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Singapore FILM IN SINGAPORE: THE RECONSTRUCTION OF A FILM INDUSTRYStudio Production of Film in SingaporeThe first Singapore film, The Immigrant (Xin Ke, 1926) was produced by Liu Peh Jing, who wanted to make films for the Chinese immigrant population in Singapore. Two years before, Runme Shaw arrived in Singapore from Shanghai to set up the Hai Seng Company, which later became the Shaw Organisation, one of the two exhibition giants in Singapore. The first Malay feature film, Laila Majnun (1933), was produced in Singapore by the Montilal Chemical Company of Bombay and directed by B.S. Rajhans. The success of this film convinced the Shaw Brothers to enter Malay film production in 1940 to cater to the expanding markets in Malaya and Indonesia. Their first film was Pearl (Mutiara, 1940), a comedy about a fisherman who finds a giant pearl. Malay Film Productions Limited, under the Shaw Brothers, went on to make over 300 Malay-language films. Their greatest discovery was singer, actor, director, writer, composer, P. Ramlee, who first appeared in films in the late 1940s and became the company's first Malay director with Penarik Becak (The Trishaw Puller, 1955), and who scored smash-hit after smash-hit at the box office and at the regional film festivals in Asia in the 1950s and 1960s. The second exhibition giant, Cathay Organisation, was set up by Loke Wan Tho in 1935. Cathay, too, went into production with their company, Cathay Keris, in 1953. Their discovery was Hussein Haniff, considered by critics to be a serious artistic director compared to P. Ramlee's more populist leanings. Along with Cathay and Shaw, Kong Ngee Company Ltd. was the other important film studio. In 1955, it produced its first film, Dragonet, and went on to produce dozens of Teochew opera films and Hokkien dialect movies. But by 1963, Kong Ngee's problems with production and management forced it to close its studios. Labour union problems, the introduction of TV and then colour film, also reduced profits and market size for Shaw and Cathay. The Shaw Brothers studio closed in 1967 while the Cathay-Keris studio shut down in 1972. Singapore's Chinese Movie Productions in Hong Kong (1955-1970) While Cathay Keris Productions was based in Singapore, and between 1953 and 1972 produced 115 Malay language films, its sister company, Motion Picture and General Investment Company Ltd. (MP & GI), had its studios based in Hong Kong and produced 200 Chinese language films between 1955 and 1970. These Singapore-produced but Hong Kong-made films are now an indelible part of Hong Kong film history. But Cathay's gradual entry into film production had begun in 1949, when it began to distribute Hong Kong movies in Singapore, films made by Yung Hwa Motion Pictures Industries Limited. Owned by Lee Tsu Yung, the Yung Hwa company had long courted Cathay's Chairman, Loke Wan Tho, to sit on its board. In 1952, Singapore’s Loke made loans to Hong Kong’s Lee in return for an exclusive six-picture distribution deal, that would allow Singapore produced (and made) films to be distributed in Hong Kong. The Singapore produced films were well received by Hongkong audiences, for they continued for a long time, won awards and created stars. When the Yung Hwa Company’s fortunes continued its downward spiral in 1955, Cathay stepped in to manage the Hong Kong company and recover its outstanding loan. In 1956, the Cathay subsidiary, Motion Picture and General Investment Company Ltd. (MP & GI) was registered in Hong Kong. With this step, Cathay had its own Chinese film empire and was now competing with the Shaw Organisation on all fronts: exhibition, distribution, and production of both Malay and Chinese films. Almost immediately, MP & GI had its first hit, Evan Yang's Mambo Girl (1956), which tapped into the Latin craze of that time and featured Grace Chang, a young actress who sang and danced. That began MP & GI's stable of leading ladies including Lin Dai, Lin Tsui, Li Mei, and Yeh Fung. The Hong Kong based company made both Mandarin and Cantonese films and its spool of hits continued to roll: Yeh Fung in Sister Long Legs (1960), Lin Tsui in Beware of Pickpockets (1957), and Lin Dai in The More the Merrier (1959). The studio was churning out between 12 and 14 films annually, consisting of romantic films, comedies, musicals, suspense dramas, biopics, and children's films. But Loke, based in Singapore, was not just interested in box-office success for his Hong Kong movies. He also cherished critical acclaim. That came in 1957 when Lin Dai won the Best Actress Award for Golden Lotus at the 4th Asian Film Festival. MP & GI was on a roll when it discovered its next big star, Yu Ming, who took the Best Actress award in 1959 and 1960 for Her Tender Heart and All in the Family, respectively. Strain within the company started to show in 1961. The intense competition caused disagreements between the Singapore and Hong Kong managers on issues such as budget control and distribution. In 1964, an adventurous era of Singapore film production ended when Loke Wan Tho was killed in an air crash. MP & GI was taken over by Choo Kok Leong, Loke's brother in-law, who renamed the company Cathay Organisation (Hong Kong) Ltd. As martial arts movies started taking off in the late 60s, Cathay found it hard to shift its focus from drama and comedy to action. Cathay’s Hong Kong studio finally closed in 1970 when Choo decided to focus the company's business on distribution. The 1970s – The Decade of the B-Movie When Cathay-Keris closed its Singapore film studio in 1972, 5 years after the Shaw Brothers had closed their Singapore studio, the golden age of the Singapore Malay film industry also ended. But its impact on popular culture did not, and the passion for film led to a new age of independents. Almost immediately after the Cathay-Keris studio closed, the independents began to make films. Among the first to begin making films was director Tony Yeow. Tony Yeow was inspired by the popularity of Hong Kong star Bruce Lee, and made Ring of Fury (1973), the same year in which Bruce Lee died. Ring of Fury starred Peter Chong, a real karate black belt champion. Of this film Yeow said, "We had an entire cast of real martial artistes, sometimes we would just let the camera run during the fight scenes because they were so good." Ironically, the film was banned. Yeow believes that the story about a debtor chased by moneylenders had a secret-society-gangster element that resulted in disapproval by the censors. Because the censors do not normally disclose their reasons for banning a film, conjecture about reasons cannot be officially confirmed. The film was finally shown on TV in Singapore in 1997. Most of the new independents could not sustain numerous productions but some made a mark. If you flip through several B-movie encyclopedias, you will find a cult film called Cleopatra Wong (1977). Directed by George Richardson, the film was the brainchild of Singapore producer Sunny Lim, who created a fusion of martial-arts and spy movies. In a way, Lim, who was a former wrestling promoter, was Singapore's answer to Roger Corman. Cleopatra Wong starred Marie Lee as an Interpol agent who destroys a counterfeiting ring. The film spoofed the spy movies of that time with campy B-movie bravado. The set pieces included Cleopatra Wong battling a group of Indian wrestlers, storming into a hilltop convent, and fighting hoods dressed as nuns. But like Yeow, Lim also took off on the Bruce Lee craze, giving it a special twist. He fused the influence of Bruce Lee’s Kung Fu films with the bionic gadgetry of the Six Million Dollar Man TV series. What emerged were Bionic Boy (1976) and Dynamite Johnson (1979). Both starred 11-year old Johnson Yap, who played a child agent with bionic strength and who actually performed his own stunts. While Lim’s three films were successful at the box office (even in Philippines and Malaysia where they were also released), Lim still found it hard to raise funds and became increasingly frustrated at dealing with Singapore's film censors and their inscrutable ways. Sunny Lim left Singapore and continued his film career in Malaysia where he made 16 more films. For Mr. Lim Jit Sun of Chong Gay Productions, being an independent producer was not enough; he had a dream of rebuilding a film studio. As most of the Singapore film talent had migrated to Malaysia with the closure of the Cathay-Keris Studio in 1972, Lim hired 10 full-time actors from the local theatre scene. He then trained them using talent brought in from Hong Kong. Lim succeeded in making three films, no prints of which survive today. The first two, Master of the House and Family of Degeneration, used an entire 20 member crew from Hong Kong comprising director and film technicians. But his third and final film, Two Sides of the Bridge (1976), was a fully fledged local production. About the disparity between the rural and urban populace, the film reflected the aspirations of the young Chinese-educated of that time. Directed and scripted by Malaysian-born Chinese Mr. Lim Ann (aka Lim Meng Chew), who was a Singapore permanent resident then, the film details the Singapore and Malaysia divide well, by contrasting the simpler, less hectic, rural life of Malaysians in a fishing village across the Causeway from Singapore, with their more business-minded, urbanised neighbours in Singapore itself (the Causeway to Singapore being the bridge in the film). But the poor box-office receipts for his films, and Lim Jit Sun's untimely death led to the closure of his film production company. But the 70s was important for one more film – American director Peter Bogdanovich's much-overlooked St. Jack (1979).Based on the Paul Theroux novel and set during the Vietnam War, St. Jack is about a good-hearted American pimp, Jack (played by Ben Gazzara), who takes care of U.S. soldiers staying in Singapore for their R & R (rest and recreation). The pimp finds himself tangling firstly with local Singapore triads and then the CIA. The film has been criticised by English critics in Time Out film guide for the way in which Bogdanovich "turns the character into a sentimental paragon of virtue and softens the hard profile of America’s Far East imperialism, ending up with a movie that reeks of the hollow travelogue sincerity it purports to despise." Time Out may be right about "America’s Far East imperialism," but they fail to take into account the Singapore censor, who banned the film as Bogdanovich filmed a script different from the one he submitted. For many Singaporeans, starved of a realist film industry that concentrated on Singapore locations and social mores, the film succeeds in capturing many aspects of Singapore of that era. St. Jack thus functions as Singapore's social and visual heritage. As the Sunny Lim films were action-based, locations were often foreign and exotic and failed to capture local Singapore colour substantially. On the other hand St. Jack recorded Singapore's infamous Bugis Street, where transexuals and whores plied their trade, and went the distance in capturing both lower-class Chinatown and uptown Orchard Road. (Interestingly, the film's cinematographer was none other than Robby Muller, noted for his excellent camera work in the films of Wim Wenders.) For Singaporeans, all this is particularly significant as most of these areas and buildings, particularly in Bugis Street and lower class Chinatown, have since been torn down and re-developed. Meanwhile, a young Eric Khoo (later to emerge as one of the key directors in the renaissance of Singapore film in the 1990s) was on the set of St. Jack, when his father sponsored his hotel, the Goodwood Park, as a location for the film. But if Time Out finds the film tame, in Singapore St. Jack was banned. When the censors realised that Bogdanovich submitted a different script from the one from which he actually shot, the film could not be shown in Singapore. St. Jack finally premiered here in 1997 at the 10th Singapore International Film Festival. It was an emotional moment for the Singaporean cast members and crew who were watching it for the first time. Overall, despite the enthusiasm for a film industry, the 1970s only produced a total of fewer than 10 feature films, which was a steep drop in production considering that the golden age produced more than 24 films per year. 1980s – Encouraging Investment: The Government's New-Found Interest in Film In the early 80s, Chinese TV drama received a boost when Hong Kong expertise was recruited. This led to new highs in audience ratings when Singapore Chinese TV serials started having the same glamour and excitement as Hong Kong TV serials. In 1988, the Singapore authorities renewed their interest in having a film industry. This was in large part due to the talent emigrating out of Hong Kong in anticipation of the colony's hand-over to China in 1997. To woo investors, the Economic Development Board (EDB) drew up a list of incentives for film production and related activities. Singapore hoped to benefit from the departing talent pool. The first task was rebuilding its studios and this was accomplished when Deacon Chiu, chairman of Hong Kong's Asia Television, invested S$70 million to build a Chinese cultural village with three small film studios within it. The Tang Dynasty Village theme park was finally opened in 1992 and while its studio was initially used by a Hong Kong production, it has not proven to be a popular site. There was also talk that the Italian film company, Cecchi Gori, would build a S$120 million film studio in Singapore, but by the end of the 80s they had shelved the project. A Key Platform of the 1980s – The Singapore International Film Festival Perhaps this decade would be best remembered for the founding of the Singapore International Film Festival in 1987 by actor, set-designer, and architect, Geoff Malone. While Singapore’s comparatively small population of three million people had always limited its potential as a market for indigenous Singapore film, Malone recognised that Singapore did have an avid movie-going population. In the mid 1980s, at least 20 million cinema tickets were sold each year in Singapore, which means a per capita admission ratio of one to seven (an exceptionally high figure by comparison with international attendance figures) and box office sales of over S$100 million. With its twin objectives of enhancing film appreciation and stimulating the interest in local filmmaking, the Singapore International Film Festival was born. It began with a modest program of 50 films. Today, it screens over 350 films from over 40 countries. The Festival is especially noted internationally for its dedicated focus on Asian cinema – at least half the films screened are from Asia. Its annual audience of over 50,000 viewers have been gradually exposed to the history of Asian cinema through its programs of retrospectives, and to new trends in Asian film, with its Silver Screen Awards for the best achievements in Asian cinema (the categories include an award for Best Young Cinema). While the festival was the only Southeast Asian international film festival when it was founded in 1987, there are now four other Southeast Asian international film festivals. The 1990s - Singapore Films are being made again In 1990, the Economic Development Board (EDB) set up a Creative Services Unit to nurture an environment for creative businesses. The Unit attracted Atlab, a film processing laboratory, to open in Singapore. This in turn encouraged the expansion and capitalisation of production houses to establish Singapore as a post-production centre. Finally, in 1993 a diploma course in film production was introduced in the Ngee Ann Polytechnic. The establishment of production and post production facilities in Singapore soon had concrete results. The Last Blood, the first Hong Kong movie to be shot entirely in Singapore, was released in 1990. With a S$10 million budget and starring three Hong Kong stars - Andy Lau, Alan Tam and Eric Tsang - this was the first production by a Hong Kong company that had based itself in Singapore. Two other Hong Kong productions followed: All's Well That Ends Well and Insanity. In 1991, Medium Rare, the first Singapore English-language feature was made. Dogged by production problems, the film was based on the story of a real-life Singapore murderer, Adrian Lim. However, as in the early history of Singapore cinema, the talent employed in making this film was mainly foreign. The director was British while the two main leads were American. However, the script-writers and producer were Singaporean. The film failed at the box office: While it cost S$1.5 million, it only brought in S$130,000. Critically, the film is regarded as less than successful, particularly in its inability to fully confront the subject matter - the gruesome nature of the murders, a constraint imposed by censorship considerations. Its producer, Errol Pang, later lamented that the film would have benefited from the new rating system, if the new rating system had been successfully introduced. The government introduced a rating system in July 1991 with a "Restricted" rating, for films with adult themes, limited to those over 18 years old. But a public outcry forced the censors to change the "Restricted" to "Restricted (Artistic)" or R(A) rating 2 months later, which only allowed these same films to be seen by those 21 years and above. The outcry arose as a result of a deluge of sexploitation films which were released when the rating was first introduced. A survey by the Straits Times showed that 46 out of 55 theatres then were showing R-rated films at this time. Still, the new rating system was a turning point for the Singapore International Film Festival. Prior to that, the festival had to withdraw several award-winning films whose directors, producers, or distributors refused to allow cuts. The rating system allowed the festival to screen most of its program without cuts and helped to build its credibility with distributors and among international critical circles. Emergence of New Singaporean Directors in the 1990s In 1991, the Singapore International Film Festival organised its first competition for Best Singapore Short Film. Its discovery was Eric Khoo, who won the prize with August, a sombre twist on a tale of adultery told from a dog's point of view. Khoo went on to make Carcass (1992), a 50-minute video which had a film-within-film structure, about a business executive whose life was parallelled by the life of a lowly butcher. In 1994, Khoo's short film Pain was banned for its sado-masochistic tale and graphic scenes. Yet the jury awarded it the Best Short Film Prize, which included film stock and sponsored post-production facilities. That gave Khoo the opportunity to make Mee Pok Man (1995), his debut feature. Using the same lead actor as in Carcass (Joe Ng), the films shared many features, with the former serving as the blueprint for the latter. Considering that the film was about a noodle seller (mee pok is a flat noodle) who falls in love with a prostitute, it was immensely popular on the international film festival circuit, and was invited to over 30 festivals. Mee Pok Man was essentially the first realist feature made in Singapore since the golden age. For that reason, it was also especially interesting to Singaporeans who were curious about the working class portrayed on the big screen. 1995 also saw the production of Bugis Street, a second attempt at portraying the sleaze of this infamous tourist spot. This time, it was by Hong Kong director, Yonfan, and since the street had already been redeveloped in the early 80s, the movie tried to reinvent the nostalgia of the venue's peak in the 60s and 70s. In 1996, the Cathay Organisation, which had largely confined its activities to film distribution, re-entered the film production business. Their film was Ong Keng Sen's Army Daze, based on a popular comedy by Michael Chiang, about the life of army recruits. The film was the first box office success in this new era, with takings of S$1.6 million. Based on the lives of young army recruits, the film started the trend for the use of "Singlish," a local slang which fuses Chinese and Malay phrases with the English language. A lot of the comedy and appeal of the film to the general public, lay in their hearing how they normally spoke, recreated on screen. But Eric Khoo's coup de grace came with 12 Storeys (1997), which was selected for the Cannes International Film Festival that same year. The film's social content, about the alienated lives of public housing dwellers, was a subtle criticism of sexual repression and displaced sexual desire. The central story (there are three in total) has a model Singaporean, a school teacher, bent on curbing the liberal lifestyle of his younger sister, the twist being that his attempts to control her have an unconscious incestuous motive. The film did not ignite controversy, but its official selection for Cannes fuelled an unprecedented hysteria for Singapore moviemaking. That year also produced two other films, Lim Suat Yen's The Road Less Travelled and Hugo Ng's God Or Dog, the latter being a second film version of the crimes of murderer Adrian Lim. A Singapore producer, Andrew Yap, also invested in Australian director Bruce Beresford's Paradise Road, which was partially shot here. And finally, the National Arts Council officially acknowledged film as an art form worthy of funding. The rapid swirl of events continued spinning. In 1998, the Singapore Film Commission was inaugurated, with its mission to fund and support Singapore film. Up to this point, there had not been any government funding of films available. Besides feature film funding, the Commission also allowed for co-productions, shorts, script development, and even for educational funding, which included studies at an overseas film school. Each year, a total of four features can be funded up to a sum of S$250,000 per film. A fund for a total of 40 shorts annually has also been provided. So far, however, only one feature has been funded. There were many new releases in 1998, and these included films such as Teenage Textbook, Lucky Number, and Tiger's Whip. But two films stood out in terms of commercial success. They were Money No Enough and Forever Fever. If Khoo's 12 Storeys achieved critical acclaim, then Jack Neo, a well-known TV comedian (who also acted in 12 Storeys) was responsible for the box-office success of Singapore film. Neo scripted and acted in Money No Enough, and its takings of S$5.8 million resulted in it becoming the second biggest grossing film in Singapore after Titanic. Money No Enough gave the blueprint for box office success (or that's what many producers thought) - comedy, usage of dialect (previously forbidden in the media during the years when Singapore was promoting the usage of Mandarin), and TV stars. The film was also a hit as it satirised dominant features of Singaporean life, such as Singapore’s obsession with money, how government policies have a taxing effect on people’s income, and the lengths to which Singaporeans go to get a good deal. Many film productions, for example, Lucky Number and Where Got Problem, were quickly assembled to catch the fad before it faded. But Neo had honed his satirical wit on TV for many years. He was a household name and he struck the jugular of the Singapore obsession when he scrutinised the country's money culture. Meanwhile, Goei's Forever Fever made a pile by having its world rights picked up by Miramax films. The film, which shows the heyday of disco in Singapore, reminisces Saturday Night Fever and features many of those hit songs covered by Singapore acts. The film’s charm works through our nostalgia for the period, and it also uses dialect. Nevertheless in look and feel, it still comes across as television on the big screen. But success proved to be an untamed animal for Jack Neo. Khoo executive-produced Neo's next opus, Liang Po Po (1999), a screen adaptation of one of his TV personas. The movie was successful but only made half the box office figure of his first film. Liang Po Po also signalled the entry of the Television Corporation of Singapore (TCS) into feature production. The Corporation set up a subsidiary, Raintree Pictures, to produce four films each year. Liang Po Po was its maiden voyage. To its credit, it created a media blitz so overpowering that Jack Neo's Liang Po Po persona could be seen at every corner of Singapore. But unexpectedly, that created a public backlash for Neo. For his third film, That One Not Enough, Neo made his directing debut, but it was also his first film to lose money. Ironically, it was also his most cohesive film, and its social satire, about philandering men, was an indirect nod to sex-crazed/repressed Singapore. In many ways, the Singapore film in the 90s dealt with Singapore obsessions - money (Money No Enough, Lucky Number), sex and repression (12 Storeys, That One Not Enough, Forever Fever, Tiger’s Whip, Bugis Street), and the fear of losing out on a good deal (Liang Po Po, Where Got Problem) - in a more candid way than could be expressed on television. For instance, much of the sexual humour was expressed in dialect, which could not be shown on TV due to Singapore’s campaign to speak more Mandarin, as opposed to other Chinese dialects. Unfortunately, owing to the phenomenal success of Money No Enough, many new films were rushed into production to take advantage of the film frenzy. Most of these came across as exploitative and copycat efforts and were box office disasters. Even more unfortunate were the consequences of over-production of poor quality films; they killed off the fervour that Singaporeans had for its emerging cinema, by creating a cynical response. Later on, when Kelvin Tong and Jasmine Ng’s Eating Air was released in late 1999, the film did not take off. It was a fine effort, fusing teenage romance with the kungfu and youth gang genres. But audiences by then were just wary of seeing another tiresome Singapore film. Had Eating Air been released after 12 Storeys, it would have built a more lasting momentum. Still, it was vindicated by winning by winning the SFC Young Cinema Award and a Special Mention from FIPRESCI at the Stockholm International Film Festival. Today, there are 173 cinemas serving a population of 3 million, but movie-going has gone down from over 20 million annual admissions in the 1980s to over 16 million now. Yet, at the same time, it is a kind of a miracle that whereas in 1991 only one Singapore film was produced, in 1998, there were five films made. Just released at the time of writing are The Truth About Jane and Sam, Where Got Problem, Street Angels, and 2000AD. That brings the figure to five films made in Singapore in 1999. The next year, two more films were released - Stories About Love, Singapore's first digital feature executive produced by Eric Khoo and Chicken Rice War by Cheah Chee Kong. Both were dismal box-office failures. So far in 2001, two new films are being released: Return to Pontianak and The Tree. In retrospect, the Singapore film industry has always been dogged by a struggle for national identity. P. Ramlee's Penarik Beca (The Trishaw Rider, 1955), which Ramlee directed himself, has often been hailed as the first Malay film made by a Malay. Although films had long been made in Singapore in the Malay language dealing with Malay characters and subjects, they had hitherto been directed by Indian and Filipino directors who were recruited during the early period of the Malay film industry. That struggle over national identity ignited again last year (2000) when a retrospective of P. Ramlee films was organised by the Singapore Film Commission. When a Singaporean organising member remarked that "there would be no P. Ramlee without Singapore," the Malaysians were incensed, as Ramlee was Malaysian-born. A brief exchange took place in the press on both sides. Today, the national ownership of its output is still in question. From a British director who tackled the Adrian Lim story (Medium Rare) to a Hong Kong director depicting Bugis Street (Bugis Street), the question over what is ours still looms out large. Perhaps for this reason, Money No Enough was a big hit. Even though the film was poorly shot, its usage of Chinese dialects endeared the film to many Singaporeans who felt that the film articulated their cultural identity. Another struggle has been the debate over art and box-office. In a way that debate was seen in the early Malay films through the films of Hussein Haniff and P. Ramlee. While Haniff was a perfectionist, Ramlee was a populist. Haniff’s films were more intellectually challenging, while Ramlee's films were superbly entertaining. Yet it is always Ramlee who is remembered and celebrated. Haniff remains a historical footnote. In a similar fashion, today's Singapore film straddles that divide again. Eric Khoo's Mee Pok Man and 12 Storeys were artistic achievements. Mee Pok Man was the first internationally acclaimed film in this current era, and it travelled to over 30 film festivals. And 12 Storeys was the first Singapore title in Cannes' Official Selection. Yet, it was the populist and comedic appeal of Money No Enough that broke all box office records for a local film. To his credit, Neo, like Ramlee before him, always laced his comedy with social satire. Four years ago, the first graduates of the Ngee Ann Polytechnic's Film, Sound and Video Department entered the job market. Many of them became part of the film crews for the new independent films being made. But their work also made up 80% of the entries received for each year's Best Short Film Competition at the Singapore International Film Festival. Many of them started winning prizes. Among the more interesting winners were Abdul Nizam, Dzulkifli Sungit, and Remi Sali. As most of the film students here are in their teens, much of their work reflects teenage preoccupations. On the other hand, the films of Nizam, Sungit, and Sali, had more mature themes: tradition versus modernity, cultural and religious identity. Perhaps what portents well for the reconstruction of Singapore cinema is its independent spirit. Even in the 1970s, independent film producers kept up production, despite the end of the studio system. While inconsistent and varying wildly in quality, their films were often spirited and had diehard filmmakers behind them. For instance, although Sunny Lim made only three films in Singapore, he made 16 more when he left the country. And while Lim Suat Yen's The Road Less Travelled suffered at the box office, she kept on her production work and worked on Neo's That One Not Enough. If Singapore filmmakers continue to build a credible body of work, success will find them as a natural consequence. That has been the lesson learnt by the Singapore pioneers both in the Malay and Chinese film industry. 15 Significant Films
Book List Hanan, David. (2000). Film in South East Asia - Views From the Region. Quezon City, Philippines: SEAPAVAA. Lacaba, Jose F. (Ed.). (2000).The Films of ASEAN. ASEAN Committee on Culture and Information. Lim Kay Tong. (1991). Cathay - 55 Years of Cinema San Francisco: Landmark Books. Moran, Albert. (Ed.). (1996). Film Policy. Oxford, England: Routledge. Uhde, Jan, & Ng Uhde, Yvonee. (2000). Latent Images - Film in Singapore. London: Oxford. |
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