#sgiff

Director: Sho Miyake Runtime: 89 minutes Languages: Japanese and Korean audio; English subtitles Certification: PG (Singapore)

The film had already started when I entered the hall. I worried that I’d missed something important. But even with that initial concern, I found myself barely resisting against the lapses of microsleep that repeatedly hit me during the screening.

Two Seasons, Two Strangers has a film within a film. One takes place in a rainy summer and the other in a snowy winter. Both feature pairs of strangers connecting through their loneliness and melancholy. The summer story was “written” by the protagonist of the winter story, Li (Shim Eun-kyung), a Korean screenwriter working in Japan. Now, she struggles to write her next film. This slump is exacerbated by the sudden passing of her former professor (Shiro Sano), whose illness is implied through a debilitating coughing fit that attacks after he attends Li’s film screening. To get out of her funk, Li takes a trip to the snow-covered countryside.

As a(n aspiring?) writer myself, I was hoping to get more out of this film than I actually did. It was nice hearing Li express her writing struggles to the audience as, “The things and feelings that used to be fresh have been overtaken by words” and “I’m in a cage of words.” Well, I relate. And I also agree with the innkeeper (Shinichi Tsutsumi) who hosts Li when he opines that “a good work is how well it depicts human sadness.”

But apart from a few lines, Two Seasons, Two Strangers feels unengagingly empty. With its minimal dialogue, I suppose the film is trying to get away from words like Li is. So, something else must take its place. There’s not enough that does, however. I must’ve missed at least the first ten minutes, but from reading other reviews, it doesn’t seem there was much to miss. The visuals feel sparse because of how dimly-lit they were. Some were so dark that they were like how your bedroom might look right after switching off the lights: you can just make out the outlines of objects and not much more. Especially in a cold, dark cinema hall, I found myself in a setting conducive for sleep.

My experience of watching Miyake’s film made me think of something I read about Naoko Ogigami’s chill-out feature Glasses (2007). Before a screening of it at the 51st San Francisco International Film Festival, she issued the audience a sleep warning but suggested that nodding off is within the spirit of her film anyway.

Maybe nodding off is within the spirit of Two Seasons, Two Strangers too.

Rating: 2.5/5

ZHAO LIYING 赵丽颖 in Ralph & Russo 2019 Spring/Summer Haute Couture | 35th Singapore International Film Festival

does anyone have tickets to see call me by your name at the singapore international film festival (preferably the 2 dec showing)? they were sold out pretty fast on the website :(

it’s probably the only chance i have to see the movie as i don’t think it’ll ever be showing at cinemas near where i live 😬

Director: Murat Fıratoğlu Runtime: 82 minutes Languages: Turkish audio; English subtitles Certification: PG13 (Singapore—some coarse language)

One of Those Days When Hemme Dies feels very much like an adaptation of Abbas Kiarostami’s Where is the Friend’s House?

In Kiarostami’s film, young Ahmad goes on a mission to return a misplaced school notebook to his friend. If this friend doesn’t present his completed homework in the notebook tomorrow, he’ll be expelled. Other than the village, Ahmad doesn’t know where his friend lives. So, he runs around asking others, mostly adults, for help. Nobody manages to provide much of it. Even if they do give some clues as to where his friend might be, Ahmad still ends up wandering through long, winding paths and up and down inclines and slopes. Most frustratingly, the adults barely seem to be listening to him.

In Fıratoğlu’s film, Eyüp (played by Fıratoğlu himself) sets off to shoot his eponymous supervisor, Hemme. Despite repeatedly reminding Hemme about wages, it’s been fifteen days since Eyüp and his fellow tomato harvest workers have received any. One of the workers reminds Eyüp that Hemme is just an employee too, so the wages aren’t in his control, but Eyüp is desperate. He has one last day to repay a debt. I get the sense that unlike Ahmad, Eyüp knows where to go. The issue is about actually getting there.

Eyüp’s motorbike is the first obstacle in getting to Hemme. It keeps dying. So, Eyüp is forced to dismount every so often and run with the bike. He eventually gives up on it, leaving it by the side of a road as the adhan, the Islamic call to prayer, sounds from a distance.

The adhan is a repeating motif throughout the film. In Islam, there are five obligatory daily prayers, and the start of each prayer period is announced with the adhan. These prayers act as reminders of God; as reminders to obey Him. Which entails not taking a life unjustly.

The first time we hear the adhan is during the scene in which he leaves his bike by the side of the road. But before doing this, he pauses, just standing there on barren land, framed in an extreme wide shot. (This is one of the film’s many long takes.) Though we never see Eyüp pray, I like to think that hearing the adhan still gave him pause.

The people that Eyüp meets along his journey is the second obstacle in getting to Hemme. However, Eyüp’s situation is almost the opposite to Ahmad’s in Friend’s House. While Ahmad is usually treated coldly or harshly—especially by adults he knows—Eyüp is often smothered with hospitality, not only by acquaintances but strangers too.

Over and over again, Eyüp is invited to join others: for a meal, for a snack, for some conversation. Over and over again, he insists that he’s “late for work” (is he actually?) but somewhat gives in to their hospitable demands in the end. When an elderly man sitting in an alley asks for help with carrying a watermelon back home, Eyüp keeps walking on at first—then returns, unable to ignore the request. The two then shuffle on to the old man’s house with the heavy fruit and linked arms. At the house, the old man insists that Eyüp have some watermelon.

The sequence with the old man strikes me as the most reminiscent of Friend’s House, which also contains a sequence featuring an old man winding through alleys with the protagonist.

With respect to mise en scène, both sequences use wide shots containing leading lines formed by the sandy-hued walls of the winding alleys. With respect to narrative technique, both use the event of accompanying the old man to build tension. Naturally, he can’t walk fast, so the protagonist must slow down despite the urge to race ahead.

And sure enough, Semih Yıldız mentions Kiarostami in IndieWire’s survey of cinematographers with films screening at the Venice Film Festival 2024: “When I first read Murat Fıratoğlu’s script […], the world in which the story takes place reminded me of the minimal cinematic language of Abbas Kiarostami”.

However, the tension that builds in One of Those Days feels more comedic than in Friend’s House. For someone who seems quite determined to shoot a person, it’s ironic that Eyüp can’t bring himself to be impolite to others. It’s somewhat absurd. So, the tension in Fıratoğlu’s film was enjoyable while it was frustrating in Kiarostami’s.

One of Those Days When Hemme Dies feels very much like an adaptation of Abbas Kiarostami’s Where is the Friend’s House?: a Turkish, more adult, and more entertaining adaptation. 

Rating: 4/5

Via SGIFF.com

Director: So Yo-hen Runtime: 101 minutes Languages: Indonesian and Javanese audio; Mandarin (繁體) and English subtitles Certification: PG13 (Singapore—smoking scenes)

Can Taman-taman (Park) be considered a documentary? The film seemed like one to me as I watched it. But there were some elements that felt contrived. Still, it won three prizes at the 14th Taiwan International Documentary Festival (TIDF) earlier this year. “The Grand Prize of the Asian Vision Competition goes to a more or less non-fiction film,” says the jury comments. I like that description: “more or less non-fiction”.

Well then, it’s a documentary talking about the experiences of Indonesian migrants in Taiwan. I say “talking” because that’s what the bulk of the film depicts: two Indonesian men, Asri and Hans, having conversations in Tainan Park. It’s mostly through their conversations and through poetry rather than visuals that we learn about what they and fellow migrants experience.

Asri contributes much of the poetry presented in Taman-taman, including a poem about a worker who picks up his girlfriend on an electric scooter. We do get to see Indonesian scooter enthusiasts hanging out in the park, and a group—either the same one or another—singing together, but other than these, we don’t observe the discussed events. Though using this elliptical technique can make the audience feel detached, it means the film avoids exploitation of the subjects’ struggles for the sake of drama, a risk of documentary filmmaking.

Speaking of the scooter enthusiasts, they appear in one of those parts that feels contrived. Because it is. After Asri and Hans talk about the scooterists, they get up from a table and walk through the park. Scooterists soon circle around them in a neat line, and the two carry on as if nothing’s unusual. In a Q&A session at the 35th Singapore International Film Festival (SGIFF35), director So Yo-hen said that the first time they shot this scene, some scooterists did appear but not as many. After the filmmakers got more scooterists, Asri and Hans repeated the scene.

I’m guessing the decision to recreate the scene this way was to maintain viewer interest. I recall hearing light laughter from the audience at this moment.

But I wonder if there’s some other reason for the fictional elements in the film. For example, the radio station that Asri and Hans pretend to run, inspired by stones with embedded speakers found around the park. The two sit in a guard hut when they “host” their radio show. With its bright red lightbulb acting like an on-air sign, the hut does look as if it could be a studio. Hans blends Indonesian and Mandarin to come up with the name Ini Radio Yinni, meaning “This is Radio Indonesia”. The concept of the programme is to share stories of Indonesian migrants in Taiwan, accompanied by readings of poetry inspired by these experiences.

In a Facebook post from May, Asri says that the Taman-taman “film project sought to give voice to the experiences of migrant workers in Taiwan, with all the ups and downs of their lives”. So why blend fiction and reality? Why not use non-fiction material only? Why do we mainly hear about the experiences of migrant workers through Asri and Hans, and not through the people they speak about as well?

According to a bio provided by the 12th Momentum biennale, So Yo-hen and his filmmaking group Your Bros. “take filmmaking as a method to re-interpret reality.” In film critic Jason Tan Liwag’s review of Dorm (2021), a previous work by the group, he states that “documentary is not reality itself, but a reflection, refraction, and reconstruction of an accumulation of experiences.” Maybe this is what Your Bros. are trying to get the audience to remember.

Throughout Taman-taman, the filmmakers remind us that what we see is through their lenses. The opening scene directly shows us one crew member who’s helping to set up the shot. We also hear a voice telling Asri and Hans, who describe their roles in the film as “actors”, that they can start. Each time Ini Radio Yinni “airs”, the hosts tell listeners not to worry if they see people filming in Tainan Park, because the film might not actually be made. In the last scene that Asri appears in, there’s crew members onscreen again—well, the shadows of them and their filmmaking equipment are onscreen, all following Asri.

After my first watch, I thought it was unlikely that I’d write a full-length review of Taman-taman. I related to Asri during a scene in which he and Hans discuss their thoughts on the project so far. Asri says he’s tired of filming and doesn’t even understand what message the filmmakers are trying to convey. I couldn’t see where the film was going and was getting bored. On the other hand, Hans seems satisfied with the idea of letting the audience come up with their own ideas and says that the more he works on this project, the more interested he gets.

In the process of writing this review, I realised Taman-taman is more intriguing than I originally thought. I still relate more to Asri’s confusion than to Hans’ playful curiosity, though.

Rating: 3.5/5

Warning: Full spoilers ahead

My invite to the screening of The Fable at the 35th Singapore International Film Festival. Director Raam Reddy and lead actor Manoj Bajpayee were in attendance.

Director: Raam Reddy Runtime: 119 minutes Languages: Hindi, English, and Pahari audio; English subtitles Certification: PG (Singapore)

“How much knowledge do you need to have to engage with something in a meaningful way?” I was reminded of this question posed by the video essay Reading Binging Benning (2018) while writing my review of The Fable (2024). The video essayists were commissioned by the International Film Festival Rotterdam to introduce a screening of James Benning’s Readers (2017)—but they had no access to the film. They had two stills, detailed information about the film, and access to some of Benning’s other works, but these don’t replace the film itself.

My situation with The Fable isn’t as drastic as these video essayists’, since I actually did watch it. There was even a pre-screening introduction from the director himself, who expressed an intention behind the film: he wanted the audience to undergo a “spiritual” experience.

I did not have this experience.

I've been granted the Cinephile Pass for the 35th Singapore International Film Festival, alhamdulillah!

What's this pass about?

"The Cinephile Pass lets you enjoy unlimited film screenings* and cover the festival for any platform of your choice — including but not limited to traditional media platforms as well as digital platforms such as podcasts, Substack, YouTube, TikTok —  all while maintaining full editorial freedom." (sgiff.com)