nice shorts

Spent a lonely Saturday at the Geothe Institut attending the screening of the entries of the Singapore Shorts award of the 19th Singapore International Film Festival.

I am glad to have been able to watch many of the the non-finalists on this Saturday marathon screening, together with the finalists, and be able to judge for myself, the quality of the entries. Indeed, I felted that the non-finalists are not neccessarily poorer in quality compared to the finalists, but I have to admit that some were genuinely atrocious.

Among the finlaists, my favorite was Di by Kam Leong Huat, a nostaligic piece on brotherly relationship in 70s Singapore ,the irreverent animations of Kelly Ling ;and Kirsten Tan's 10 Minutes Later, which plays with the idea of the causal and cyclical nature of events, however, I would have preferred if the Tarantino flavour of the film was less obvious.

There also a few gems among the non-finalists which I felt should have been in the final list in place of some. A few of my favorites include, Heave by Gek Li San, Rahim by Murni Mastan, Man Eating Club by Ong Chee Yeong and The Passenger by Green Zeng.

A few were torturous, which I shall not name.

So, after going through no less than 35 short films in a single day, I have come up with a few rough categories that short films typically fall into,

1. the gay-les-bi/ (sometimes)aids theme
2. parrallel lives
3. nostalgia/reminiscence
4. lost love and redemption
5. kinship and friendship
6. pointless but interesting
and lastly
7. those that are just pointless.

Of course the categories are not exhaustive and films may fall into two or more of these categories, but most of the films which I caught hardly broke the mould of these categories.

Wow, this is the first substantial post I've written in ages. Glad to be back to the normal world, away from contrived thoughts and forced arguments.