Liliosa Hilao and the Martial Law (a scene from River of Exploding Durians)

I first read about Liliosa Hilao a couple of years ago. I cannot really remember how did I actually stumble upon her story then. I was in Tokyo, I was binge-reading the colourful history of Philippines on Wikipedia, and like a labyrinth, it led me to unexpected places, namely the sad story of Liliosa Hilao. The atrocities that happened to her during Martial Law were painful to read, and after I was done, I remained haunted by it.

A few years later, when I finally started making my film RIVER OF EXPLODING DURIANS, I decided to incorporate scenes of a high school class reenacting forgotten ASEAN history, because I was hoping to preserve these in cinema. The truth is, our education system, our history books, just like those in this region, are rather insular and limited, many things weren't allowed for discussion. How then, can we grow if we were kept constantly in a bubble?

One of the scenes in RIVER OF EXPLODING DURIANS is a reenactment of Liliosa Hilao's story. I decided to upload it a few days ago when I heard of the ongoing political situation in Philippines, where Bongbong Marcos, son of Ferninand Marcos, was running for vice president. A subject of great consternation for many, especially those who had to endure Martial Law. Since many were discussing about how the atrocities were being forgotten, I realized I had to share Liliosa's story to the public.

It took 2 days before it caught on, and to my surprise, the feedback and responses since then had been overwhelming. It's something I've never experienced before. What moved me most was to actually hear from the family of Liliosa Hilao. When I was reading about Liliosa Hilao's story all those years ago, I would never expect to do something that could reach her family. Life is full of surprises. I'm very humbled by this experience.

I can't believe these videos of mine are 10-12 years old already...

Instead of working on my script, I ended up procrastinating and checking out my long dormant Youtube page.

I then realized that I've actually been a Youtube user since 2006. That's 10 years. That's a really long time!

I remember a couple of these video-sharing sites coming out around the same time during my final year in Perth, and I was trying a few time. All of them didn't last, except for Youtube.

Many of my really old videos are still there, stuff I shot when I just got to Perth. Learning how to operate a camcorder, teaching myself how to edit with an editing software (I was using Sony Vegas).

I have often wondered whether I should just delete these damn videos since I've already moved on. What I made then were embarrassingly personal (they are video diaries anyway), and not exactly the type of thing I would want people to associate myself. I want people to stumble upon trailers of River of Exploding Durians, Kingyo, Inhalation, Last Fragments of Winter etc. (ahem,  basically the stuff from this playlist) And not my Murdoch University student projects in 2006! Not the little "short films" I did with friends in 2005 and 2004 when I didn't even know what filmmaking was!!!

But then, they are part of the journey, and they lead to what I am now, so I'll just keep them... for the time being.

Most of them are snippets that seem more fitting for Facebook video. But Facebook hasn't existed when I shot them. So there.

These stuff were actually shot and edited in 2004, when I just got to Perth. They were literally the first ever videos I've ever done.

RIP Prince

Friend lost her laptop. Devastated. I told her to believe in humanity by watching Prince’s Super Bowl Halftime Show https://t.co/GxZ0YRaYYA

— Edmund Yeo (@greatswifty) April 23, 2016

Prince died two nights ago.

Since then, I've been posting and retweeting a lot about him on Facebook and Twitter.

I always knew who he was as he grew up, but wasn't really truly exposed to his greatness until I saw that Super Bowl Halftime Show. That was epic and spine-tingling.

Two days later, when a friend lost her Macbook and External Hard Disk, and was entirely distraught, all I could do was to ask her to believe in the goodness of humanity by watching Prince's Super Bowl Halftime Show.

WATCH: Woo Ming Jin's really funny IT'S POSSIBLE YOUR HEART CANNOT BE BROKEN starring fellow filmmakers Tan Chui Mui and Liew Seng Tat

This 2005 short film by Woo Ming Jin was made during the height of the period which some had referred to as the "Malaysian New Wave". It was a time when a tight-knit group of filmmakers in the country started making films together, or helping each other by taking different roles in the production. It was the rise of DV cameras and digital filmmaking, which gave many the chance to make their own films.

The two leads of this short film are actually fellow filmmakers Tan Chui Mui and Liew Seng Tat, who were a year or two before they each made their breakthrough feature debuts, LOVE CONQUERS ALL and FLOWER IN THE POCKET.

Here's the synopsis:

In this black comedy about the disintegration of a love affair, a young woman's (Tan Chui Mui) loneliness in the midst of Kuala Lumpur's metropolitan sprawl triggers a tenuous relationship with a naïve salesman (Liew Seng Tat) who has a tendency to please and over-emote.

Cast and crew's Instagram posts about Isao Yukisada's PIGEON shoot

Sharifah Amani plays Yasmin in PIGEON. Yasmin is named after the late great Yasmin Ahmad.

Well, the awesome thing about social media and smart phones is that many film shoots are now being chronicled and posted about endlessly, relentlessly, by the cast and crew of the film.

It wasn't like that 5-6 years ago, when all you had was one person taking production photos, and then posting them online later. (This blog had served this purpose back then with the earlier shoots that I was involved in)

As for the PIGEON shoot last week, naturally, the cast and crew, and even director Isao Yukisada himself, were posting photos on Facebook and Instagram while the shoot was happening. I don't exactly have everyone's Instagram account (director Yukisada has more of a following on Facebook, which he is more active on, but his Instagram account is growing)

I'm going to be sharing the ones from the director, the main cast members Sharifah Amani, Nas T, Sherry Alhadad, and also TK the line producer/assistant director and Boon the Production Designer. They all have really awesome accounts which are worth following!

I am actually in charge of doing the making-of documentary for this short film, and I'm thinking of incorporating these posts into my documentary. It's something I will have to think more about.

Now, enjoy the posts!

(Sharifah Amani's posts were particularly emotional)

Photos from Isao Yukisada's PIGEON film shoot

From the 29th of March to 5th of April in the past two weeks, I was involved in the film shoot of Isao Yukisada's PIGEON. Greenlight Pictures and I were the Malaysian producers for this project, which is a segment in Tokyo Film Fest's upcoming omnibus project Asian Three-Fold Mirror.

Shot mostly in Penang, with Malaysian and Japanese cast and crew members (... and one Thai sound guy), this 30-minute short film stars Sharifah Amani, Masahiro Tsugawa, Masatoshi Nagase, Sherry Alhadad, Nas T Muammar Zar, Sherry Alhadad.

The photo album for this shoot is going to be constantly updated for the next few days.

PIGEON is a segment of the "Asian Three-Fold Mirror 2016" omnibus film directed by Isao Yukisada.The short film was...

Posted by Greenlight Pictures on Friday, April 8, 2016

Sometimes in life, falling in love is like being bashed in the head by a hammer

本地摇滚队异种《放弃治疗》MV。 林莉幃， 苏熙喆主演。

A music video of a Malaysian rock band, Alienoid.

異種 ‘放棄治療’ Official MV

異種 ‘放棄治療’ Official MV

Posted by 異種 Alienoid on Thursday, March 10, 2016

个人觉得不能错过的大马中文电影

前几天在脸书发的帖， 今天再补充。 希望可以与大家分享。

7部不能错过的大马中文电影。 之前都一直不知道自己的River of Exploding Durians 榴莲忘返也列在名单里。 因为想到被点名的都应该是院线播放了的作品。 谢谢 The Rakyat Post对本片的注意与欣赏。其实马...

Posted by Edmund Yeo on Wednesday, March 2, 2016

7部不能错过的大马中文电影。 之前都一直不知道自己的《榴莲忘返》也列在名单里。 因为想到被点名的都应该是院线播放了的作品。 谢谢人民邮报对本片的注意与欣赏。
其实马来西亚中文电影电影还有很多不能错过的。 例如几位马来西亚新浪潮前辈们的作品。

胡明进的《大象与海》， 《遗情》， 参与康城的《虎厂》， 《The Second Life of Thieves 偷·情》 （他的作品我是当制片以及剪接， 所以推荐比较多啦！）








陈翠梅的《爱征服一切》

刘城达的《口袋里的一朵花》

林丽娟的《理发师的女儿》 （片子没预告片， 我还是分享导演另一部短片好了）

何宇恒的《太阳雨》

李添兴的《美丽的洗衣机》， 《黑夜行路》与《当我们同在一起》， 等等



这些作品都比较文艺， 节奏， 风格与一般的商业电影不一样， 但也值得去看吧。

RIP Jacques Rivette

The important French New Wave director Jacques Rivette passed away yesterday at the age of 87.

Posted by Edmund Yeo on Friday, January 29, 2016

I felt a slight regret that I've never seen more of his films. Yet I remember very well the first. The very first Rivette film I saw would turn out to be his last, AROUND A SMALL MOUNTAIN. Caught this at the Tokyo International Film Festival in 2009. It was a rather peculiar experience. Many of the film is set in a circus, where occasionally the line between reality and fiction is blurred, the theatricality of life is mirrored by the performances in the circus. I was a little confounded.


After that film I wanted to find out more about his previous films, and I was recommended two films that were considered his masterpieces. 3-hour CELINE AND JULIE GO BOATING and the 12 1/2-hour long (!!) OUT 1 (Out 1, noli me tangere). I got hold of these films a few years ago, saw half of CELINE AND JULIE GO BOATING, but didn't start with the latter. Perhaps I was intimidated by the length then, even though that was the particular period of time when I indulged myself in some of the longer films in history, like Bela Tarr's SATANTANGO, Rainer Werner Fassbinder's BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ and a few of Theo Angelopoulos' earlier works. Committing to these long films can be a rather unique experience, like locking yourself in a room to binge-read a novel. You find yourself following not just the plot and characters, but immersing yourself completely in the world that was constructed, its particularly rhythm, and replaying earlier moments of the film in your mind which felt like an eternity ago.

Tony Rayns' open letter to the people of Busan supporting the work of Busan International Film Festival Director Lee Yongkwan

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the problems that the Busan International Film Festival had been facing recently. Basically the government had not been pleased that the festival had been screening a documentary about the sinking of MV Sewol in 2014. Since then, there had been one political attack after another, mostly attempts to force festival director Lee Yongkwan to step down, while the festival had to subject itself to censors.

It's horrifying to see a film festival become a pawn of politics. Film festivals exist as platforms for filmmakers to express themselves artistically, to show different perspectives, different cultures, different voices of different countries of the world, to educate the audiences, to educate the filmmakers. Film festivals exist for many things, therefore it's unsurprising that many directors and other film people have voiced their support for the Busan Film Festival over the last few weeks.

Yesterday, famed writer and festival programmer Tony Rayns wrote an open letter regarding this matter. This letter allows us to contemplate more on the value of film festivals, especially one as historic as Busan Film Fest. How the growth of a festival can affect the economy, culture and others of a particular country.

Tony Rayns writes an open letter to the people of Busan supporting the work of Busan International Film Festival...
Posted by Edmund Yeo on Thursday, January 28, 2016

I'm just gonna copy and paste the entire letter here, because this is necessary.

RIP Alan Rickman

It's tragic that every time I post here, it has something to do with a death.