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

Center of Chicago

Today is Sept 17th, I’ve officially been in the US of A for a month now. This blog has been somewhat neglected this past month as I attempt to sort out my life here.

In the picture above, you see a picture of a bus stop – this is the stop I wait at every day after school in downtown Chicago for my bus home. It looks mundane enough alright, there’s an Office Depot across the street, a Sears at the corner. That’s what I thought too, nothing too spectacular – but look closely at the address printed above the picture (grabbed from Google Street View), It reads E/W Madison, N/S State. In other words, 0 E/W, 0 N/S. Yes, this is the center of Chicago city.

Chicago as a city is structured so all addresses are a reference to this center. Numbers run bigger as they are further away from the center. Hence addresses can read 123 E Belmont or 123 W Belmont. To the average Chicago resident, this might all seem quite normal, but it was something that took me quite sometime to figure out.

For a long time, I’ve meant to find out where the reference point was from – I knew it had to be somewhere downtown, but always assumed there will be a plaque / sign / monument stating it as the center of the city. Tonight I finally harnessed the power of Google Maps, and voila – found the elusive ‘Ground Zero’.

Serendipitous isn’t it? Right at the corner where I wait for my daily ride home, right under my nose – an unassuming Bus Stop.

Tidbits of daily discoveries, all part of my great American adventure – almost equaled when I decided to post off a package and walked right into a mammoth Post Office, only to discover it was designed by Mies Van Der Rohe – but that’s another blog post altogether.

‘Threshold’ Premiere @ 14th Pusan Int’l Film Festival

‘Threshold’ will be having it’s official world premiere at the 14th Pusan International Film Festival (South Korea) which will be happening from 8th till 16th of October 2009 . It will be screened in the ‘Wide Angle’ section – Asian Short Film Showcase 2, alongside fellow NTU ADM alumni Michael Tay’s ‘Respirator’.

It’s an honor and relief to finally be able to enjoy ‘Threshold’s long overdue premiere in one of Asia’s largest film festival.

Date & Time: Oct 12, 13:00 and Oct 14, 10:00
Venue: MegaBox Haeundae 2

More information on the lineup is available here.