al­i­ties in the real world. Sakkarangal on the other hand, focused on won­der­fully piec­ing together scenes that suc­cess­fully showed the rela­tion­ship between its char­ac­ters in a touch­ing, amus­ing, and most impor­tantly, believ­able way. The rela­tion­ship between char­ac­ters never comes off as being forced or rushed and who could for­get the moments such as those of old lady chas­ing off the young boy or when the young boy rides hap­pily off with his “reclaimed” bicy­cle only to realise that he had mis­tak­enly betrayed his new found friend and his offer­ing of his favourite toy to her as an apol­ogy. It is inter­est­ing to note also, that this was all pulled off with lit­tle use of dia­logue between the two char­ac­ters. The film­mak­ers explained that they con­tin­u­ally bore in mind from start to fin­ish, the fact that this was the telling of a very sim­ple story and that they tried to keep every­thing sim­ple and indeed, the charm of the story lies in its sim­plic­ity in telling a sim­ple story. The other three films that were also shown were Mrs. Postman, Childhood Games and Meng Xiang, all of which were sto­ries that revolved around a sin­gle char­ac­ter. Yet, they could not be more dif­fer­ent from each other. From the get go, the film­mak­ers of Mrs. Postman estab­lish the char­ac­ter as one that is bub­bling with life, warmth and kind­ness to the peo­ple around her with the use of a charm­ingly edited open­ing. The film than takes audi­ences through her fall from grace and even­tual repent­ing. Here, the film­mak­ers suc­ceed in cre­at­ing a char­ac­ter that is eas­ily like­able and one that audi­ences are able to sym­pa­thise with despite her flaws. The end­ing fur­ther adds to this by reveal­ing the character’s moti­va­tions for her actions. Childhood Games stands right on the other end of the spec­trum in rela­tion to its main char­ac­ter. While Mrs. Postman por­trayed a very cheer­ful and upbeat char­ac­ter, Childhood Games revolves around what is likely to be one of the dark­est char­ac­ters of the night. The film deals with the character’s bat­tle with his inner demons as he strug­gles to come to terms with him­self for his past fail­ings. The fact that this char­ac­ter is played by known heart­throb David Aw, makes the char­ac­ter even darker as it shows that phys­i­cal appear­ances can be deceiv­ing and that even the pret­ti­est of faces can have dark and hor­ri­ble secrets. Though the por­trayal of the deed is some­what open ended, view­ers should have no issue under­stand­ing or fig­ur­ing out the heinous doings of the char­ac­ter in his youth due to the way the scene is clev­erly writ­ten and shot. The fact that it only needs to be implied and not shown fully fur­ther proves the effec­tive­ness of the scene. The last but def­i­nitely in no way the least is Meng Xiang. A film that undoubt­edly took top spot of the night as it stands on a class of its own. Meng Xiang, tells the story of a young swim­mer who strug­gles with his pas­sion and dream, hence the title. Despite mak­ing use of a rather tried theme and sub­ject, Meng Xiang tri­umphs in being a film that is well made through­out. From the breath­tak­ing open­ing shot to the over­all look, feel and pace of the film to the believ­able act­ing and writ­ing, Meng Xiang does not at any point feel wrong or out of place. In fact, most of, if not the whole of the film does not even feel like a stu­dent film. Viewers would likely be reminded in view­ing the film, of films that have been made by local pro­fes­sion­als such as Royston Tan. Like the pro­tag­o­nist of the film, it prob­a­bly won’t be too long before the film­mak­ers have their dreams fulfilled.With such qual­ity show­ings with this year’s event, it would cer­tainly be inter­est­ing to see how future grad­u­at­ing films com­pare. Whether or not they will be able to go from strength to strength will be revealed in time to come. Reviewed by Eugene Tan