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