Embed Instagram Post Code Generator

Wednesday, April 25, 2018

Compiling my own memories from Jan to April 2018


Haven't updated in 4 months since 2018 started? Insane. So many things have happened!

A brief trip in Tokyo during the first week of 2008. (brief appearance on NHK too)




A trip to Europe in February for the Swiss premiere of AQERAT (it was my first time in Switzerland and the experience was awesome).






Also stopped by at Berlin Film Fest before Switzerland for the first time since 2009.


Started March with the Malaysia International Film Fest and the Malaysian premiere of AQERAT, met Ann Hui and Christopher Doyle at the closing ceremony!





A day after the ceremony, and a day or two before my own birthday, I received a "Most Outstanding Filmmaker" award from the Malaysian Chinese Film Association during their annual dinner. I was really just there for the food, and to meet up with film friends, didn't know they were giving out awards. -_-





Ended March with a film shoot in Hokkaido.









Now, April, I gave a talk at the University Malaysia Sarawak last week. And I served as jury member at the Mini Film Festival, which is a short film festival that is run by students and lecturers in UNIMAS for the last 14 years. It's quite inspiring that such a festival can last for so long. It sure lasted longer than... KL International Film Fest (that one lasted for two years).

The crazy thing about the talk in the university was the growing realization that some of my very first short films, like CHICKEN RICE MYSTERY (which I screened to amused audiences) and LOVE SUICIDES, were done 10 years ago.

10 years ago, I didn't even think that I would be talking about my works 10 years later.

But I guess back then I was just trying to finish the damn films without thinking that much, just like what I do now. It's always strange to slow down, and then realize the passing of time. Even this journal, despite my lack of updates, it had really been around since 2004...


at

Sunday, December 31, 2017

Notes from the 22nd International Film Festival of Kerala


The year is about to end, before it does I want to write about the International Film Festival of Kerala, which happened from Dec 8 to Dec 15, 2017 (I was there from Dec 7 to Dec 16, stayed throughout the duration of the festival). AQÉRAT was having its Indian premiere at the festival, as an opening film of its brand new section, Uprooted: Films on Identity & Space, which are mostly films about refugees, displacement and search for identity.

The last time I ever been to India was 2007, so it took ten years to revisit the country. And Trivandrum, the city where the festival was held, was both familiar (reminds me of certain places in Malaysia) and not (the amazing audiences, the passion people have for cinema, it's one of a kind)

Each screening venue were huge auditoriums or theatres with a capacity of more than 800 people, with some of them seemingly meant for thousand over audiences. And having attended many screenings at the festival, it was amazing to see that the screenings were usually full, whether it was a 9am screening, regardless of the film, be it an arthouse film or a local Bollywood blockbuster, or an indie Malayalam film... or even my film. There would always be a long queue. And during Q and A, audiences would ask highly thoughtful and educated questions about the film. It was said that cinema is embedded within the blood of everyone there, from what I saw, I can't argue with that.




Aside from films, I also had a Tokyo Film Fest reunion with director Semih Kaplanoglu! (His new film "Grain" won the Grand Prix at Tokyo, while his previous film Honey was the Golden Bear winner at the Berlin Film Fest in 2010), having been too busy during the Tokyo Film Fest, it was great to finally catch his film in Kerala.


Aside from reunion with old friends, I also got to make new friends!




I even get to meet Alexander Sokurov, one of my heroes! He was there to pick up a Lifetime Achievement Award. Many thanks to the festival for doing a Sokurov retrospective, and a talk session with him.



List the films I saw in the festival.

1) The Insult (dir: Ziad Doueiri) (opening film)
- This is when I experience the Kerala Film Fest crowd response for the very first time. People cheering, whistling and clapping their hands during moments in the film. Triumphant moments, when protagonists finally choose to do something decent, or a withering one-liner comeback, etc. A film about reconciliation of historical pain.

2) Sweet Country (dir: Warwick Thornton)
- For some reason, as I sat through this film, I was reminded of John Hillcoat's The Proposition, which I saw in 2005 at the Luna Theater in Fremantle. I was still studying in Perth, and naturally I was curious about the state of Australian cinema. I made a point to catch a few films in the cinema, but The Proposition left the deepest impression.


3) Angels Wear White (dir: Vivian Qu)
- I was vacationing in China last month when the film had its theatrical release. Although there were three multiplexes close to my hotel in Xiamen, none of them were showing this film. I'm glad to catch it. Teenage actress Wen Qi is exceptional!


4) Grain (dir: Semih Kaplanoglu)
- Semih's famous Yusuf trilogy consisted of the films, "Egg", "Milk" and "Honey". "Grain", however, has nothing to do with the trilogy, it's a scifi meditation on survival.


5) 120 BPM (dir: Robin Campillo)
- That soundtrack of this film by Arnaud Rebotini!!! Normally when one tells you that they "liked the soundtrack" of your film, most probably they have nothing else to say about the film, so I have to dispel it. I do think the film's great, there were moments in it so awesome in its visual flair. But that music just stayed in my head. Wish I had done the protest scenes in River of Exploding Durians with that much verve and energy.


6) Two Persons (dir: Prem Shankar)
- A Malayalam film in competition. Set in one night, a man meets a woman, a nocturnal journey, they discuss about love, life and things that trouble them.


7) Loveless (dir: Andrey Zvyagintsev)
- Yes, it's amazing. And I'm so glad the film had a theatrical release in Malaysia. There's a scene in AQÉRAT which was actually a homage to Zvyagintsev's previous film Leviathan ;)


8) Call Me By Your Name (dir: Luca Guadagnino)
- Loved Guadagnino's "I Am Love", which I had constantly revisited. This one's actually more restrained and subtle, yet it lingers, like its song.


9) Newton (dir: Amit V Masurkar)
- India's submission to the Oscars. A rousing, crowd-pleasing film, which, again, had audiences cheering and clapping hands during certain moments and lines of the film.


10) Let The Sunshine In (dir: Claire Denis)
- My biggest regret was being too shy to say hello to Claire Denis when I saw her at the Jeonju International Film Festival in 2011.


11) A Fantastic Woman (dir: Sebastian Lelio)
- Caught this on the last day of the festival. It was a morning screening, I woke up, I saw the Oscar's shortlist for Best Foreign Film. Among the 9 films, 2 I saw at the festival (Loveless and The Insult), so I needed to make it 3 instead. It was worth it.


12) Wajib (dir: Annemarie Jacir) (Golden Crow Pheasant Award winning film/ closing film)
- Guy in returns to Nazareth from Rome to help his father hand deliver his sister's wedding invitation. Set entirely in one day, father and son road movie, cultural clashes (Palestinians abroad vs Palestinians at home), very universal.



at
Labels:

Thursday, December 07, 2017

Video recap of AQERAT at Tokyo International Film Festival


I am now waiting to fly off to India for the Kerala International Film Festival. I haven't been to India for 10 years, so I'm quite excited. I have to say that my previous trip was a memorable one. It was a month, I went to cities like Bangalore, New Delhi, and then going to places like Varanasi, Bodh Gaya etc. to make my pilgrimage. I was traveling with a Tibetan Rinpoche and a lama, I experienced the country in many different ways, from its beauty to its horrors, with images that seared into my mind until now. 10 years ago, I went to India, and after that, to Chile, I was 23. it was 2007. That was the year I met Woo Ming Jin and started a decade of collaboration, that was a year before I continued my studies in 2008. It cannot believe it's already been 10 years even though it did feel like a lifetime ago.

But before India, I would like to share with you all a video recap painstakingly shot by TK Cheng, Aqérat's line producer, assistant director, production designer (yes, he does many things). Throughout the trip in Tokyo Film Fest he had been carrying his camera taking photos, shooting videos, and this then, is a result of his hard work. Just to help us remember. Where would I be 10 years from now if I were to revisit this video again? Just like how I reminisce about my India and Chile trip from 2007? (The Chilean trip, in fact, was written extensively in this blog, it was the first ever film festival I attended as a producer, and it left a deep impression, footages I shot on my DV camcorder during the Indian trip, however, was used to edit a video essay called FLEETING IMAGES.)



at
Labels: ,

Saturday, December 02, 2017

Memorable November





This journal has existed since 2004, witnessing my days as a university student in Perth with dreams of filmmaking to the actual embarkation of my filmmaking journey. And thus it has witnessed many of my adventures and greatest triumphs, from my student short films in Murdoch during 2006 to directing a Japanese short film, KINGYO, that got into Venice Film Festival in 2009 to writing and producing Woo Ming Jin's TIGER FACTORY that got invited to the Director's Fortnight at Cannes Film Fest in 2010, and then winning the Sonje Award for Best Asian Short Film the same year at Busan Film Fest with another short film, INHALATION.

There are a lot of ups and downs, though I'm sure I don't really write the downs that much.

Exactly a month ago, November 3rd 2017, I received an award for Best Director at the Tokyo International Film Festival, for my latest film AQÉRAT (We, The Dead). My lead actress Daphne Low, who had worked with me since 2013 for the short film FLOATING SUN and then RIVER OF EXPLODING DURIANS, she received the festival's inaugural Tokyo Gemstone Award, which was for rising stars. That was her first ever award as an actress too!

Since then, the outpouring of congratulations, media coverage etc had been overwhelming.























As I stood on the stage then, it was difficult not to be emotional, firstly because I am aware of the film festival's history, and in 30 years of its history, many film greats had been recognized by the film festival, like Edward Yang and his Brighter Summer Day winning the Special Jury Award in 1991, while the Best Director award in the festival had won by filmmakers like Alan Parker, Yim Ho, Reza Mirkarimi, Guy Ritchie, Taylor Hackford, Ruben Ostlund, Alejandro Innaritu, Wu Tian-Ming, Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, the Safdie Brothers... to be mentioned with these greats is unbelievable, especially when I try to remember where I was when I saw the films they won their awards for. (Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris won for 'Little Miss Sunshine', which harkened memories of my Perth days when I would go alone to the Luna Palace Cinemas in Fremantle, which specializes in arthouse films, with 'Little Miss Sunshine' being one of the films I saw then)

Then I thought of everyone who were part of my journey, from past to present, from Perth to Tokyo to back in Malaysia, teachers, mentors, comrades, companions who were involved in all my films, and I realized how fortunate I was that I have always met the right people who had helped me make worthy films that strengthened my belief in what I've been doing (well, there are some not-so-right people too, but they were rare, and they existed only as cautionary tales... or sources of irritation), with friendship that managed to endure. The connection I share with other people through film is one I cherish immensely, since being in love with cinema was such a lonely thing to do while I was growing up.

I remember in 2004 when I had a camcorder and I wanted to make a short film and one person decided to join me in this crazy quest. Here's to you, Justin. For being my best pal in Perth where we talked about films and literature, and for introducing people of J-Lit like Yukio Mishima, Yasunari Kawabata, Akutagawa, Junichiro Tanizaki etc. to me. So glad I got to meet up and celebrate with you a few days after the award ceremony.


So, November ended, and Facebook prompted me to remember what happened in the previous month. (after the Tokyo International Film Festival, I went off to become a surprise jury member at the Digicon6Asia a few days after, a surprise that surprised even myself)


It also reminded me of my 10-year friendship with Lesly the Cinematographer, who had been mentioned quite a few times here, having shot my short films like CHICKEN RICE MYSTERY, LOVE SUICIDES, AFTERNOON RIVER, NOW, FLOATING SUN, LOVE IS A DOG FROM HELL and finally AQERAT.



I'm afraid of making this post too self-congratulatory. Winning the award makes me grateful, and very humbling, but I still have to remember that I have half of a new film waiting for me to finish! And another new project I'm developing a story for!



at
Labels: , ,

Thursday, August 24, 2017

Photos from Kampung Bagan Sungai Lima

When it comes to filmmaking, I always have this yearning to shoot it at places I've never been to before. Every new project, we'll have to go somewhere we've never been to before, I think it coincides with my love for traveling.

The past few weeks I've been visiting Kampung Bagan Sungai Lima (the "fifth river" in Malay), the village on this island are mostly on stilts. A quiet sleepy town, where people travel around only by walking or bicycles, it's almost as if I were transported somewhere else in time.

Location scouting

A post shared by Edmund Yeo (@edmundyeo) on



Ocean of dried shrimps

A post shared by Edmund Yeo (@edmundyeo) on



Waiting for a storm that never came.

A post shared by Edmund Yeo (@edmundyeo) on



A room with a view.

A post shared by Edmund Yeo (@edmundyeo) on



Jetty of Five Rivers

A post shared by Edmund Yeo (@edmundyeo) on


at

Friday, June 30, 2017

Edward Yang. 10 Years later + Brighter Summer Day cast reunion


The great filmmaker Edward Yang passed away exactly 10 years ago.

That was 2007. I remember it most for being the year I got into the film industry. It was that one year between my return from Perth (late 2006) and my subsequent relocation to Tokyo (April Fool 2008).

5 years ago, to mark the 5th anniversary of his passing, I wrote this post about his films.

In that post, I remembered and chronicled my experiences of watching four of his films.

(in this order)

YI YI, THE TERRORIZERS, BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY and A CONFUCIAN CONFUSION.

On the first time I saw YI YI:
In the course of the film's 3-hour running time, I found myself mesmerized and amazed by the novelistic scope of the film, which seemed to cover every single aspect of humanity in the film. It was an absolutely rich experience, that the film would follow the lives of a typical Taiwanese family in the span of a year, beginning with a wedding and ending with a death, and the middle of it, we see the Father reminiscing his past love with an old lover, the Mother crying over the monotonous everyday life she had led, the Daughter undergoing the experience of first love, and the Son, gradually finding his own artistic side, taking photos of people's backs because he wanted to take photos of things that people could not see.

Just like how the film was subtle in its majesty, my life, in a subtle way, was altered after watching the film, I never realized how much it would impact me.

One particular scene that stood out to me had been a masterful sequence which featured a crosscutting between Father speaking to his old lover about their previous relationship while they were both in Japan, and Daughter, during her chaste first date. I stopped and looked at the sequence over and over, years later I would attempt its editing methods on Ming Jin's film WOMAN ON FIRE LOOKS FOR WATER, and a couple of my shorts.

On the first time I saw A BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY:
It was also in 2008 when I saw the 4-hour film A BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY (1991). This would end up as my favourite Edward Yang film of them all. Again, this was a sprawling tale set in the 60s and revolves around a 14 year old boy. The literal Chinese title was "THE MURDER INCIDENT IN GULING STREET", which was an incident that really happened during Edward Yang's teens, when a teenaged boy murdered his girlfriend who happened to also be involved with a teen gang leader. Therefore, knowing Chinese, what exactly happened towards the end of the film wasn't exactly a surprise, but watching it placed in context of the Taiwanese political environment then, and seeing how it affected the many primary characters in the film (the film had a cast of hundreds of amateurs), gradually consuming and eating their souls, the ending was inevitable.

Interestingly, in that post, I wrote about hearing news of A BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY being restored, and how I have yearned to see the film on big screen. That was 2012. I managed to fulfil that dream at Busan Film Festival 2015.

From 2007 to 2010, I only managed to watch 4 of his films.

From 2010 to 2013. I finished the rest of the films from his filmography. MAHJONG, THAT DAY ON THE BEACH, and finally, TAIPEI STORY.

Those old posts I wrote, they are more detailed when it comes to articulating how I felt about the films.

Anyway, in the last few days, as usual, a few film friends on Facebook had been commemorating and celebrating the works of Edward Yang.

I joined in.




And finally, a video from a recent BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY cast reunion. Somehow I can only embed the video and not my post, so I'll include what I wrote on my FB post.

10 years ago Edward Yang passed away. After his death I started watching his films. It was a year after I got back from Perth and a year before I moved to Tokyo.
I started with YI YI, it opened my eyes to the possibilities of cinema. After that, I went to Tokyo, on one afternoon I managed to watch BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY. Life changed. I have watched the film a few times in the past decade, including its restored version on the big screen. Aside from Chang Chen,Elaine Jin and Lawrence Ko, most of the cast members remained in my mind, perpetually frozen in time, looking the way they look in the film.

So it feels so amazing to see this BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY cast reunion!!! Everyone looks so different after 25 years! Especially Cat, seeing him as an adult blows my mind (he's supposed to be in subsequent Edward Yang films but I couldn't recognise him)



at
Labels:

Friday, June 09, 2017

Remembering Auntie Tan

Exactly a week ago, I was taking a plane to Langkawi for a wedding. A few hours before I flew off, I paid my respects to Auntie Tan, a dear family friend who passed away the night before.

While I was flying I wrote a post to remember her.


I am writing this while I’m flying to Langkawi for a wedding. It’s one of those pleasant flights where I’m fortunate enough to have an entire row for myself. Too bad the flight is so short.

Right now, I want to write about a very dear family friend who had just passed away yesterday. All these years, I’ve called her “Auntie Tan”. A great friend of my mom’s, a person our entire family had been very fond of.

This morning before going to the aiport, I went to her house to pay my last respects. That was the least I could do. I was going to miss her funeral for a wedding, it almost felt like a dark cosmic twist.

“Always cheerful, always smiling and always laughing, this is how I will always remember you. Thank you.” I said in my heart as I stood before her coffin.

I first met her when I was 15, it was a trip to Hong Kong. It was a momentous Buddhist occasion. A bone fragment of the Buddha was being venerated and exhibited in public. Coming along with my family were two of my mother’s friends, one was Auntie Jennifer, the other was Auntie Tan. I knew Auntie Jennifer before that because her son is a friend from high school (while her other son would later marry my cousin :D ) our connections are quite deep, apparently.

Some of my memories of Auntie Tan, for me, are of the family trips we took over the years, usually for Buddhist reasons. Hong Kong in 1999, a memorable trip to India in 2007. Or the Buddhist ceremonies she would always attend with mom. I remember too the durians she brought us. They are just simple memories, nothing dramatic, but the way she called my name was rather distinctive too. (sounds more like 宇恒／以恒 than 毅恒)

We learnt that she had cancer a few weeks ago. Since then I have visited her a few times. She remained in good spirits, telling me about a niece of hers that she really wanted me to meet because she's studying performance art. Also reminded me that I can just treat her like my own mom.
There’s not more I can say, but also a memory I have of Auntie Tan. It's a memory of a personal loss.
14th of July, 2012. My grandmother died. We rushed to Ipoh, and spent the entire night chanting mantra. My uncles and aunts, my cousins, we were all awake the whole night to give my grandmother a proper send-off.

One of the most unexplainable things about my grandmother’s passing is that I couldn't seem to cry at all. Despite how close I was to her since I was a child. The tears flowed freely from those around me, yet my eyes were so, so dry. From learning news of her death to the funeral to the burial. It baffled me. Was I so numb?

But my memory is inaccurate, just like the above paragraph. Some brief moments tend to linger longer than others.
On the morning of 15th of July, as the earliest light of the sun lit up the sky, we started making preparations for grandma’s funeral. In the midst of this, the first two people to arrive, who drove more than 2 hours to Ipoh, were Auntie Jennifer and Auntie Tan.
When I saw them standing in front of the gate, looking for my mom, I cried then.

(This photo was taken in 2010, Chinese New Year. We were visiting Auntie Tan's house. She was offering me my most beloved pineapple tarts. In the background was her husband Uncle Tan, who passed away not long after this photo was taken. Rest in peace.)

Auntie Tan, Uncle Tan and Seng Guan
at
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)