Abstracts
1. Khairudin Aljunied

This paper provides a critical "reading" and examination of the P. Ramlee’s film, Seniman Bujang Lapok. Central to its argument is the appropriation of such a film as historical sources for the study of Malay society in 1950s-1960s Singapore. By contextualising P. Ramlee’s portrayal of Malay society within several key developments in his life and era, the article propounds some major themes that reflect the challenges and anxieties faced by Malays then. It is hoped that this article will induce scholars towards a rigorous interrogation of Malay films that are currently at the margins of Singapore's historiography.

2. Anwardi Datuk Jamil

'Malaysian Cinema: "Filem Kita Wajah Kita" (Our Film Our Image): Social Memory or Selective Memory'. The above motto is the motto that has been promoted by Malaysia’s National Film Development Corporate for over ten years. It is the motto that currently fits well with the industry players who keep on churning movies that promotes national and political interests above all else. What one sees on the Malaysian screens are hardly images or visuals that are based on reality. Therefore, Malaysian cinema on the whole if viewed by our descendants three generations on, will see a Malaysia that they will never relate to – a warped sense of social memory that didn’t exist except in the cinemas. It is the same feeling current generations feel when they see the old Malay movies from the P. Ramlee era – laced and fueled by Hindustani values and images, current audience are made to believe that that was how the Malays lived in the 60s when it is not. It was an opportunity lost – a chance for filmmakers to capture reality on film – true content for future social memory but alas very few Malay movies have managed if ever, to portray the Malays or Malaysians on the wide screen. This paper is to begin a discourse that will identify the new trends by young filmmakers who prefer to ground their films with more realism and with a Malaysia that rings true.

3. Anchalee Chaiworaporn

'Nationalism and Nostalgia: Two Conflicting Identities in New Thai Cinema'. This paper will examine how different the old and new-generation directors of New Thai cinema, who together helped construct the boom of Thai cinema after the Asian economic crisis in 1997, choose to tell the stories in their entry, firstly into the Thai film industry, and then the global circle. While the older generations (for those who had already established and struggled to survive during the pre-1997 deadend of the industry) construct a nationalistic identity by employing and exploiting the Thai historical facts like Bang Rajan, and Suriyothai, the new-generation filmmakers (for those who just emerged in the year of 1997) prefer to limit themselves to more personal identities and nostalgic sentiments. I will look at both the socio-economic contexts that helped boost the ideology a few years before, during, and after the crisis when it is involved in all walks of Thai life, and the textual analysis in their different construction of identities. However, when the country faced the economic downturn, these remedies corresponded with the phenomenal construction of national identity, which have been promoted by the governments and again, by the King’s motto, “Sufficiency Economy.” In fact, cinema is just one of several art forms that manifested this national concept.

4. Prof Eloisa May P. Hernandez

Human rights violations are rampant, corruption exists in the entire government system, cheating in elections involve the highest officials of the land, the value of the Philippine peso is drastically dropping, the specter of martial law hangs over the country, the Marcoses are in power, their cronies control the businesses, and the people are taking to the streets with calls for the resignation of the President. Philippines 1986? No, it’s Philippines 2005. Memories of the dictatorship and the political and social system that it operated on still hold power in the Philippines. Nothing has changed - we are where we were 20 years ago. Having lived through the dictatorship, it weighs heavy on my memories. Ramona Diaz’s film Imelda (2003), probably the most watched documentary in the history of Philippine cinema, revives in the social memories of millions of Filipinos, including me, the rise to power and subsequent fall of the complex, ruthless, vain, and oftentimes “imeldific” First Lady, Imelda Romualdez Marcos. Sometimes painful, surreal and absurd to watch, the documentary vacillates from portraying Imelda as a pitiful, albeit bitter, widow as the director lets her condemn herself when she starts to draw hearts to show her love for the Filipino people and sings a love song to the body of her dead husband. Human rights violations rampant during her and her husband’s 20 years regime is erased in her personal memories but attested by victims/survivors who gave personal accounts in the film. It is obvious that there is a stark difference between Imelda Romualdez Marcos’s personal memories and the national social memory of the Filipino people. The film inscribes in the memories of the Filipino youth, those fortunate enough not to have memories of dictatorship, a social memory of what the rest of the Filipinos went through and hopefully liberates them and the country from the dictatorship of memories.

5. Prof Roland Tolentino

The experience of modernity results from the emergent social relations formed in liberalized market economies, which also posit as sites of newer forms of pain and suffering as especially experienced by those in the margins. South Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines share the nationalist experience of trauma and popular uprising to topple dictatorial governments, paving the way for intensified economic development. As national economies undergo liberalization to survive in globalization, so do their political structures are reshaped to become conducive to transnational capital. The essay discusses the relationship of the state and civil society in a postcolonial national setting, looking into their operations and parameters in the South Korean film A Single Spark. The analysis of the effects of the state and civil society on issues of citizenship and urban being is discussed in the Taiwanese film Super Citizen Ko. The transformation of the national into the transnational state and civil society is discussed in the Philippine film Eskapo.
 

Ticket Price:
$4/5

Date:
14 September '05 Wednesday

Time:
1000 - 1200

Venue:
The Substation

Abstracts

1. Jeanine Tan

We live in a world increasingly dominated by screens and visual texts in the form of film, documentary, animation, interactive computer games, paintings, photographs, cartoons, comics, internet images/videos, picture books, advertisements, music videos, and the list goes on. Film, an art form that is over a century old, has earned its right to be included as a major area of study in its own right. While there are many courses on film studies at the tertiary level, film education has hardly made its way into the primary and secondary classroom. Yet there are many benefits to be gained from film education. Film can be included as a text to aid the teaching of other subjects. Film can, and should, also be studied as a primary text. It is important in a screen-based culture that students are encouraged to identify and understand the codes and conventions employed by film and gain critical distance from the text. The Screen Education programme at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) in Melbourne presents us with a successful model which we might be able to modify to our local environment. Their programs encourage dynamic thinking, interaction and activity in which popular hands-on production experiences sit alongside traditional learning environments such as film lecture programs. ACMI’s screen education staff cater to primary and secondary students, and cover key areas of the Victorian curriculum.

2. Emmeline Yong

Filmmaking: The Art of Telling a Story. The root of a good short film lies in a story that is well told – one that effectively conveys viewpoints or arouses emotive responses. Using films and filmmaking as a medium for storytelling, we can encourage students to learn how to create, develop and communicate ideas. During our short discussion, we will share with the audience how we have used film and filmmaking in our outreach workshops with schools. One of the projects we will talk about is The Traveling Short Film Project, a film outreach program that brings a collection of local short films to schools in Singapore. This program is jointly organized by Objectifs, The Substation Moving Images and independent film curator Yuni Hadi, and has been brought to almost 20 schools.
 

Ticket Price:
$15

Date:
14 September '05 Wednesday

Time:
1330 - 1530

Venue:
The Substation

Ticket Price:
$15

Date:
14 September '05 Wednesday

Time:
1600 - 1800

Venue:
The Substation

Abstract

1. Benjamin McKay

Research Methodology and the Archival Dilemma. The manner in which a film historian, or any other researcher using cinematic texts from the past, approaches the task of researching their project is largely determined by the theoretical and practical boundaries of research methodology. The theoretical boundaries of that methodological approach are often determined by what is and is not available to a researcher. Film History is largely empirical, but the very fact that many film texts either do not exist or cannot be found, has forced Film Historians to fill in the gaps of their research by employing a more subjective, speculative and assumptive approach to their work. Such an approach is seemingly at odds with the supposedly empirical nature of the historical profession and the discourse on empiricism is thus being challenged. This presentation will address the manner in which researchers have to be flexible in their telling ofthe past and in their search for the ‘truth’ by the very limitations of the archival network.

Researchers are also influenced by the politics of the past and the present. This is evident in the manner in which certain textual sources are not made available to them by the state as part of a broader culture of censorship. Indeed there is evidence that some film texts were destroyed in the past due to their content. Censorship and the politics of controlling knowledge have an enormous impact upon what can and cannot be researched. From a researchers perspective this presentation will address the issues of censorship and will make proposals for the manner in which archivists might be able to work within a culture of censorship, and still be able to meet the requirements of their clients. Such proposals will be informed by case studies from archives elsewhere.

Film History that uses filmic textual analysis as a primary source is concerned with social memory. Researchers are often engaged in the construction of narratives that reveal their ‘truth’ at the point where film can be seen as both an agent and a source of history. The understanding of the past through cinematic analysis is informed as much by an understanding of the present. History is not written in a vacuum. This presentation will address the search for social memory by the film historian. Such an analysis will be informed by the presenters’ own research project on developing a social history of Singapore and the Malay world in the 1950s and 1960s through a reading of the films that were produced locally at that time. It will also address the many dilemmas that such a project encounters in accessing the films themselves.
 

Ticket Price:
$4/5

Date:
15 September '05 Thursday

Time:
1000 - 1200

Venue:
The Substation

Abstract

1. Ben Slater

Under Pressure - Film Criticism In The Digital Age.
The role of film criticism has always been a tenuous and unstable one. Cinema is a notoriously difficult medium to assess - it draws from and fuses many different art-forms, while being constantly dominated by commercial and industrial practices. In looking at film the 'critic' needs to be able to access a wide range of influences and references, and not just from film, he or she needs to understand the business of movies, as well as to carefully articulate arguments about a film's particular strengths and weaknesses. The whole form of 'film reviewing' has come under pressure over the last ten years, firstly the rise of Film Studies as a academic subject has opened up many new ways of critically exploring film. Secondly, film marketing has sought to overturn the power of the critic in order to make certain products 'critic-proof'. Lastly, the internet has changed the landscape of how film opinion is circulated and discussed. These three factors have radically altered the ways that we critically receive film.

I propose to discuss these two strands - the 'problem' of film reviewing in the first place; and changes in the process of film reception partly brought on by New Media - and try to determine how film criticism may develop from here.

Ticket Price:
$4/5

Date:
15 September '05 Thursday

Time:
1330 - 1530

Venue:
The Substation

Ticket Price:
$4/5

Date:
15 September '05 Thursday

Time:
1600 - 1800

Venue:
The Substation

Abstracts

1. Daniel Yun

The expression – Pan-Asian films used to be fairly meaningless to filmmakers. Now it is not unlike European films, e.g. a very Pan-Asian HK film is similar to a very European film from England. The next phase of filmmaking in Asia will not be led by HK or India alone, but it will be more of an Asian movement.

As part of global cinema, where world box office is now increasingly more important to Hollywood studios than just North America, where formulaic summer blockbusters are increasingly more risky, the transnational, transcultural cinema is taking root even with Hollywood studios as they hurriedly set up their ‘classic’ extension – Sony Classic, Fox Searchlight, Warner Independent and Lion Gate films. These smaller companies help the global cinema phenomenon.
Yet Transnational and Transcultural cinema is most pronounced and is the most recent phenomenon in Asia. With strong demand from a global market, the fusion of identities, the cross cover of influence and the sharing of funding and risks are less of an option and more a necessity. The increasing use of CG and effects is also blurring the cultural lines.

Ultimately the emergence of Transnational, Trancultural cinema, the concept of borderless movie concepts can thrive because audiences around the world are more international. The world is a much smaller place. Internet links the most remote of places to the most cutting edge cities and the result is a fusion of ideas, views and cultural beliefs. If movies are a true reflection of life, this evolving process is inevitable.
 

Ticket Price:
$4/5

Date:
16 September '05 Friday

Time:
1000 - 1200

Venue:
The Substation

Ticket Price:
$4/5

Date:
16 September '05 Friday

Time:
1330 - 1530

Venue:
The Substation

Ticket Price:
$4/5

Date:
16 September '05 Friday

Time:
1600 - 1800

Venue:
The Substation