Maybe She Loves Everyone by Wesley Leon Aroozoo

Four screenings happened in Sep. Three of Sherman’s films: Memories of a Burning Tree, Tickets and When the End of Winter Is Almost Spring (international premiere) were showcased at the Montreal World Film Festival 2010, ranked 5th in the world in terms of audience attendance. White Days by Lei Yuan Bin was also screened as part of the Singapore Film Festival in Melbourne.

In Oct, you can catch the following screenings if you are in Tokyo, Hawaii, Berlin, Mumbai and Jihlava. We are most glad to hear from our audience. So if you happened to have watched any of our films and would like to share your thoughts, please write to us!

1. Memories of a Burning Tree by Sherman Ong and Red Dragonflies by Liao Jiekai will compete for the Best Asian-Middle Eastern Film Award at the 23rd Tokyo International Film Festival.

Memories of a Burning Tree:

10/23 12:00pm Cinemart Roppongi SCREEN1 (Director in attendance)
10/26 16:15 TOHO CINEMAS ROPPONGI HILLS SCREEN2 (Director in attendance)

Red Dragonflies:
10/26 11:00am TOHO CINEMAS ROPPONGI HILLS SCREEN1 (Director and actress in attendance)
10/29 19:50 Cinemart Roppongi SCREEN1 (Director and actress in attendance)

2. Red Dragonflies by Liao Jiekai and Tickets (short film) by Sherman Ong will screen at the 30th Hawaii International Film Festival.

Red Dragonflies
20 Oct 5:30 PM  Dole Cannery A

Tickets
15 Oct 5:30 PM  Dole Cannery E

3. White Days by Lei Yuan Bin will compete for the Green Chilies Awards at the Asian Hot Shots Berlin (20-24th Oct 2010).  (Director in attendance)

One Day In June (short film) by Daniel Hui will screen together with White Days. Mickey and Peep by Wesley Leon Aroozoo will also screen in the Singapore Hot Shots Programme and the Experimental Shorts Programme respectively.

Yuan Bin and Wesley’s attendance at the Asian Hot Shots Berlin is supported by the Singapore Film Commission Travel Assistance Programme.

4. Memories of a Burning Tree by Sherman Ong will compete in the World Cinema section at the 12th Mumbai International Film Festival (21-28 October 2010).

5. Kissing Faces and Maybe She Loves Everyone will both screen at the 1st Doi Saket International Film Festival in Chiangmai from the 23rd-30th October.

6. Flooding in the Time of Drought by Sherman Ong will screen at the Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival, Czech Republic (26-31 Oct 2010).

Red Dragonflies have been selected to the 29th Vancouver International Film Festival! It will be screened in the Dragons and Tigers section, alongside fellow Singaporean feature, Boo Junfeng’s Sandcastle. Congratulations Jiekai!

This lyrical first film, elusively beautiful and tinged with abstraction, heralds Liao Jiekai as a major new voice in Singaporean indie cinema.

Here are the screening dates and times:

Saturday October 2nd 1.30pm – Pacific Cinematheque

Monday October 4th 6.00pm – Empire Granville 7 Th 5

Rumah Sendiri; Daniel Hui with Ni Luh Sri Suyanti 2010

More 13 Little Pictures short film screenings in Singapore! This time, Sherman Ong and I (Daniel Hui) are showcasing our new short films in the 6th Singapore Short Film Festival, curated by the Substation in Singapore. The Substation has traditionally been a home for discovering new works. We are extremely excited to be screening our films here!

Tickets; Sherman Ong 2010

The films we will be screening are Sayang (Daniel Hui), Rumah Sendiri (Daniel Hui with Ni Luh Sri Suyanti) & Tickets (Sherman Ong), the latter two of which are part of the S-Express Singapore, a traveling film program that would tour the regional festival circuit. Do look out for these films in your country!

Here are some information on the films:

Sayang (29 August 4pm):

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.

Rumah Sendiri (5 September 8.15pm):

A Balinese housemaid works in a home that is not her own. She is the invisible class in Singapore, an unseen population for whom the land is merely transitory. In part a reaction to Eric Khoo’s No Day Off (2006), the film is a collaborative effort whose aim is for you to simply look at her—because, after all, choosing what to see and listen to remains the most political act we do every day.

Tickets (5 September 8.15pm):

This film centres on Xiao Jing, a ticket seller in an old cinema in Singapore. Coming from China to study acting in Singapore, her ambition is to break into the Singapore film industry as an actress.

We’ll be seeing you there!

Mickey; Wesley Leon Aroozoo 2010

Hello friends! Wesley have informed me that his new short film, Mickey, will be screening at the 6th InDPanda International Short Film Festival in Hong Kong, before going to screen at the World Film Festival Bangkok in November.

The film will be screened on 28 August at 2pm in InDPanda, under the category “Torn Between Love and Lost.” Do look out for it on the schedule!

Here is the synopsis from the schedule:

An experiment about science and love. Mickey is a film that juxtaposes scientific experiments on lab rats to the mechanical complexity of human love.

We will be updating our friends in Bangkok regarding its screening times soon. Stay tuned!

Also, remember to check our Youtube channel regularly for more trailers and news!

Here are the screening dates and times. See you there!

1. Cine Hoyts La Reina – Thursday 19 th – 10:00PM
2. Cine Hoyts La Reina – Friday 20th – 5:30 PM

One Day in June; Daniel Hui 2010

Three 13 Little Pictures filmmakers are screening their films at the 7th Singapore Short Cuts! The festival, organized by the National Museum of Singapore, is one of Singapore’s leading short film showcases, and we are deeply honored to be part of the programme this year. Peep, by Wesley Leon Aroozoo, has already been screened to an enthusiastic audience last Sunday. Sherman Ong and Daniel Hui will be screening When the End of Winter Is Almost Spring and One Day in June this Saturday 7 Aug, at 2pm. The screening will see the local premiere of One Day in June, which had its world premiere earlier this year at the International Film Festival Rotterdam.

Here is what the programmers have to say about our films:

On Wesley’s Peep:

There are no sharks, at least of the Animal Planet variety, in Wesley Aroozoo’s Peep. However, the combination of the noun ‘Shark’ and the verb ‘Peep’ does clue us in on the subject of this experimental short about loan sharks. More significantly, the film deals with the irreversibility of one’s personal history, which arises from the obliteration of the family unit in the aftermath of a singularly historic event.

On Sherman’s When the End of Winter Is Almost Spring:

The drama unfolds as a series of stylized dance vignettes set amidst the banality of urban realism. As such, most of the dance sequences in which the terms of the struggles are laid bare and devoid of music. The palpable effect of such a disparity of style turns the attention from the usual mechanics of realist drama to a heightened realism created through choreography and movement. The choreography by Kuik Swee Boon, Xiao Jing and Vincent Yong, all of whom are also the actors in this film, effectively articulated the human frailty of the three characters.

On Daniel’s One Day in June:

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.

Tickets are free for collection at the National Museum, and the screening will be followed by a Q & A with the filmmakers. Be sure to catch us there!

In an interview with TODAY, Sherman told Mayo Martin, “I just work with images, whether they’re moving or still. These can be categories that just limit you.”

Sherman Ong 2010

He is currently heading off to Beijing for the next International Film Festival Rotterdam’s “Raiding Africa” program, joining Ying Liang (Taking Father Home) and Sheng Zhimin (Night of an Era), Beijing Film Academy teacher Zhang Xianmin, Tiger Award winning Thai filmmaker Anocha Suwichakornpong (Mundane History), and China-based Dutch filmmaker David Verbeek (RU There) as mentors for seven young African filmmakers. Find out more about the project here.

The international competition at Jeonju is usually worthwhile; a highlight this year was Liao Jiekai’s Red Dragonflies, which won the Special Jury Prize. The film delicately interweaves personal memory with the excavation of the recent past of Singapore, various lines of the film converging at a rickety pedestrian bridge crossed by three young hikers, and then at a quiet coffeehouse/bookshop. The drifting mood the filmmaker sustains is subtly obsessive without being smothering. Debts of style and sensibility to both Hou Hsiao-hsien (leisurely pans on slowly developing interior scenes; long camera distance) and Apichatpong Weeresethakul (dream narration and unceremonious narrative bifurcation) are apparent. Some of the acting (by non-actors) comes off as studied, and on the whole the film is stronger in its non-narrative aspects, for its purely visual discoveries, than as a portrayal of the concerns of young Singaporeans (which it also is). Red Dragonflies is above all the revelation of a director’s personality.

Read the rest of the article here.

Red Dragonflies; Liao Jiekai 2010

Ian Mundell weighs in on the 39th International Film Festival Rotterdam’s “Forget Africa” program, of which Sherman Ong’s Memories of a Burning Tree was a part:

In Memories of a Burning Tree, Sherman Ong from Malaysia worked with local filmmaker Peter Mbwago to tell the story of a young man arriving in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in order to look for a grave. In the course of his search he encounters a number of other characters whose life revolves around the graveyard and a local cafe, each also looking for something. With understated performances from non-professional actors speaking Swahili, the film gives a striking impression of urban African life without pushing violence, poverty or disease.

Read the rest the article here.

Memories of a Burning Tree; Sherman Ong 2010