by Gary Simmons, The Australian Centre for the Moving Image

Cinema frames and shapes national identities. Singapore Shorts, a compilation of short narrative, experimental and animated short film is a crucible for the plurality of Singaporean identities.

Keen observation of Singapore’s family, personal and social mores is never far from the surface in this eclectic compilation. And these mores are often problematic in this compilation of short films

A melting pot of visual styles, textures, contours, colours and tones registers both familiar and familial themes. Themes such as filial piety to the sometimes arbitrary and insensitive ways in which children are obliged to pursue others’ expectations rather than their own are explored with honesty and sensitivity. Many of the films have a strong companion film within this compilation.

Throughout this Singaporean cinematic feast there is always a critical edge. There is often an explicit and resistant point of view being articulated which reveals the competing personal and social dynamics of a Singaporean society in transition; a work in progress.

The compilation begins with the whimsy of 3 Feet Apart. This ‘short’ is an animation of a young male born with a cell phone implanted in his head. He falls in love with a girl with a portable television implanted in her arm. But the static interference means permanent distance is necessary. They can never be on the same frequency. This is a transparent parody of the ways in which technology pervades the private, human realm. Wired and wireless gadgetry is an extension of ears, eyes, fingers. The real world is often blocked out.

Autograph Book is a personal reminiscence through the eyes of a young girl whose autograph book comes to life with those who she shares her life, however fleetingly.

Birthday is gritty realism, the camera ensnaring two young, struggling parents whose relationship is at the crossroads, as they share the joy of their child’s birthday, which ultimately acts as a bridge between their divided lives.

Locust is a visual ode, a meditation on the ways in which lives intersect ephemerally, yet paradoxically, definitively in a swarming public space. The bodies touch momentarily, but this experience is etched in memory forever.

Mother is an achingly poignant portrait of both loss of and yearning for a mother; a prose-poem set to a montage of old super 8 footage of an extended family. It is melancholic, yet affirmative.

Moving House is a documentary on the Taoist rituals of a family as they pay their respect to their ancestors for the final time. The family is forced by government edict to exhume the bodies of their grandparents so that land can be reclaimed for housing. Their sense of duty is divided between family and Singapore’s need to house its’ people. But the family’s sadness is palpable.

The Call Home takes the viewer into the life of a foreign worker whose sense of dislocation, solitariness and loss is evoked in an overtly political film that critiques a system that entraps workers who are contracted for long hours and whose separation from loved ones back home is a double-edged sword; a Catch 22. Money is sent home, but if Kasi must continue to work or his family back in India is destitute. Kasi is distraught, impotent to change his situation. He breaks down when his phone card runs out when he calls his wife. His story is universalised as he joins and merges with his compatriots in the final scene.

The Secret Heaven is also seen through the eyes of a child who just wants to be a young child. She escapes the sibling comparisons, her piano teacher and her domineering parents by creating her own fantasy heaven in which she controls her own life and enjoys her childhood.

While You Sleep is a lack and white elegy that watches a family waiting anxiously for their mother to come out of a coma.

Throughout all these shorts there is a profound sense of compassion for the human condition as characters attempt to reconcile the competing demands of their lives. Good films record the lives of characters who seek the truth, who love, yearn and desire, who deal with complexities in themselves or their worlds. Singapore Shorts took me into the multiple hearts, minds and souls of the human mosaic of Singapore.

Footnote
The reviewer spent 1999 teaching at Hwa Chong Junior College in Singapore and is a keen student of pan-Asian cinema. He has used Singaporean films in his work at The Australian Centre for the Moving Image There were many times when he felt like one of the characters in Locust. And he often felt like a ‘technology Troglodyte’, given his Singaporean students’ ease with technology. 


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