Birthday and other moments in snowy Yubari International Film Festival

Last month, I suddenly made the decision to go to Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival, firstly because I've never been to Yubari before, secondly because the festival coincided with my birthday, and I thought spending my birthday in the snow would be great. I will now post these to help myself remember.

And so I went. Due to my flight getting delayed, I ended up having to take the more convoluted route there. Usually there would be a direct bus to Yubari from Shin-Chitose Airport (close to Sapporo), but the bus only runs until 6pm. After that I had no choice but to take the train, which involved switching lines, and waiting in near empty stations. It was quite atmospheric.

Shin Yubari station. I was happy to see the snow. For a while I thought I was the only person there.

A post shared by Edmund Yeo (@edmundyeo) on Mar 4, 2017 at 3:23am PST

Photos and worm-eating misadventures from a documentary shoot

Ah yes, during the end of February, I was directing four documentary shorts for Channel News Asia, it was a one week shoot and each segment is only 2-3 minutes. The shoot took me to a few different cities and places, time for preparation was pretty short. I believed I was approached to direct them less than a week before the actual shoot. Nevertheless, I had fun.

And here are some photos (and videos) I took during the shoot.

Hello again, journal, let me tell you about my new film "Aqérat"

When was the last time I have actually posted here? Probably nearly 6 months ago, during the Tokyo International Film Festival. The truth is, ever since I figured that I can automatically post my Instagram posts here, I have gotten lazy.

But somehow, my Instagram pictures stopped appearing it, it's quite a bummer, but it means that I have to return and actually WRITE here. To my imaginary audience of one.

In that amount of time since I was gone, I have shot my new feature film, "Aqérat". That was late December. Been working on it since then.

"Aqérat", which means "life after death" in the Rohingyan language, tells the story of a desperate young woman named Hui Ling (played by regular collaborator Daphne Low) who gets involved in human trafficking. It's about the recent Rohingyan migrant crisis that had been happening the past few years, it's also a love story.

Film is shot in the Northern state of Kelantan, which is really close to the Thai-Malaysia border. Before the shoot, I've never been there before, but filmmaking is an act of constant exploration, thus it would have been a waste to not find a way to capture this beautiful, unique place onscreen.

Trusty TK the production designer and art director had once again uploaded production photos of the shoot. Great stuff, he deserved the Dongseo scholarship at last year's Asian Film Academy at the Busan International Film Festival :D

Ryusuke Hamaguchi's 5-hour opus HAPPY HOUR

Ryusuke Hamaguchi's wonderful HAPPY HOUR, like the Iwai Shunji retrospective, was also part of the Japan Now section in the Tokyo International Film Festival.

I need to give props to Japan Now. Ever since the festival started this section last year, with Ando-sensei (yup, my former university professor Kohei Ando-sensei1!!) serving as programming advisor, the section has become one of the main attractions of the festival. The screening of noteworthy (of commercial or critical merit) Japanese films of the past year, complete with Q and A sessions moderated by Ando-sensei, had been great!

I remember having dinner with Ando-sensei in August right after he had served as jury member of the Guanajuato International Film Festival (where he saw Happy Hour for the very first time and awarded it the Best International Feature Narrative award) and we discussed about the trickiness of trying to program this film at the Tokyo International Film Festival due to its length (5 hours!!!) I said to Ando-sensei that if the film would ever show in the festival, I will definitely go and see it.

I'm very glad Ando-sensei managed to program the film, and made the experience even richer by making it an all-nighter screening!

I wrote this a few hours after the screening: