Malaysia, Singapore | 7 min | Silent, B&W | Malay Intertitles, English Subtitles | HD

• Sharjah Biennial 2013, curated by Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Ikram brings home his classmates to feed Julia, his blood-sucking stepmum. When Julia starts flirting with a classmate Ikram has been secretly admiring, he flies into a rage of jealousy. An adaptation from a short story by Faizal Sulaiman, Kopi Julia is a film tribute to the Malay horror films made in the 50s in Singapore.

Also starring Adeline Setiawan, Ong Szu Jie, Vicki Yang and Miu Miu

Introduction

A devout Christian woman who goes on a drug-smuggling mission to save her son, an AIDS sufferer, is arrested at the Singapore-Malaysia Causeway. A Muslim reporter fights tirelessly for the Christian woman to be spared execution. And the man who has the power to decide their fates – the Hindu executioner at Changi Prison – is finally counting the cost of his actions.

Director Statement

Director Biography

Glen Goei (born 1962) is one of Singapore’s leading film and theatre directors. Goei’s film, FOREVER FEVER (1998), was the first Singapore film to be presented at Sundance and to achieve a worldwide commercial release. The film was distributed in America and the United Kingdom by Miramax, which then signed him on an exclusive three-picture deal. His second film, THE BLUE MANSION (2009), featured a cast comprising the cream of Singapore and Malaysia’s acting talent and an international production team. It premiered at the Pusan International Film Festival and won the Best Film and Best Director Awards at the SPH Singapore Entertainment Awards. Glen’s work in theatre started with his Olivier Award nominated performance in the title role of M. BUTTERFLY opposite Anthony Hopkins in London’s West End. As Associate Artistic Director of W!ld Rice, he won the Production of the Year for his daring restaging of THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ERNEST at the Straits Times Life! Theatre Award 2010. He also directed the hugely popular EMILY, and THE HISTORY OF SINGAPORE. He was the Creative Director of the National Day Parade (2003-2006). He graduated from Cambridge with a Masters of Art in History.

Directed by Daniel Hui
Country of production: Singapore
Production Company: 13 Little Pictures
Format: 16mm
Genre: Drama
Estimated Running Time: 103 min

Synopsis

A woman begins to come to terms with society after having withdrawn into her own world to mourn her late husband. The film splinters away to document the characters surrounding her – people from different classes, including the director’s own family. An investigation of the landscapes in which we live, work, and play, this is Singapore seen through the prisms of family, class and race.

Director’s Statement

Eclipses was conceived at the juncture of the personal and the political, the individual and the collective, the particular and the universal. It will attempt to navigate the uncertain territory between Heidegger and Marx, taking as its starting point an amalgamation of Europa ’51 and The Man With A Movie Camera. It is a film about absence (hence, the title) – the absence of the husband that ignites the story, the absence of the world that the woman denies, and later the absence of the woman itself as she is subsumed into the world. It will be a sociological document that describes society at every level of production; at the same time, it will be an emotional document about the different stages of grieving, about realizing one’s place in the world around us.

Director’s Biography

Daniel Hui is a filmmaker and writer. His works include ECLIPSES (Singapore), RUMAH SENDIRI (Short Cuts), SAYANG (Short Cuts), ONE DAY IN JUNE (Rotterdam), WANDERLUST (Seoul) and THE BRACELET (Vladivostok).

Directed by Elizabeth Wijaya & Lai Weijie
Written by Elizabeth Wijaya & Lai Weijie
Produced by Tan Bee Thiam & Sherman Lai
Country of production: Siem Reap, Cambodia
Production Company: 13 Little Pictures, E&W Films
Format: HD
Genre: Drama
Running Time: 75 min

Synopsis

What does it mean to declare or even whisper: I have loved?

In Siem Reap, a young woman, haunted by loss, mourning, melancholia and the imperfections of memory, dances with two men–one of whom she is married to, while the other is engaged to be married.

Director’s Statement

Marie goes to Cambodia in search of a romantic honeymoon but is confronted with the ambiguities of life and struggles with emotions and impulses beyond her understanding. “I Have Loved” is an intimate exploration of human consciousness, time and ways of remembering. After the death of her husband, Marie is haunted by an eclipsed memory—she cannot remember a key traumatic event as it happened. Trapped in a Freudian cycle of mourning and repetition, she returns to Siem Reap to remember—so that she may forget. But she fails to achieve her desired catharsis. When she meets Amarin, who is drawn to her grief due to his own buried sorrow, light shines into her cloistered soul but guilt, fear and their vast differences makes them remain both soul mates and strangers. The landscape and architecture of Siem Reap and the Angkor temples are also characters in this film that explores contradiction on different levels. The town of Siem Reap, compact and yet filled with contradictory building styles and transient tourists, is a metaphor for the frazzled yet searching and hopeful minds of the characters. The splendor and illusion of the grand and cold Hotel de la Paix as a modern temple for privileged pilgrims gestures towards Resnais’ “Last Year in Marienbad” and also the Angkor temples. The time- weathered temples form the emotional core of the film and visually allude to the ancient human soul—battered yet magnificent before the dust of modernity. The visual style of the film will be poetic and allusive, as if experiencing someone else’s dream. Beauty on the screen is meant to reveal the ephemerality of beauty and the fear of emptiness beneath. References include the paintings of Degas, Richter and also Louis Le Brocquy. This film is also intended as a love note to Cambodia. While the trauma of its recent past needs to be remembered, showcasing the glory of its ancient history and landscape is also an affirmation of its future. Like Marie learns, Cambodia, especially with the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, confronts a painful history rather than try to forget what is impossible to forget. However, the film avoids any explicit reference to politics. The world, in fact, is almost solipsistic as Marie’s epic emotional voyage colors the mood of the film.

Directors’ biography

Elizabeth Wijaya, recipient of the NUS Research Scholarship, received her MA in Literary Studies and BA (First Class Honours) in English Literature. She was President of the NUS Literary Society and the co-director of I HAVE LOVED.

Lai Weijie graduated from NYU Tisch School of the Arts Asia with an MFA. He was director of photography for DELILAH, BEFORE (Best Short Film, Tribeca) and co-produced HOMECOMING that grossed more than $3 million in Singapore and Malaysia. Recently, he co-directed his first feature I HAVE LOVED.

I Have Loved Teaser Trailer

Directed by Elizabeth Wijaya & Lai Weijie
Written by Elizabeth Wijaya & Lai Weijie
Country of production: Singapore/Malaysia
Production Company: 13 Little Pictures, E&W Films
Format: HD
Genre: Horror
Estimated Running Time: 120 min
Status: Development

Logline

On the eve of Marina Bay Sands’ opening, a woman returns to Singapore to revisit a childhood love that was never fulfilled. Meanwhile, off the coast of Singapore, a man finds himself working on an offshore rig alongside his long-lost biological father. The invisible navigate themselves through the new Singapore landscape, bound by the past and their memories of their old friend Nigel who has gone missing.

Director’s Statement

For a decade, from the time Elizabeth was 6, she was part of the daily exodus of students, workers and lifestock, commuting from Malaysia to Singapore. The long travelling hours, at first on the orange school buses and then via public transport provided moments of drama and reflection.  The inspiration for this film stems from the time passed and friendships formed and lost, as children journeyed together from pre-dawn to nightfall, from childhood to adulthood. Many who live on both sides of the causeway do so in search of a better life—the journey is a hopeful one but it is also not without its perils.

This film imagines a life ended abruptly and a ghost child that grows up along with the city she was lost in. Ghosts are often portrayed as taking on the form of how they last looked in life but what if this ghost allows her image to grow, as she would have wanted to be if she had been alive? She haunts Singapore, seeking yearly vengeance, until one day she meets a boy from her past…

This film is dedicated to the ghosts of us, to the lost past and the eclipsed future.

Directors’ biography

Elizabeth Wijaya, recipient of the NUS Research Scholarship, received her MA in Literary Studies and BA (First Class Honours) in English Literature. She was President of the NUS Literary Society and the co-director of I HAVE LOVED.

Lai Weijie graduated from NYU Tisch School of the Arts Asia with an MFA. He was director of photography for DELILAH, BEFORE (Best Short Film, Tribeca) and co-produced HOMECOMING that grossed more than $3 million in Singapore and Malaysia. Recently, he co-directed his first feature I HAVE LOVED.

Directed and Written by Wesley Leon Aroozoo

Produced By Tan Bee Thiam

Country of production: Singapore

Production Company: 13 Little Pictures

Genre: Experimental Comedy/Drama

Estimated Running Time: 90 minutes

Status: Development

Looking For: Pre-Sales/Funds

Introduction

The rhythm of humans going under the limbo pole one by one is creepily poetic and unsettling. Amidst the crowd of office workers gathering around, we are introduced to our good friend, Patrick Pan.  We shake our heads and look away as his greed leads him to working at a Bookmark factory under the wings of a successful tycoon whom he idolises.

It is dark and quiet. Bedtime stories.

The innocent Bookmark Factory wakes up from its sleep and rear its ugly head. Patrick willingly drowns himself in puddles to attain his dream, while his whole world does a cartwheel and eventually bites him, chews him up and spits him out.

There are more holes than that of underwear.

Patrick is now mush.

Directors’ biography

Wesley Leon Aroozoo graduated from Nanyang Technological University and is now pursuing his Master of Fine Arts at NYU Tisch Asia. In 2010, he was selected as one of Tokyo Filmex’s Next Masters. His short films, such as KISSING FACES (Rotterdam), have screened at over 80 festivals.

Director/Writer/Editor: Daniel Hui
Producer: Tan Bee Thiam
Cinematographer: Looi Wan Ping
Sound Engineer: Lim Lung Chieh
Sound Design: Takuya Katsu
Format: HD
Estimated Running Time: 54 min

Synopsis

A young woman stuck in a marriage to an older man. A husband who doesn’t know how to communicate with his younger wife. A mysterious boy who shows up in their lives. As their realities give way to the realm of desire, the three are sucked into an ambiguous romance that grows beyond what either can bear. Night Lights is at once a moral critique on eros and a tragic mystery of what lies at the heart of passion.

Director’s Statement

Isn’t it funny how, in dreams, you can live an entire life and it wouldn’t make a difference when you wake up? I’ve fallen in love so many times in my dreams, felt that strong forceful physical emotion; and then everything vanishes in the morning sun. The thing is, something real happened there – if we can trust our feelings. Something happened that only we know, a flower in our heart that is sheltered from the rest of the world – it blooms in secret. A friend told me recently, it is true because we experienced it; it is true even though no one else thinks it’s true; because as long as there’s one person in the world who felt it (the proverbial tree falling in an empty forest), it actually happened. Isn’t it the same with love after all?

Director’s biography

Daniel Hui is a filmmaker and writer. His works include ECLIPSES (Singapore), RUMAH SENDIRI (Short Cuts), SAYANG (Short Cuts), ONE DAY IN JUNE (Rotterdam), WANDERLUST (Seoul) and THE BRACELET (Vladivostok).

Written, directed, edited by Daniel Hui
Singapore | 8 min | 2010 | Color
Original Format: Hi-8

Synopsis

A personal rumination on love and loss, using the images and sounds of famous movies. Just as, in movies, we see through another’s eyes, hear through another’s ears, this film stands as an experiment to see if we could also speak through another’s mouth.

Director’s Statement

Making a film, for me, is very much like being in love. It is a tautology. A friend asks me, “Why do you make films?” I stumble. “I make films because I make films.” Like love, all discussion of a film seems to go around it. We can talk about what the film means to us, to society, to history – an important, if not the most important, act of filmmaking – but the film remains unscathed. The film is. In any film, you can shoot a person however you see him/her, but that wouldn’t – and shouldn’t – change who and what the person is. The person remains the same – nothing more, nothing less.

And so it seems that making a film is like pointing at somebody you love, and saying, “There!” I cannot explain myself, nor can I defend my love – I can only present. Language is always too much and not enough. Maybe that’s why I can only make films about people I love…

How do you make others understand why you love someone? How do you express the grief, anxiety, jealousies, joy, vertigo, that the person you love gives you? Someone asks me, “Why do you love me?” I stumble. “I love you because I love you.”

This film is dedicated to Yasmin Ahmad.

Directors Biography

Daniel Hui is a filmmaker and writer. His works include ECLIPSES (Singapore), RUMAH SENDIRI (Short Cuts), SAYANG (Short Cuts), ONE DAY IN JUNE (Rotterdam), WANDERLUST (Seoul) and THE BRACELET (Vladivostok).

Country of production: Singapore
Running length: 10 minutes
Colour
Year of production: 2010
Language: English, Mandarin, Hokkien
Subtitles: English

Director/Writer/Producer: Daniel Hui
Cinematographer/Editor: Looi Wan Ping
Original Idea: Jonathan Crisman
Sound Engineer: Nicholas Lee
Sound Design: Takuya Katsu
Assistant Director/Co-producer: Tan Bee Thiam
Associate Producers: Lim Lung Chieh, Athalia Ho
Grips: Vince Ong, Mike Lau
Still Photographer/Publicity Design: Colin Teo

Cast
Vel Ng
Teoh Kim Eng
Brendon Fernandez

Introduction

A woman returns from abroad. In her state of jetlag, she finds herself falling between the gaps of the past and present.

In long, poetic shots, sorrow and loneliness are tangible. With the film, Hui has created a small-scale drama that evokes questions but does not answer them.

Throughout the presentation of the narrative, Hui is interested in images that are uneasy of themselves – images that seem to want to be other images. With a Heideggerian ontological concern in mind, Hui pushes each image to the horizon of being and non-being, and of truth and illusion.

- 7^th Singapore Short Cuts, National Museum of Singapore

Directors Biography

Daniel Hui is a filmmaker and writer. His works include ECLIPSES (Singapore), RUMAH SENDIRI (Short Cuts), SAYANG (Short Cuts), ONE DAY IN JUNE (Rotterdam), WANDERLUST (Seoul) and THE BRACELET (Vladivostok).

Directed by Azharr Rudin
Writing Credits: Azharr Rudin
Producer: Azharr Rudin, Bee Thiam Tan, Elyna Shukri
Country of production: Malaysia
Production Company: 13 Little Pictures, gegambar
Genre: Horror, Suspense, Drama
Estimated Running Time: 90 min
Status: Development
Looking for: Pre-sales, Funds
Estimated release date: 2011

Introduction

A family moves into an old suburban residential. The father (Lelaki) is depressed; the mother (Perempuan) feels that something seems amiss; their 6-year-old boy (Budak) stays out of school. In a game of hide-and-seek, Budak went missing.

Director’s statement

The local title of the film is GELISAH which may translate to anxious, restless, or nervous. The film may be a reflection of, my own restlessness at a certain period of time and place. It is conceived in a stream of consciousness manner of how I imagined I would have a conversation with the environment that these characters live in. I will not actually try to talk to it as if it is a physical being. Rather I will describe how it conjures a heightened sense of mystery, fear and imagination on me, in the primordial sense. I choose MATAHARI (Sun, Eye of the Day) as the main title as it may invite a different kind of interpretation to the film. MATAHARI is a companion piece to my debut feature PUNGGOK RINDUKAN BULAN (Moon). Sometimes I don’t feel comfortable with spoken languages, or maybe just the actual act of talking. I hope I can communicate to my audience, like I am the quiet stranger watching this film with you in a cinema theatre, that while I do not speak, we share secrets because we experienced something together. I want you to know I am beside you.

Director’s biography

AZHARR RUDIN was a pizza maker, web designer, contributing photographer/writer for a Malaysian music magazine, before venturing into filmmaking. His short film, MAJIDEE (2005) won awards at film festivals in Hawaii, Tokyo and Singapore. His “sophisticated experimental sextet” THE AMBER SEXALOGY a “…sometimes whimsical, often lyrical vignettes of longing and love” debuted at the 2006 Singapore International Film Festival. His films have also been featured in film festivals across five continents. His debut feature film PUNGGOK RINDUKAN BULAN (THIS LONGING) premiered at Pusan 2008 and has been described as “uplifting”, “poignant”, “mysterious”, “daring”, “astonishing” and “evocatively captures sense of liminality.” It was also listed as among the best films of World Cinema in 2008/09. His next feature film project MATAHARI has been chosen for EAVE 2010 (at Udine Far East FF and Pusan IFF).