Threshold in 1st SSFA

UPDATE (31st Jan 2010): Threshold won ‘Best Script’ at the 1st Singapore Short Film Awards! More information here and here.

Threshold has been nominated for 3 out of 10 Categories in the 1st Singapore Short Film Awards, namely ‘Best Script’, ‘Best Soundtrack’ and ‘Best Cinematography’.

The SSFA Ceremony will be held on 31st January 2010, screenings of the 33 nominated short films will be at the Substation from the 25th – 31st of January 2010. Threshold will be screened on 30th January, at the 9 pm session. Click here for more information. Full list of nominees below…

Aemaer

a video by Loo Zihan
featuring Georgia Wall

Based on excerpts from ‘Memoirs of the Life and Public Service of Sir Stamford Raffles’ by his widow, Lady Sophia Hull Raffles (b. 5 May 1786, London – d.12 December 1858)

Happy Halloween

Happy Belated Halloween! I never knew how significant the celebrations are in the West till I spent my first Halloween in the US this past weekend. It might be interesting to do a study on why such a macabre festival is so popular here.

Been quiet here of late, mainly because I’ve been avoiding looking back as I go forward, this blog is one of those things I see at this point as a reminder of some of my past in Singapore. However, I am also aware that the only way to bring it back to the present is to continue posting entries, which is what I will attempt to do.

It’s almost the middle of semester and you can feel the atmosphere in school tense up as deadlines loom in the horizon. I’ve faithfully kept a list of films I’ve seen since I arrived in chronological order, I think I’ll begin a movie log like Ash does, the ones I really enjoyed are in bold:

1. Eyes Wide Shut – Kubrick
2. Rosemary’s Baby – Polanski
3. Calendar – Atom Egoyan
4. The Devil Wears Prada – David Frankel
5. Taking Woodstock – Ang Lee
6. Funeral Parade of Roses – Matsumoto
7. Little Children – Todd Field
8. Far Side of the Moon – Robert Lepage
9. Code Unknown – Hanake
10. Woman in the Dunes – Teshigahara
11. Ballad of Narayama – Imamura Shohei
12. La Promesse – Dardeene Brothers
13. The September Issue – Cutler
14. Battle of Algiers – Gillo Pontecorvo
15. Cleo 5 -7 – Agnes Varda
16. Hard and Soft – Godard & Meville
17. Raging Sun, Raging Sky – Julian Hernanadez
18. Mother – Bong Joon-Ho
19. Night and Fog – Renais
20. A Place of One’s Own – Lou Yi An
21. Waiting for Happiness – Abderrahmane Sissako
22. Taxi Zum Klo – Frank Ripploh
23. V for Vendetta – James McTergue
24. Glengarry Glen Ross – James Foley
25. A Single Man – Tom Ford
26. Where the Wild Things Are – Spike Jonze
27. O Fantasma – Joan Pedro Rodriguiez
28. Blue Velvet – David Lynch
29. Antichrist – Lars Von Trier
30. The 5 Obstructions – Lars Von Trier & Jørgen Leth

UNESCO World Day for Audiovisual Heritage

As part of its education and outreach efforts, the Asian Film Archive is, for the first time, launching an online campaign to generate greater awareness of the importance and urgency of saving Asia’s film heritage. In line with UNESCO’s message on World Day for Audiovisual Heritage to save a fading heritage, the Archive anticipates that this series of videos will reach out to the public as well as film communities with the vital message on the need to properly and adequately preserve their filmic works.

In Asia’s tropical climate and environment, films in both print and digital video formats can disintegrate rapidly when not kept properly. Even films in the digital format are not spared given that the longevity of the digital format is still under scrutiny. Through these videos, the Archive hopes to generate the realisation in filmmakers on how urgent it is to archive their works early as they become aware of the fragility of their creative works physical shelf life when stored improperly.

The Sea

“The Sea has a voice, which is very changeable and almost always audible. It is a voice which sounds like a thousand voices, and much has been attributed to it: patience, pain and anger. But what is most impressive about it is its persistence. The sea never sleeps; by day and by night it makes itself heard, throughout years and decades and centuries. In its impetus and its rage it brings to mind the one entity which shares these attirbutes in the same degree; that is, the crowd.

The Sea is an image of stilled humanity; all life flows into it and it contains all life.”

- Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power