Blog Archives

Canopy (2013)

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Posted on April 13, 2014 by Yee-Yin

With its Australian premiere this week at the Gold Coast Film Festival, Canopy is an Australian-Singaporean co-production that was a passion project eight years in the making for director Aaron Wilson and producer Katrina Fleming.

Set during the days of the Battle of Singapore in 1942, the film opens with the plane of WWII RAAF pilot Jim (Khan Chittenden) being shot down over the island. He parachutes out to safety, only to find himself in the thick of a … (read more)

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Ilo Ilo (2013)

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Posted on December 2, 2013 by Yee-Yin

Based on the director’s own childhood memories and experiences, Ilo Ilo is a low-key and intimate look at family life in the age of modernization in Singapore, in the midst of the late 1990s’ Asian Financial Crisis. It tells the story of Terry, a domestic worker from the province Ilo Ilo in The Philippines and her adjustment to her host environs and new life as a maid in a middle class household, hired by fulltime working parents to mind their … (read more)

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Cinema Asia (2007)

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Posted on April 22, 2012 by Justin
Cinema Asia is a series covering some of the history and the state today (well, in 2007 when it was made) of five cinema industries in Asia: China, Taiwan, South Korea, India and Iran. Each episode takes a look at the the background of each national cinema, the things that make it unique, and cuts together interviews with actors, critics and prominent directors.
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The Warrior and the Wolf (Lang Zai Ji) (2009)

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Posted on December 2, 2009 by Elizabeth Kerr

Wolves have a storied place in mythology and folklore ranging from reverence to revulsion. Wolves tend to be venerated in Native American cultures – but it’s just a tendency. Romulus and Remus were wolves and they founded Rome. We’ve all been warned to ‘beware of wolves in sheep’s clothing’, and we know how poor Red Riding Hood fared. And, uh, hello … werewolves? Based on a story by Akutagawa-winner Inoue Yasushi, The Warrior and the Wolf is a three-part meditation … (read more)

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15 (2003)

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Posted on March 3, 2007 by Eugene

The general impression of Singapore is of an over-bearing, authoritarian city-state, whose citizens sacrafice certain civil liberties in return for an efficient and spotless metropolis

Like Hero, minor sacrafices for the greater good.

Unlike Hero, there is no nobility or glory in being an unwilling sacrifice.

15 is a film about being amongst those sacrifices. The juveniles unable or unwilling to fit in and be productive members of society are the central protagonists, operating in pairs, occasionally with … (read more)

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Rice Rhapsody (2004)

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Posted on October 18, 2004 by James

Some people swing towards chicken, others to duck, but sometimes its takes time and experience for individuals to figure out their preference. Jen’s youngest son is one such confused soul, unsure whether he’s sexually drawn to the new age femme from Europe or his bicycling playmate from the sandpit days … or neither, or both. Meanwhile, Kim Chui knows he’s in love with Jen but she stubbornly refuses to get involved with another man, and certainly not with the owner … (read more)

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