Oct–Dec 2012 Cinémathèque Quarterly

Transcription

Cinémathèque
Quarterly
71454_nms_quarterly_COVER_OK.indd 3
Oct–Dec
2012
10/10/12 8:32 AM
“I could not sleep, I saw
the lights, I kept staring at
the lights till morning…”
– Zubir Said, on the glimmering
city of Singapore which he
first saw when arriving on a
cargo boat in 1928
10/10/12 8:32 AM
Contents
4
Editor’s Note
6
8
12
World Cinema Series
O Drakos / The Fiend of Athens by Nikos Koundouros
Les Enfants du Paradis / Children of Paradise by Marcel Carné
16
MAJULAH! The Film Music of Zubir Said
22
Perspectives Film Festival
40
Writings on Cinema
Documenting Affect: Yangtze Scribbler, Jalan Jati and
All the Lines Flow Out by Ho Rui An
Addendum: The Quiet Man Continues by Noel Vera
54
Interview Yusnor Ef
70
Word on the Ground When the Nusantara Rocked…by Bobby Dread
76
Write to Us
77
Credits
78
About Us
79
Ticketing Information
80
Getting to the Museum
24
71454_nms_text_ok.indd 1
10/8/12 4:28 PM
2
10/8/12 4:28 PM
3
10/8/12 4:28 PM
Dang Anom (1962) by Hussain Haniff
Image © Cathay-Keris Films Pte Ltd
Editor's Note
Though this quarter features a mélange of both European and Asian films –
some restored, some rediscovered – the overarching focus is on the Nusantara,
an old Javanese term coined over seven hundred years ago to encapsulate what
we know today as Indonesia.
From the 10th to 20th of October, we’ll be celebrating the film music of cultural
icon Zubir Said, the man best known in Singapore (at least, by those who don’t
remember the Golden Age of Malay cinema) as the composer of Singapore’s
national anthem. The programme pays kudos to Said’s classical, poetically
inclined compositional style through the films for which he wrote the score.
Originally from the Minangkabau highlands of Indonesia, Zubir nevertheless
became a Singapore fixture. That seemingly small fact characterised the rich film
and music industry of the 1940s–1960s. Nusantara – which originally defined
the Indonesian islands – came to define the Malay Archipelago as a whole.
Those who used it meant it to include Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei and in some
instances, even the Philippines.
In our interview section this issue, we speak to yet another legend, Yusnor Ef,
a teacher, lyricist, composer, producer and film historian who has written well
over 250 songs for countless popular Malay singers. Cikgu Yusnor tells us why
Singapore was the centre of the arts industry in the 1960s and how the fluid
political and cultural boundaries created a collaborative artistic community.
Cikgu Yusnor’s remarks on the complexity and diversity inherent in Malay music
are echoed by long-time musician Bobby Dread, who writes about growing up
listening to Radio 2 (a Malay radio station, now called Warna) and discovering
the eclectic Malay Nusantara bands of the 1980s.
In our essays section, veteran Filipino film critic Noel Vera mourns the passing
of legendary Filipino filmmaker Mario O’Hara in late June this year, but avoids
eulogising. Instead, he re-visits an essay he wrote a decade ago, re-works
4
10/8/12 4:28 PM
his thoughts and tells us why O’Hara’s contributions as a scriptwriter, theatre
director and filmmaker were integral to the nation’s filmic landscape.
Writer Ho Rui An turns his attention to three films shown at this year’s
Singapore Short Cuts: Yangtze Scribbler (Tan Pin Pin, 2012), All the Lines Flow
Out (Charles Lim, 2011) and Jalan Jati (Lucy Davis, 2012). Reading
them with a Deleuzian eye, he invites the reader to consider ‘affect’, which
can be felt, but is not an emotion.
For the World Cinema Series, we feature Marcel Carné’s Les Enfants du
Paradis / Children of Paradise (1945), that roving portrait of 19th century
Paris, shot in a country occupied at the time by the Nazis. Audiences will enjoy
a version that has been beautifully restored by Pathé and the Jérôme SeydouxPathé Foundation.
The well-known classic is joined by an obscure 1956 film by Greek director
Nikos Koundouros called O Drakos / The Fiend of Athens. Interest in the film
spiked when writer Jonathan Franzen devoted sections of his novel Freedom
to describing it through two characters who debate what the film means. Prints
of O Drakos with English subtitles were, until recently, unavailable. Thankfully,
audiences curious about Koundourous’ work (at one time, called the Orson
Welles of Greece) can watch the film on the big screen.
A positive highlight for the quarter is the Singapore Film Festival (1st–3rd
October) that will take place in Delhi, India. The Cinémathèque was invited
for the second time this year to put together a short programme featuring
works by Singaporean filmmakers (the first was from 12–20th May, for the
Sintok Film Festival in Tokyo). Organised by the Singapore High Commission
in Delhi, the programme is the first of its kind in the Indian city and will feature
Sandcastle by Boo Junfeng, 881 by Royston Tan, Red Dragonflies by Liao Jiekai
and Singapore GaGa by Tan Pin Pin. If it is a sign of things to come, perhaps
Singaporean films will start travelling to other shores outside of the film festival
circuit, thereby reaching a wider audience in the long-run.
Vinita Ramani Mohan
Editor
Cinémathèque Quarterly
5
10/8/12 4:28 PM
6
10/8/12 4:28 PM
Les Enfants du Paradis / Children of Paradise (1945) by Marcel Carné
Image: Collection Fondation Jéròme Seydoux-Pathé © 1945 – PATHÉ PRODUCTION
World
Cinema
Series
13 November, 6 December / 7.30 pm
Gallery Theatre, Basement
$9 / $7.40 Concession
Prices inclusive of SISTIC fee
A programme of the National Museum Cinémathèque
World Cinema Series is a monthly screening of works by the boldest and
most inventive auteurs across the world, from renowned classics to neglected
masterpieces. Witness the wonders, possibilities, textures as well as the
revelatory moments that have contributed to the rich history of cinema. Take a
leap of faith and discover the art of cinema that continues to affect and inspire
us on the big screen – as it was meant to be seen – with the World Cinema
Series, shown every second Tuesday of the month at the National Museum
of Singapore.
7
10/8/12 4:28 PM
World Cinema Series
Tuesday, 13 November, 7.30 pm
O Drakos / The Fiend of Athens
Director Nikos Koundouros
1956 / Greece / 103 min / 35mm / Ratings TBC
In Greek with English subtitles
Image courtesy of Alkisti Athanasopoulou
8
10/8/12 4:28 PM
World Cinema Series
O Drakos, an obscure Greek film from 1956 recently re-surfaced in Jonathan
Franzen’s Freedom, a novel that went on to become an instant bestseller and
received glowing reviews from literary critics worldwide. The film follows a timid
little man, working as a clerk, alone and disillusioned on New Year’s Eve. On his
way home, he realises he possesses an uncanny resemblance to a renowned
serial killer whose photograph has just been published in the newspaper. The
word drakos (monster or dragon) is the Greek term for serial killers or rapists.
He soon finds himself running away, as everyone he knows including the police
mistake him for the Monster. A gang of awestruck crooks rescues him from
imminent arrest and forces him to take charge of a desperate criminal scheme
they have got going. The poor man becomes enamoured of the idea and
decides for once in his sad life to be a tough guy and a hero. He surrenders
to his bizarre destiny: to be “The Fiend of Athens.”
An immediate feature of O Drakos is the violent contrasts between light and
darkness. A primordial conflict permeates the film with an atmosphere of
disillusionment and a sense of foreboding. This is derived as much from the
characters depicted as the cinematographer’s art. In essence, this distinctive
feature is a significant characteristic of the sub-genre film noir which is
founded on the principle of contrastive lighting and highly stylised visuals
and narratives. A femme fatale, another primary film noir characteristic, inhabits
O Drakos’ shadowy world. As a sub-genre of the crime and thriller movie, film
noir had reached its maturity the year before with the release of Robert Aldrich’s
Kiss Me Deadly (1955). From 1956, film noir became a recognised genre.
Many films that were subsequently considered film noir masterpieces were
released, including Alfred Hitchcock’s similar themed The Wrong Man, Fritz
Lang’s Beyond a Reasonable Doubt and While the City Sleeps, and Stanley
Kubrick’s The Killing.
While O Drakos shares many visual and thematic preoccupations with the
so-called film noir genre, director Nikos Koundouros went beyond the genre
conventions in often startling ways. The all-consuming film noir aesthetic is
strikingly juxtaposed with that of a cinematic realism - neo-realism, the kind
perfected by the post-war Italian filmmakers. Other than the lead actors,
the rest of the cast are non-professionals. O Drakos married disparate and
improbable styles and while it was rejected by the critics of the day, the film
was a harbinger of cinematic art in Greece.
9
10/8/12 4:28 PM
World Cinema Series
Image courtesy of Alkisti Athanasopoulou
10
10/8/12 4:28 PM
World Cinema Series
Nikos Koundouros
Born in Aghios Nikolas (Crete) in 1926, Nikos Koundouros studied
painting and sculpture at the School of Fine Arts in Athens. He was
sent to the island of Macronissos to serve in the military because of his
anti-government sentiments. His theatre career began there. He turned to
cinema with Magic City (1954), a film in which he combined neo-realism
with an eye for imagery. O Drakos (1956), a composite and pioneering
work which he made in 1956, established Koundouros as a genuine
representative of the new age of Greek cinema. In the years of Greece’s
dictatorship, Koundouros lived in Paris, Rome and London. Following the
fall of the military junta he returned to Greece and served as a consultant
on cinema to the Minister of Culture and president of the Greek Film
Directors Guild. Some of Nikos Koundouros' films, decidedly avant-garde
for their time and for Greece, influenced many directors of the New
Greek Cinema. His films have earned him international recognition and
acclaim as one of the foremost directors in Greek cinema.
11
10/8/12 4:28 PM
World Cinema Series
Thursday, 6 December, 7.30 pm
Les Enfants du Paradis / Children of Paradise
Director Marcel Carné
Scriptwriter Jacques Prévert
1945 / France / 194 min / DCP / Rating TBC
In French with English subtitles
Co-presented with Institut français Singapour
12
10/8/12 4:28 PM
World Cinema Series
In Les Enfants du Paradis, the French masterpiece directed by Marcel Carné
and written by Jacques Prévert, the French theatrical world of the 1840s comes
to life along the string of theatres and diners lining the historical Boulevard du
Crime in Paris, which was recreated in a studio. Along the boulevard, boisterous
crowds from stage actors, to criminals, dandies and people of all classes, gather
in a carnivalesque spectacle. Pathos and romance overflow in this portrait of
Parisian life as the magic of the theatre seeps out of the theatre halls within the
narrative, spilling over onto the streets, imbuing the crowds with a dramatic and
burgeoning passion that dissolves the distinction between fiction and reality,
and art and everyday life.
Centred at the Le Théâtre des Funambules, the film focuses on the relationship
between the beautiful and mysterious Garance and four men vying for her
love: Baptiste Deburau the mime artist who echoes Jean-Gaspard Deburau,
the legendary creator of the 19th century Pierrot pantomime; the charismatic
actor and playwright Frédérick Lemaître; the thief and anarchist Pierre-François
Lacenaire; and the oppressive aristocrat Count Éduard of Monteray. As their
lives intertwine, we witness the consequences of their actions rippling through
this quadrangle relationship in a plot filled with betrayal, deceit and unrequited
love. Yet through Carné’s sensitive expressions emerge a sense of destiny, a
fatalistic yet truthful acceptance of one’s fate, and an inviolable idea of dignity
amidst tragedy.
Les Enfants du Paradis is a triumphant hallmark of poetic realism and one of
the most celebrated films in the history of French cinema. It was shot in Nice
from 1943 to 1944, when France was occupied by the Nazis. The production
team also included the brilliant set designer Alexandre Trauner, who as a Jew,
had to work on the set discretely to avoid prosecution by the Nazis. The film has
been read as an allegory of the French spirit of resistance and Marcel Carné
deliberately held the completed film till 1945, when it was released to great
acclaim at the dawn of the liberation of France.
Les Enfants du Paradis was restored by Pathé in partnership with the
Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé. The film will be introduced by Mrs
Sophie Seydoux, Chairman of the Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé.
13
10/8/12 4:28 PM
World Cinema Series
14
10/8/12 4:28 PM
World Cinema Series
Marcel Carné
Marcel Carné is arguably the most prominent figure of the poetic realism
movement in French cinema. He was born in 1906 in Montmartre, Paris.
Carné attended evening classes on cinematography and soon entered
the film world as an assistant to directors such as Jacques Feyder,
Richard Oswald, Alexander Korda and René Clair. At the same time, he
established himself as a film critic for Cinémonde and Cinemagazine
between 1929 and 1933, and made his first short film Nogent Eldorado
du Dimanche in 1929, followed by a slate of features such as Le Quai
des brumes / Port of Shadows (1938) and Le Jour se lève / Daybreak
(1939), in which he established a long working relationship with
screenwriter Jacques Prévert. The years when France was occupied by
the Nazis is often regarded as the watershed period of Carné’s career.
While most filmmakers fled the country, Carné stayed on to make Les
Visiteurs du Soir / The Devil’s Envoys (1942) and the highly celebrated
Les Enfants du Paradis / Children of Paradise (1945). Carné continued
to direct films through the ’50s to the ’70s, but was soon overshadowed
by the onset of the French New Wave.
Co-presented with
With the kind support of
15
71454_nms_text_FA.indd 15
10/9/12 10:56 AM
16
10/8/12 4:28 PM
Imgae Courtesy of Puan Sri Datin Dr Rohana Zubir
MAJULAH!
The Film Music
of Zubir Said
10–20 October / Various Timings
A Programme of the National Museum Cinémathèque
With support from Cathay-Keris Films Pte Ltd, Malay Heritage Centre, Shaw
Organisation Pte Ltd and Singapore Malay Film Society
Although best known as the composer of Singapore's national anthem Majulah
Singapura and the Children’s Day song Semoga Bahagia, Zubir Said was also
a prolific composer of film music, and left an indelible mark on the Malay films
of the golden age of Singapore cinema from the 1940s to 1960s. Zubir Said
worked as a film music composer for 16 years, starting at Shaw’s Malay Film
Productions and later at Cathay-Keris. During this period, he pioneered the use
of voice-dubbing for Malay films and composed the music score and songs for
some of the most iconic and memorable films of Singapore’s cinema heritage
such as Dang Anom (1962), Chuchu Datok Merah (1963) and Sumpah
Pontianak (1958). From 10th–20th October 2012, on the 25th anniversary year
of Zubir Said’s passing, the National Museum of Singapore will pay tribute to the
film music legacy of one of Singapore’s greatest music icons with a programme
comprising of a series of 11 classic Malay films with new English subtitles
featuring some of his most beloved and memorable film music compositions.
17
10/8/12 4:28 PM
Schedule
Wednesday 10 October (by invitation)
7.15 pm
Thursday 11 October
8.00 pm
Chinta (1948) by B.S. Rajhans
Friday 12 October
8.00 pm
Rachun Dunia (1950) by B.S. Rajhans
Saturday 13 October
8.00 pm
Sumpah Pontianak (1958) by B.N. Rao
Sunday 14 October
4.00 pm
Bawang Puteh Bawang Merah (1959) by S. Roomai Noor
Monday 15 October
8.00 pm
Tunang Pak Dukun (1960) by S. Roomai Noor
Tuesday 16 October
8.00 pm
Sri Mersing (1961) by Salleh Ghani
Wednesday 17 October
8.00 pm
Chelorong Cheloreng (1962) by S. Roomai Noor
18
10/8/12 4:28 PM
Schedule
Thursday 18 October
8.00 pm
Jula Juli Bintang Tujoh (1962) by B.N. Rao
Friday 19 October
8.00 pm
Saturday 20 October
4.00 pm
Gila Talak (1963) by Hussain Haniff
8.00 pm
Chuchu Datok Merah (1963) by M. Amin
Chinta (1948)
Chuchu Datok Merah (1963)
Tunang Pak Dukun (1960)
Gila Talak (1963)
19
10/8/12 4:28 PM
10/8/12 4:28 PM
10/8/12 4:28 PM
Sri Mersing (1961) by Salleh Ghani
Image © Cathay-Keris Films Pte Ltd
Ying & Summer (2011) by Gladys Ng
22
10/8/12 4:28 PM
Perspectives
Film Festival
8–11 November / Various Timings
The Perspectives Film Festival: Breakthroughs in Cinema returns this year with
another exciting and daring theme – sexuality. Organised annually by students
from NTU, Perspectives 2012 will feature films that explore sexuality’s impact
and influence on love, fear, death, psychology, gender relations and deviance.
The films which hail from countries as far as Romania, Turkey, India and Korea,
demonstrate how sexuality is not independent of daily life, but rather, an integral
part of it. The films curated aim to explore the complexities of human nature and
showcase the multiple ways that directors from a variety of cultures and time
periods have approached the topic.
More information on the films, screening schedule and venues are available
at www. perspectivesfilmfestival.com. To receive the latest updates on
Perspectives Film Festival, check out the Facebook page (www.facebook.com/
PerspectivesFF).
23
10/8/12 4:28 PM
10/8/12 4:28 PM
10/8/12 4:28 PM
All the Lines Flow Out (2011) by Charles Lim
Writings on Cinema
Documenting
Affect: Yangtze
Scribbler, Jalan Jati
and All the Lines
Flow Out
Ho Rui An
What exactly is affect, which can be felt but is not
quite emotion? Building on existing conceptions of
affect as "pre-personal" intensity, Ho Rui An considers
how short films Yangtze Scribbler, Jalan Jati and
All the Lines Flow Out seek to capture affect in all its
complexity and elusiveness.
How do we begin to plot a line of thought across a
selection of short films that include works as diverse as
Yangtze Scribbler (2012), Jalan Jati / Teak Road (2012)
and All the Lines Flow Out (2011)? Going by crude
categorisations, the first is a documentary, the second
an animation and the third an idiosyncratic creature that
crosses the thresholds of cinematic arthouse into the
brave, unruly world of the “artist’s film”. Yet all three films
26
10/8/12 4:28 PM
Documenting Affect
screened under the same programme for this year’s
edition of Singapore Short Cuts complemented each
other effortlessly.
Perhaps we can start with a proposition: All three are,
despite their appearances, documentaries, insofar as they
are constituted by endeavours to document. In Yangtze
Scribbler — perhaps the only film among the three that
can be unequivocally called a documentary — we are
introduced to the work of artist and amateur archivist
Debbie Ding who, in her ongoing quest to document the
signs and symbols of Singapore’s urban environment,
stumbles upon a strange set of inscriptions scrawled
on the walls of a dingy stairwell in Yangtze Cinema. The
six-minute short is by Singapore’s leading documentary
filmmaker, Tan Pin Pin, who has in her previous works
documented the country’s vanishing landscapes and
cultural practices, as seen in Moving House (2001),
as well as the work of the very people involved in
the preservation and documentation of the country’s
ephemera, as seen in Invisible City (2008). But curiously,
in Yangtze Scribbler, the subject of the documentary
is neither Ding nor the cryptic inscriptions she has
encountered, but the encounter itself — specifically, its
affects. Here, affect refers not to emotion, for emotion
is intensity already captured and qualified by a sensing
body that makes possible the utterance of one’s feelings
as “happy” or “sad”. Affect is really more of a force — the
sense we get of something acting upon us but which has
yet to be assimilated into our subjectivity and to “make
sense” to us on the level of the body. In the words of
Guattari, it is a “pre-personal” intensity, residing neither
within a subject (the documenteur) nor an object (the tobe-documented) but in the transferences between them.1
In this light, what Yangtze Scribbler attempts to document
are not the uncanny inscriptions in themselves, but their
27
10/8/12 4:28 PM
Writings on Cinema
becomings — emergences upon a horizon of experience
that a body attempts to own, recognise and qualify, albeit
to no avail.2
Yangtze Scribbler, Jalan Jati and All the Lines Flow Out
all seek to document affect. This also means that they
are impossible projects, for affect, strictly speaking,
cannot be documented. As intensities that cannot be
qualified, affects resist capture, or at least any attempt
at apprehending them can only be provisional, thwarted
eventually by how they constantly, erratically exceed
themselves. Affects are real insofar as they can be felt as
“incipience”3 and virtual insofar as they carry “unactualised
capacities to affect and be affected”.4 Thus, while they
cannot be documented, they can still be registered, as
feelings, sensations or orientations towards the things
through which affects circulate — may it be the scribbles
uncovered by Ding, an old teak bed in Jalan Jati or a city’s
subterranean network of waterways in All the Lines Flow
Out. These registrations denote the movements of affect,
its rhythms and obstinacies, attractions and repulsions,
and are what form the subjects of the three films in lieu
of the unwieldy affects that they try to capture but can’t.
Serendipitously, this accidental triptych of films also
constructs across itself a progression of sorts that maps
out the multitudes of affect: what begins with Tan’s film
as a modest but nonetheless fascinating observation on
the “autonomy” of affect moves on to examine affect’s
circulation in larger affective economies in Jalan Jati,
eventually culminating with All the Lines Flow Out, which
draws attention to how the film itself is implicated as a
body entrenched within the circulatory economies of
affect. There is a corresponding transformation of the
cinematic form: from Yangtze Scribbler to All the Lines
Flow Out, codes of documentary are progressively
ruptured as the movements of affect become more
28
10/8/12 4:28 PM
Documenting Affect
profuse and schizophrenic, testing the mimetic capacities
of cinema and demanding for new filmic ontologies. From
the detritus of the pulverised documentary of affect arises
a new creature: the affective documentary.
Yangtze Scribbler
Yangtze Scribbler begins with a voiceover by Ding that
reminisces over the times when she worked near Yangtze
Cinema and would frequent the coffee shop in its vicinity.
This plays against observational shots of the coffee
shop and cinema. The Yangtze, as Ding informs, has a
reputation for exclusively screening R-rated films, and
this excites the psychogeographer in her who has always
been interested in seeking out Singapore’s “alternative
cinemas”.5 She then starts to recount the first time she
encountered the aforementioned scribbles in the stairwell
of the cinema. The camerawork becomes shakier as the
filmmaker ventures into the grimy stairwell, ostensibly
taking on Ding’s point of view. There we find the scribbles:
three rows of hastily scrawled digits accompanied by two
Yangtze Scribbler (2012) by Tan Pin Pin
29
10/8/12 4:28 PM
Writings on Cinema
stickmen figures, encapsulated in an oval. They appear
on every floor, taking on a generally consistent form.
Ding speculates on their meanings:
“The thing is the numbers don’t really make sense as
dates. It’s not really the size of people, or girls, or phone
numbers... It could be gang messages, or a message to
someone?”6
Evidently, these inscriptions cannot work on the level
of signs for Ding, for she is not privy to its mode of
codification. To her, they are akin to hieroglyphs left by an
alien society. Nevertheless, she photographs and uploads
them onto her ever-expanding digital archive on Flickr
which, as an archive of obscure inscriptions, does not
seem to follow any taxonomic or hermeneutical principle.
For one, she does not group her photographs into
categories. She merely tags the location at which
the photograph was taken.
Given this, what is captured in Ding’s archive cannot be
accurately described as signs and symbols. Neither can
they be reduced to purely asignifying marks, for they still
possess the potential to be captured and (re-)inserted
into “semantically and semiotically formed progressions”.7
Instead, what her archive really seeks to document
are the affects of her encounterings, the inscriptions’
becomings, but as affects cannot ultimately be seized and
fixed, her archive is really more of a registry, in which the
intensities she encounters are not so much documented
as registered. Her photographs simultaneously mark
presence and absence, each an expression of the capture
of affect and of the fact that “something has always
and again escaped”.8 Furthermore, by amassing them
in a public archive, Ding disseminates these points of
potential, opening them to further captures and escapes.
30
10/8/12 4:28 PM
Documenting Affect
In her words:
“I hope, when I put them online... this information is still
searchable by others. I might not have the sufficient
imagination to think of all the stories in the world. But
maybe other people out there will have their own take
on things.”9
Implicit in Ding’s reflection is the acknowledgement that
affect is autonomous, and it is its partial immersion in
virtuality that lends it autonomy. Bodies that receive affect
select lines of movements and narratives of meaning to
be actualised locally10 while allowing others to escape;
there will always be a remainder, an excess, a flight.11 The
question that then begs to be addressed is what becomes
of these excesses as they continue to circulate through
and across bodies. To what kind of an affective future does
Ding’s archive open? But, alas, that is beyond what the
film can cover in its very short duration.
In a way, Yangtze Scribbler merely scratches the surface
of the affective, for the complexities of affect are truly only
revealed when it is passed on within an entire circuit of
bodies, accumulating impressions like a palimpsest. But
this is what also makes the film a fitting preamble to Jalan
Jati and All the Lines Flow Out, films which not only seek
to document such affective complexes, but also work on
the level of affect, as we shall see.
Jalan Jati
As a film composed mostly of cutouts and drawings
animated through stopmotion, Jalan Jati is a strange
beast. The brainchild of visual artist Lucy Davis, the
film is part of a larger multidisciplinary project that sees
an intrepid team of artists and scientists travel from
Singapore to Muna Island in Southeast Sulawesi in
31
10/8/12 4:28 PM
Writings on Cinema
Jalan Jati / Teak Road (2012) by Lucy Davis
search of the material origins of a teak bed found in
a local karang guni junk store, aided by DNA timber
tracking technology. The film traces their journey as they
transverse not just physical and cultural geographies, but
also epistemological ones, in the process endeavouring
to coalesce the drifting plateaus of science and magic,
the positivist and the animist. The result is a nervous and
hypnotic foliation of visual and aural textures, comprising
animated woodcuts, DNA prints, charcoal drawings, old
photographs and text dancing in small, tentative steps to
a luscious and at times, discordant soundscape of field
recordings, folk songs and synthetic tunes.
The film is divided into various sequences each introduced
by an intertitle, the language of which suggests an
anthropomorphism of the materialities explored in the film.
The opening sequence, for instance, is titled, “A Teak Bed
Remembers”. Correspondingly, it opens with an animated
drawing of a seemingly anthropomorphic bed frame that
32
10/8/12 4:29 PM
Documenting Affect
appears to be breathing as the lines recede and expand in
undulating fashion, eventually morphing into a double helix
resembling DNA. Yet, the language through which the film
speaks is not meant to be metaphorical. One is supposed
to take literally the idea that non-living and non-human
entities are capable of memory. How is that possible?
Such vocabularies are made available to us through the
logic of affects. In fact, the journey that Jalan Jati traces
is precisely an affective one, in which beds, boats, birds,
islands and of course humans serve as bodies through
which affects circulate, with bodies here defined by a
“potential to reciprocate or co-participate in the passages
of affect”,12 to affect and be affected. This is made most
evident in the intertitles that read “Teak Uses Humans to
Colonize Southeast Asia” and “The Teak Bed Sends Four
Humans from Singapore to Muna Island and Back Again”.
What appears to be an ironic inversion of the subjectobject relation is in fact an articulation of the affective
transferences between equivalent bodies.
The affective journey described in Jalan Jati has no definite
points of origin or destination, only multiple entryways,
exits and lines of flight in and out of the narrative.13 Instead
of tracing arborealities and chronologies, we are made to
transverse bodies in time and space, always suspended
in the middle of things. When there are references and
allusions to specific histories, such as the fifties to eighties
timber boom in Muna that eventually left both the island’s
ecology and its inhabitant’s livelihoods in ruins, they are
framed as affective events. In the sequence, “An Island
Remembers a Timber Boom–Muna”, for instance, a quote
by the Pentiro Village head recorded in 2010 mentions
how during the timber boom, the island was so overrun by
teak that one “could walk on wood all the way to the sea”.
It is an anecdote that resounds with haptic evocations,
33
10/8/12 4:29 PM
Writings on Cinema
suggesting almost a “woodification” of the island, as
wood—its touch, smell, density, heat, speed—begins to
permeate the affective horizons of the islanders; in other
words, the becoming-wood of the island, to invoke the
language of Deleuze and Guattari. The becoming-wood
here is an affect, a “[mode] of expansion, propagation,
occupation, contagion, peopling”14 that can, by another
movement, be expressed as a becoming-boat, a
becoming-bird or a becoming-human. No longer are there
the discrete entities of wood, bird, boat or human, only the
becomings that occur between and across them.
But what is most radical about Jalan Jati is that it does
not merely describe these affective passages through
linguistic means. It mimes them, seeking to reproduce
the sensational resonances of these affective movements
through a cinema that works not on the level of signs, but
of skin. The very density of the mise-en-scène replete with
grainy, scratchy images evoking the textures of tree barks
has the effect of filling the screen to the point of producing
in the viewer a certain over-intensity of contact, as if we
have entered the wood’s fleshy body and become wood.
The hesitant, animatic-like animation also feels “wooden”.
Finally, there is the impossibly rich sound produced by Zai
Kuning and Zai Tang, which in its scratchings, crunchings,
creakings and fizzlings induce the sense of tactile bodies
rubbing off each other, of the stretching and pulling of skin.
By testing the skin of the film for its mimetic capacities,
Jalan Jati goes beyond being a mere documentary of
affect; it is a profound affection of the documentary form.
All the Lines Flow Out
If Jalan Jati has managed to affect and deconstruct the
documentary form, All the Lines Flow Out can be said to
complete the movement it has started by reconstituting
34
10/8/12 4:29 PM
Documenting Affect
from the remnants a new creature that is the affective
documentary. In the film by visual artist Charles Lim, there
are no provisions made at all for language (except for
one small segment), no attempts made at describing the
movements of affect. Instead, the entire duration of the
film is a sustained encounter with affect and its mediating
bodies. What is subliminal in Jalan Jati surfaces to the
realm of consciousness here as the film reaches beneath
the skin into our musculature and viscera, such that as
viewers, we gain awareness of the sense of our bodies
in space.
All the Lines Flow Out was filmed almost entirely in the
monsoon drains or longkangs of Singapore. It begins
with the slightest hint of a narrative: an anonymous man
is seen walking through a longkang, seemingly lost and
disenchanted. The music that plays is dramatic and
foreboding. But by the third minute of the film, all this gives
way to a purely affective experience of the city’s vast,
labyrinthine waterways. In the most memorable sequences
of the film, long takes of the longkangs shot from a boat
take us through underground passages, housing estates
and construction sites to finally end at the open sea, in the
process steeping us in a profound sensorium of stunning
imageries, intense sonorities and at times disorienting
perspectival shifts.
Our relationship with the film is no longer hermeneutical,
but self-consciously embodied. We are not only affected
by the film but are also aware of the bodies that are
reversibly affecting and being affected upon, specifically
those of the viewer and of the film. In naturalistic cinema,
these two “embodied acts of perception and expression”
that meet “in a coterminous perception of a world”15 are
made to appear as one and the same. We are made to
identify with the camera’s point of view, to take on the
35
10/8/12 4:29 PM
Writings on Cinema
film’s body as our own and to ignore our own bodily
presence in the cinema. However, in All the Lines Flow
Out, the film’s body invites us to enter it only to eventually
refuse us, snapping us out of our identification with it to be
resensitised to our own mode of embodiment, thus making
us contend with the fact that the two bodies experience
the world in radically different ways. The footage filmed
on the boat offers one instance of this, in which the overly
smooth movements of the camera exaggerate human
motion to the point that it becomes clearly non-human.
There is also the dramatic cut that occurs somewhere in
the middle of the film, when a shot moving towards an
unbearably noisy construction site abruptly cuts to one of
a quiet neighbourhood. The cut is shockingly visceral, as if
in that breath-stopping instant, we have been exhaled from
the film’s body and thrown back into our own.
It is at once a sobering and awe-inspiring moment. As
much as we have been returned to own bodily limits, we
have also been made aware of the presence of other
bodies — in fact, a whole constellation of bodies, of
which the film is just one of many.
36
10/8/12 4:29 PM
Documenting Affect
Ho Rui An is an artist and writer presently pursuing his studies in
Fine Art and History of Art at Goldsmiths, University of London,
under a Loke Cheng-Kim Foundation scholarship. In 2011,
he published his first novel, Several Islands, written based on
the memories and discourses surrounding Singapore’s first
independent contemporary arts space, The Substation. His critical
writings on contemporary art, film and performance can be found
on his website at www.opencontours.com
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
Pierre-Félix Guattari, “Ritornellos and Existential Affects,” in The
Guattari Reader, ed. Gary Genosko (London: Blackwell, 1996),
158.
Brian Massumi, Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect,
Sensation (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2002), 28.
Ibid, 30.
Manuel DeLanda, Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy
(London: Continuum, 2002), 62.
Yangtze Scribbler, DVD, directed by Tan Pin Pin (Singapore: 2012).
Ibid.
Massumi, 28.
Ibid, 35.
Tan.
Massumi, 41.
Ibid, 35.
Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth, “An Inventory of
Shimmers,” in The Affect Theory Reader, ed. Melissa Gregg
and Gregory J. Seigworth (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press,
2010), 2.
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus,
trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1987), 21.
Ibid, 239.
Vivian Sobchack, The Address of the Eye: A Phenomenology
of Film Experience (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1992), 173.
37
10/8/12 4:29 PM
10/8/12 4:29 PM
10/8/12 4:29 PM
All the Lines Flow Out (2011) by Charles Lim
Writings on Cinema
Addendum:
The Quiet Man
Continues
Noel Vera
Over ten years ago, film critic Noel Vera wrote an
essay about the reclusive Filipino filmmaker and
maverick Mario O’Hara, for a special programme at
the Singapore International Film Festival. On June 26,
O’Hara suddenly passed away. Here, Noel Vera returns
to that essay, remembers the man and his work and
tells us why O’Hara’s untimely passing has left a
gaping hole in the film industry of the Philippines.
It’s 2012, some eleven years since I’ve written “The Quiet
Man,” my original article covering (briefly, callowly) the
career of one who I believe was one of the best filmmakers
working in the Philippines.
The article didn’t change the world much, not even said
filmmakers’ career; he still worked away quietly in the
background, still came out with interesting films and, in
one case, a theatrical production that reworked one of his
most well-known scripts.
So once again, briefly and callowly:
40
10/8/12 4:29 PM
Addendum: The Quiet Man Continues
Insiang (1976) was arguably O’Hara’s finest, most famous
collaboration with long-time friend Lino Brocka. His script,
originally a one-hour TV episode, was expanded by Brocka
into a ninety-minute feature that went on to be the firstever Filipino film to screen at Cannes’ Director’s Fortnight.
O’Hara has since taken back the screenplay and reworked
it, setting the action in the Manila district of Pasay (where
it was originally – and more realistically – set), and adding
a narrator who, much like The Common Man in Robert
Bolt’s A Man for all Seasons (1966) provides footnotes
to the otherwise realistic story. The narrator is important;
it’s O’Hara’s way of claiming the play for his own, his
version of a story filmed by Brocka as the definitive slum
drama (with suitably squalid cinematography by the
great Conrado Baltazar), that had now become a drama
about the abuse of children and the possibly disastrous
consequences of such abuse.
Insiang (1976)
41
10/8/12 4:29 PM
Writings on Cinema
The ending – originally Brocka’s concession to the
censors of the time – was changed. The protagonist
speaks the same lines to her mother (“I was lying,
I never...”) but the tone and meaning is altogether different.
What in the original was a loosening of tension and
betrayal of Brocka’s uncompromising spirit has now
become a confirmation of that spirit, that the slums truly
eat their children. The production was successful enough
that Tanghalang Pilipino, the group that staged it in
2002, did a revival in 2007.
Babae sa Breakwater / Woman of the Breakwater (2003)
was O’Hara’s take on roughly the same subject as Lino
Brocka’s most famous work, Maynila sa Mga Kuko ng
Liwanag / Manila in the Claws of Neon (1975). Where
Brocka’s film focused on a provincial innocent corrupted
by the hell of Manila, O’Hara’s film was a touch more
lighthearted, if broader and more varied in scope: two
brothers, fleeing political terrorism in the countryside,
come to the Manila breakwater; there they find a
community of homeless people who have built makeshift
shacks along the bay’s shoreline. Violence, eroticism, and
a touch of magic realism ensue, all accompanied by a
traveling troubadour (Yoyoy Villame) singing folk ballads
that help transition from one scene to the next, comment
on the action, and set the overall tone and mood for this
lovely picture.
Ang Paglilitis ni Andres Bonifacio / The Trial of Andres
Bonifacio (2010) was O’Hara’s take on a lesser-known
but no less beloved Filipino hero. Where his film on the
life of fellow hero Jose Rizal (Sisa, 1998) used conjecture
and not a little prestidigitation (he contended that Sisa,
Rizal’s most famous literary creation, was a real woman
and Rizal’s true love), O’Hara, like Carl Dreyer with The
Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), takes the actual minutes
42
10/8/12 4:29 PM
Ang Paglilitis ni Andres Bonifacio / The Trial of Andres Bonifacio (2010)
of Bonifacio’s trial and uses them as the basis for his
script. Throw in, again, a magic commentator (played by
Miles Kanapi), staged excerpts from moro-moro (a genre
of Filipino folk theater) dance numbers (Bonifacio himself
used to be a moro-moro actor), and a lovely folk ballad
or two and you have, well, not a traditional film production
of an actual historical event but O’Hara’s interpretation
of one, as brilliantly idiosyncratic as his Sisa.
It is interesting to note that O’Hara, with his first-ever
digital production, again flouted film fashion and trends.
43
10/8/12 4:29 PM
Writings on Cinema
Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos / Three Years Without God (1976)
Unlike most filmmakers who went digital, he didn’t exploit
the medium’s obvious advantages (camera mobility, the
tendency to give one’s picture a handheld ’shaky-cam’
look). His camera setups were generally static, with an
emphasis on subtle mise-en-scène to give his images
power; he took his cue from the moro-moro and gave
both trial and musical interludes a claustrophobically
stagebound, inevitable feel – his unforced, unspoken
commentary on the validity of the entire judicial process.
O’Hara’s latest film to date was a return to his melodramatic roots. Back in the ’80s he was director of the
popular television soap Flordeluna; in 2011 he’s gone
back to directing a soap. Sa Ngalan ng Ina / In the Name
of the Mother was his return to prime-time television,
and his first collaboration with actress Nora Aunor, (who
had acted in Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos / Three Years
Without God [1976] and Bakit Bughaw ang Langit?
/ Why is the Sky Blue? [1981]) in over twenty years.
The series is a daringly political re-telling of the Corazon
Aquino story: wife and mother living a quiet life whose
husband is assassinated by a powerful rival, she is
forced to run against said rival herself – and win.
44
10/8/12 4:29 PM
That’s easily the most unbelievable part of the whole
story and, ironically, the story’s most genuinely trueto-life element. The mini-series has it all: sex, drugs,
corruption, violence, inter-family and intra-family conflict
– all set against a miniaturised backdrop of contemporary
Filipino politics. O’Hara’s directing here is remarkably
restrained: he uses simple, beautifully shot setups and
coaxes understated acting from his large cast, even when
they’re dealing with the most over-the-top situations. As
Elena Deogracias, the series’ housewife turned political
matriarch, Nora Aunor is remarkable: O’Hara often composes tumultuous panoramic images of chaos swirling
around her, with Elena as the still, sane center.
What was O’Hara like in the new millennium? He
reworked old material, resorting to sprinklings of fantasy,
of surrealism to spice things up a bit. He turned more
often to music and song, in the Brechtian manner, as a
means of keeping us distanced – intellectually as
opposed to emotionally engaged – from the material.
He was relentlessly experimenting; at the same time,
with Sa Ngalan Ng Ina, he demonstrated a still undiluted
mastery of the melodramatic form. He followed his own
instincts, marched to his own music, dwelt on his own
interests and obsessions. In short, he did what he’s
always done – worked quietly in the background without
our notice (most of the time), doing unique work, making
himself essential almost without meaning to.
And then of course, it all ended. On June 19, 2012 the
report came out over online social media that O’Hara had
been rushed to the emergency room due to symptoms of
acute leukemia; the family, respectful of his retiring nature,
withheld the hospital’s name (it was later revealed to be
San Juan de Dios). Brother Jerry O’Hara reported that
he responded well to chemotherapy. The optimism was
45
10/8/12 4:29 PM
Writings on Cinema
Ang Paglilitis ni Andres Bonifacio / The Trial of Andres Bonifacio (2010)
46
10/8/12 4:29 PM
Bulaklak Sa City Jail / Flower in the City Jail (1984)
47
10/8/12 4:29 PM
Writings on Cinema
premature: on the morning of June 26th word went out
that O’Hara had succumbed to cardiac arrest, the quiet
man silenced at last.
O’Hara was a crucial collaborator of Brocka’s, and it’s
possible to argue that he introduced a note of moral
ambiguity not found in Brocka’s other pictures – at the end
of Insiang, for example, one couldn’t really tell who was the
victim, who the victimiser; in Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang
(1974) the character O’Hara plays (Berto the Leper)
is first seen as a possible rapist. He took up Brocka’s
social-realist mode of storytelling (Bakit Bughaw ang
Langit? [1981]) and introduced baroque, even fabulist
variations with Mortal (1976) and The Fatima Buen Story
(1994); later in his career he managed to fashion a mode
of cinema inimitably his – imaginative in both form and
content, yet filled with political, sociological and historical
concerns (Pangarap ng Puso / Demons [2000],
Sisa [1998]).
Arguably O’Hara was more fluent than Brocka in at least
one or two dialects of the language of filmmaking. The
prison riot that climaxes Kastilyong Buhangin (1980), the
varied and at times elaborate fight sequences in Bagong
Hari (1986) confirm his status as one of Philippine
cinema’s finest action filmmakers; his use of pointedly
angled shots and distinctly staged mise-en-scène reveal
him to be the visual descendant of Gerardo de León
(and behind de León the classicists: Ford, Eisenstein
and Griffith).
O’Hara’s early training in radio possibly distinguished
him from other Filipino filmmakers of the ’70s, who mostly
hailed from Filipino theater: I submit that this training
helped free him (the way it freed another filmmaker active
in radio, stage and film) from the tyranny of the proscenium
48
10/8/12 4:29 PM
Sisa (1998)
arch, giving one the sense of watching a film film instead
of a film recording of a stage performance. Musical
cuing (Brocka’s weakness, according to O’Hara), sound
transitions, overlapping dialogue linked his images, subtly
amplified their cumulative emotional power. Moreover,
there was a fluidity to his editing (see Pangarap ng Puso,
where the montage of photo stills act like the flickerimages of memory), a constant bounding from reality
to fantasy and back (the protagonist’s schizophrenia in
Mortal, the children’s view of supernatural creatures in
the context of provincial life in Pangarap ng Puso) that
suggests not so much a spatial orientation as an aural
one, or at least one less limited by the unities of a specific
location – a heedless leaping across time and space and
49
10/8/12 4:29 PM
Writings on Cinema
emotion, taught to him by the equally fearless transitions
(from present to past, reality to fantasy, comedy to drama)
found in the radio shows of his childhood.
Not that he turned his back completely on theatricality.
In Babae sa Bubungang Lata / Woman on a Tin Roof
(1998) he would present large swathes of Joaquin’s
play as a play, as two characters moving about in a tiny
set with the camera just sitting there, drinking in their
performances; the plainness of the approach underlined
the plainness of their lives, their aspirations (this in
contrast to the film’s more fabulist characters, who are
shot in a variety of angles and lighting). In Ang Paglilitis
ni Andres Bonifacio, O’Hara’s first ever digital feature,
O’Hara refrains from taking advantage of digital video’s
most obvious virtues (the mobility of the equipment, the
ease in creating handheld, constantly moving shots) and
instead locks down the camera, viewing the actors with
an unblinking, dispassionate eye (if anything he takes
advantage of the digital medium’s other virtue, its ability
to record long takes). The stable framing and vivid color
palette emphasises a stylisation not inappropriate to a
moro-moro production, one of which is quoted extensively
in the film, and serves as an unspoken commentary on the
politics behind the trial (in the moro-moro, the outcome is
settled long before the play begins).
What to say, finally, of O’Hara the filmmaker? Frankly
I could write for years and it wouldn’t be enough. But a
few words might help: He is, I believe, Philippine cinema’s
wayward spirit, its silent wanderer-observer (especially
around the Makati-Malate-Quiapo-Divisoria area), its
whispered yet insistent conscience. He is its reluctant
poet, its low-key fabulist, its (to borrow a phrase from
Manny Farber) termite artist, toiling away in the mud and
filth to build something that isn’t intended to be anything
50
10/8/12 4:29 PM
51
10/8/12 4:29 PM
Writings on Cinema
beautiful, perhaps doesn’t even presume to become
anything near beautiful, but which somehow, in some way,
almost by accident if you will (though this random quality
may be a hallmark of its authenticity) achieves a wayward,
reluctant beauty.
He is (again, strictly in my opinion) the Philippines’
finest filmmaker, and his death does our cinema an
irretrievable, irrecoverable harm – not just for the life’s
worth of recognition owed to him, but for the works he
might have given us, if he lived but a year longer (I once
spent an evening listening to him talk of the scripts he
has squirreled away, one more fabulous than the next).
The world is a quieter place with this man gone, not
necessarily a better one. We do well to mourn our loss.
52
10/8/12 4:29 PM
Noel Vera is a Filipino film critic and author of Critic After Dark:
A Review of Philippine Cinema. He has written for The Manila
Chronicle, The Manila Times, Cineaste, Criticine, Senses of Cinema
and Cahiers du Cinéma. He has been consultant and programmer
for the Cinemanila Film Festival, the Far East Film Festival in Udine,
Italy, and the Singapore International Film Festival. Noel shared a
FAMAS Award for Best Story for his work on the screenplay of Tikoy
Aguiluz’s Rizal sa Dapitan (1997). He has translated into English the
screenplays of Mario O’Hara’s Babae sa Bubungang Lata / Woman
On A Tin Roof (1998), Sisa (1998) and Pangarap ng Puso / Demons,
(2000) for international screenings.
He is at: www.criticafterdark.blogspot.sg
53
10/8/12 4:29 PM
54
10/8/12 4:29 PM
Snow City (2010) by Tan Pin Pin
Image
1–9
(2009)
courtesy
by Ang
of Tan
Sookoon
Pin Pin
From left to right: Yusnor Ef, Mohd Zain Hj. Hamzah (producer of the musical
programme Dendang Perindu), and singers Ahmad Daud and Rahimah at a
recording for Radio Singapore in 1960.
55
10/8/12 4:29 PM
Interview
Yusnor Ef
From hanging out with filmmakers and the crew at the
Jalan Ampas Studio as a young teacher, to penning his own
screenplays and lyrics for film songs, Yusnor Ef has come a
long way. Now a veteran producer, lyricist and researcher in the
industry, he continues to document the history of the Golden
Era of cinema and the music scene in Malaysia and Singapore.
The spritely 75-year old tells the Cinémathèque Quarterly what
it was like to be mentored by the legendary P. Ramlee, why he is
an indefatigable archivist and why Singapore was the cultural
and creative centre of the Nusantara (or the Malay Archipelago)
in the ‘50s and ‘60s. He also recounts tales of rivalry between
the two major film companies of the golden era: Cathay-Keris
and Shaw Brothers and comparing the spirit of his time to the
industry now, he tells us why the preservation of Malay heritage
remains an endeavour that is close to his heart.
Your career began, in many ways, with a desire to work in the
music industry in the early 1950s. But you didn’t have formal
musical training. Were there challenges to entering the
industry without these skills?
Yes, I don’t know how to write music notation. But I have a good sense of
hearing and a feel for music. I started out in my school days, around 1954
to 1956. Then I joined a pancaragam, or a type of band in the kampong,
and mostly played at wedding ceremonies. That was the time I started as
an amateur singer. Later, I became involved in drama and acted in stage
plays. Next, I became a director for stage plays, and directed many Malay
dramas too. I was the director for a play entitled Siapakah Bersalah (or
Whose Fault? in English), which was written by my friend. I wanted to
include a song element in the drama, so that the actors and actresses
56
10/8/12 4:29 PM
could sing in it, something that had not been done before in this part
of the world.
So it was like a musical, but it hadn’t been done in a stage
play here before?
Yes, but in the end we only included one song. I asked my friend,
Kassim Masdor, a composer, music director and writer who was
working with Studio Jalan Ampas, to compose the music, while I wrote
the lyrics. That was the first time a song with my lyrics was performed
on the stage. Later on, when my friend became a part-time producer at
EMI, he recorded that song for the late Fazida Joned. He gave me the
opportunity to write more and more lyrics for songs, and to date, I have
written the lyrics for more than 260 songs for popular artistes.
When you were working as a lyricist, were you influenced by
the playback singers in the Indian film industry like Mukesh,
Latha Mangeshkar and Mohammad Rafi?
Yes, mostly Mohammad Rafi, Latha Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, Mukesh,
and Udit Narayan. I’d translate Hindi songs. I don’t know Hindi but my
wife knows Hindi as she’s Punjabi. Whenever we watched Hindi movies,
I would always ask her to translate the meaning for me. When writing
lyrics for songs in films, I would sometimes look at the story or meaning
in the films first. At other times, I would create my own story in the lyrics,
from films like Jeene Ki Raah (1969) and Ganga Jamuna (1961).
So did the soundtrack, as well as lyric-based songs become
an important part of filmmaking at that juncture?
Yes. When Pak Zubir Said was working with Shaw Brothers, he didn’t
have the opportunity to write the score for the soundtrack or background
music of the films. Those days, they used pre-recorded Western music
for the background tracks. Pak Zubir Said was unhappy that he could
not develop his own scores. He managed to compose for a few films
only, like Aloha (1950) and Rachun Dunia (1950), before he transferred
to Cathay-Keris. At Cathay, he had the chance to compose background
music for the films produced by the company. He said, “If the Indians
57
10/8/12 4:29 PM
Interview
can do it, why can’t we?” Later, when P. Ramlee came onto the scene
in 1948 as a playback singer, he started to learn from Zubir Said. So
when P. Ramlee became a film director and music director himself,
he composed and arranged his own soundtrack for films like Sumpah
Orang Minyak (1956) and Semerah Padi (1956).
I think that the last film of this kind made in Singapore was A-Go-Go
’67 (1967). There are a lot of songs in that film; it’s a bit like West End
Story (1961). I still recall sitting in for the session where the music
directors Kassim Masdor and Yusoff B interviewed the Pop Yeh Yeh
groups for the film.
Can you tell us a little about your own writing process?
During that time, the melody comes first, then the words. The words
are in turn based on your experience, the story you see, etc. When I
was courting my wife, I wrote songs for her, which she rejected. As a
Punjabi, she could not really appreciate the Malay songs I wrote. One
day she told me, “Take me as a friend, not more than that.” As a young
man, I was broken-hearted and I recall going to the Jalan Ampas studio
shortly after that. There, I listened to a sad melody written by my friend,
Kassim Masdor. When I heard the music, I decided to write the lyrics
for it, expressing how I was disappointed with her. The song was later
recorded by the popular singer, Ahmad Jais, and Gelisah
(or Restless in English) is still a classic today.
Apart from writing lyrics for popular singers, how did your
career in the film industry evolve?
My involvement in the arts has always been very wide. It’s not restricted
to music. I was also a scriptwriter for radio plays, TV, and later on, for
films. But I did not write lyrics for film songs during the Golden Era.
I started in 1962 for films produced in Malaysia. I went into scriptwriting
to make use of the experience I gained from working with my mentor
P. Ramlee, who taught me how to write screenplays. I first got the
opportunity when Indra Film asked me to write the lyrics for the songs in a
film entitled Keluarga Si Comat (1975). From there, the company wanted
to produce another action story, entitled Serampang Tiga (1981), and
58
10/8/12 4:29 PM
Yusnor Ef
I was roped in to write the screenplay for the film, together with the
Cambodian director Ismail Sasakul, who was a perlarian or refugee who
ran away from Cambodia to come live in Malaysia after the war there.
After that, I worked with the Indonesian scriptwriter Pak Misbah Wiran
on the script for Irisan-Irisan Hati (1988), which was about the postKonfrontasi period between Malaysia and Indonesia. I wrote all the
Malaysian parts of the dialogue, and was invited to a film festival in Bali
where this joint venture production was screened. The film won the
award for the best joint venture film in Malaysia and Indonesia in 1988.
The actor and actress, Deddy Mizwar and Christine Hakim, were very
popular at the time. For that film, we also discovered Tiara Jacquelina,
who is now a famous producer and actress in Malaysia.
What were your ambitions at that point in time? What were
you trying to achieve?
Since 1954, my ambition has always been to join the film industry. But
I did that only in 1980, working freelance or part-time at the Indra Film
company in Kuala Lumpur. I enjoyed production work and during my
part-time stints, picked up skills related to the filmmaking process, from
scriptwriting to camerawork. It was a satisfying and interesting side job
to my full-time job as a teacher.
A lot of this work was going on during a very turbulent historical
period. There was British colonial rule, followed by the Second
World War, then the Japanese Occupation and the Malayan
Emergency. What impact did that have on the industry and on
composers?
When the British first came, there weren’t many Malay composers or
much music being produced. We mostly just knew western music or
music influenced by the west. Then, when the Japanese came with their
propaganda elements, everything became Japanese-controlled and
we were not even allowed to have a radio in the house. There is a Malay
film about the situation at that time, called Mata Hari (1951), which was
produced by Shaw Brothers. There was a lot of control on artistic activity
during that time. But, when the British came back, after the war, the film
59
10/8/12 4:29 PM
Actor and singer Omar Suwita (on the left) from Shaw’s Malay Film
Productions at an interview with Yusnor Ef for the documentary
Gemilang Filem Melayu (2006) for the Malaysian TV channel, Astro.
60
10/8/12 4:29 PM
Yusnor Ef shows some of his writings and recordings to the former
Prime Minister of Malaysia Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad (on the left)
in Putrajaya, Malaysia, 25 January 2011.
61
10/8/12 4:29 PM
Interview
industry experienced a resurgence, first with Shaw Brothers, then with
Cathay-Keris, who were industry competitors.
When P. Ramlee came down to Singapore around 1948, Shaw Brothers
became a strong industry player with P. Ramlee as the backbone for the
company. Anything Shaw Brothers was also P. Ramlee. Pak Zubir, on the
other hand, began as a composer for Shaw Brothers before transferring
to Cathay-Keris, just as P. Ramlee started working there.
It seems like there was this interesting dynamic between Shaw
and Cathay-Keris and, correspondingly, between P. Ramlee and
Pak Zubir Said. Presumably the two men were quite different?
Pak Zubir composed almost all the music for films at Shaw, and later
for Cathay-Keris. His music is very classically Malay and reflects a
strong Malay identity. He uses a lot of traditional pantuns in his lyrics,
with influences from Malay dance music. P. Ramlee is a bit different.
The films that he made for Shaw Brothers were more popular, because
he incorporated Western, pop and modern influences in his music.
So, for profit reasons, Cathay-Keris started to ask Pak Zubir to write
like P. Ramlee, but Pak Zubir refused and persisted with his principles.
I heard that he left Cathay-Keris because of his unhappiness over their
request. Wandly Yazid, who is Indonesian like Pak Zubir, then took over
as a composer with Cathay-Keris. To this day, Yazid’s most famous
song is Gurindam Jiwa. His son keeps his fathers’ materials in a
sort of mini-museum near Sultan mosque in the Arab street area
(in Singapore).
When I was a student of P. Ramlee, I once asked him how he felt about
becoming more popular than Pak Zubir. He said that he respected Pak
Zubir because he knew and kept his Malay culture and identity alive,
whereas he (P. Ramlee) was “cacar-marbak” (fond of mixing everthing).
Why was Singapore such a draw for players in the industry?
In many ways it was because the British made Singapore the centre.
They wanted Singapore as the port for everything. Zubir Said, Wandly
Yazid, Yusoff B and Ahmad Jaafar all came here from different parts of
62
10/8/12 4:29 PM
Yusnor Ef
Indonesia. I always say, “There would have been no P. Ramlee without
Singapore.” But some Malaysians are not happy when I say that, because
the Malay community hails P. Ramlee as their creative icon. I try to explain
to them that P. Ramlee was born in Penang and he had talent but the
place where he wanted to develop and nurture his talent was Singapore
because the film industry was here. It was when the Indian director,
B.S. Rajhans watched P. Ramlee win the best singer award in a singing
competition at Bukit Mertajam in North Malaya, that he decided to invite
P. Ramlee to come to Singapore as a solo singer. It was in Singapore that
P. Ramlee built his career as a director, writer and actor.
It sounds like there was a lot of mutual support in the film
community. For instance, Hussain Haniff started out as an editor,
went on to become an assistant director, and later on a director.
So looking at him, you get the sense that being a part of such a
close-knit community in the film industry helped him develop
his craft.
Yes, it was like one big family. It was easy to start a film too. When there
was crew needed for a film, we could always simply ask around within
the community. This spirit was especially alive at the Jalan Ampas studio.
The people in the industry literally lived where they worked, because
Shaw brothers gave them quarters in the form of two-room barrack
houses to stay in, at Boon Teck road. So even after a full day of shooting,
the interaction continued outside of work.
Even when I wasn’t working on any particular film, I enjoyed hanging out
with the crew and directors at Jalan Ampas. Sometimes P. Ramlee would
call me to tell me, “Hey, there is a shoot today. Come in the afternoon.”
Once, I was at the shooting of Labu dan Labi (1962), just observing
the filmmaking process, when P. Ramlee called me over and said,
“Go and look in the viewfinder.” In this way, and in many other ways,
he slowly helped me to develop my interest in the filmmaking process.
I took some of these skills with me and applied them to TV
documentary production.
63
10/8/12 4:29 PM
Interview
What was P. Ramlee like as a mentor? How did he influence
your creative process?
He taught me through discussion and dialogue. For example, I would
show him a storyline. After reading it, he would give comments such
as, “If you want to make a novel, this is the way. But if you want to write
a screenplay, this is not the way.” He would write down instructions
for me on how to write a screenplay, things like “Scene 1: Kampong
Melayu. (rumah orang kaya, or rich man’s house)…Camera focus inside
or outside…etc.” I would then go home to type them out and show
him my revised drafts for further correction. I still have his handwritten
instructions, as well as the manuscripts we worked on.
He tested me, too. When I first went to meet him at his house on Cedar
Avenue, he made me wait for him for a long time to see if I was really
interested in filmmaking. Then, when he was confident that I was serious,
he called me from the studio to tell me, “Mohd Noor, I’m coming back
now. Don’t go home.” Since I was still working as a teacher back then,
he also asked me if I could teach his children.
Later, when I became very close to him, he gave me my current name,
Yusnor Ef. I was writing my name as “Mohd Noor Effendi” on plays that I
wrote back then, and his remark was, “You are not Arab. Why do you call
yourself Effendi?” So he wrote the name “Yusnor Ef” on my file. That was
in 1959, and I recall it was a Sunday morning, at 11a.m. I thank God for
this name!
Do you think Singapore could become that cultural centre for
music and cinema again, with that kind of support?
It will be very hard. I like to say that luckily, in the end, P. Ramlee died in
Kuala Lumpur. If he had died in Singapore, no one would remember him.
I think I’m the only one who is documenting him here.
Moving forward, how did your career as a producer for
television develop?
I started teaching in 1954, before transferring to the Ministry of
Education as a textbook writer for Malay language in primary and
64
10/8/12 4:29 PM
Yusnor Ef
secondary schools, as well as for Islamic Religious Knowledge (IRK).
After that, I was transferred to the Educational Television Programme
(ETV) division, where I produced 78 programmes for the teaching
of the Malay language. That’s where it started. In 1994, I had a heart
attack. I was working under the Curriculum Development Institute of
Singapore (CDIS) then, and so I asked to retire. After a year, I was asked
to produce programmes for ASTRO TV Station in Malaysia. At first,
they wanted me to work there as an executive producer, but I declined
because of my age. Before that, I had also set up my own production
company in Singapore, called the YKNA network, for which I produced
a few programmes for the Suria Channel. I have been producing many
programmes, mostly documentaries, for ASTRO and now for Radio
Televisyen Malaysia (RTM).
What prompted the move to work with television stations in
Malaysia?
I was disappointed with Suria, our local Malay station in Singapore.
I think the role of TV stations is to inform, educate and entertain. But
currently, most of the focus at Suria is on entertainment. This situation
is different from Malaysia, where there is a special category for heritage
in television and radio station programming. That said, it’s not just that
the TV stations here are not interested. First, I think they don’t have the
budget. Second, the people who are in charge of the station do not
share the values we once shared. In the past, as artists, we were creating
work that drew from our roots and our culture, and our art came from the
heart. Now, things are profit-driven or based on mass appeal. This is not
the ethos of my time and generation.
My good friend, Tun Ahmad Sarji bin Abdul Hamid, who is the president
of the Heritage Board of Malaysia, always says, “The soul of the nation
lies in our heritage. Without the past, we have no present. Without
present we have no future.” This is especially important because
Singapore used to be the centre for Malay film, music and literature.
That’s why many actors, actresses and musicians, including Pak Zubir
Said himself, came from Indonesia and Malaysia to work here.
65
10/8/12 4:29 PM
Interview
What sorts of projects are you working on at the moment?
I’ve worked on a 39-episode programme about the Malay film industry
since 1933 (Gemilang Filem Melayu) and the development of the Malay
music industry since the 1940s. I also have a programme that aired on
RTM recently about how traditional Malay dance started being featured
in Malay films, and the Indian and Western influences on such dance
forms (such as on Malay keroncong1). Later on, when P. Ramlee became
a famous director, you can see how he incorporated elements of Malay
culture and Malay dance in films like Ketipang Payung (1959), Semerah
Padi (1956), and in the song Sekapur Sirih Seulas Pinang.
You cannot deny that Malay culture is mixed or is influenced by all these
elements, be it from the bersanding2 ceremony, clothing, berinai 3,
because the Indians were here before the Arab traders. Music like
keroncong, ghazal 4, dondang sayang 5, boria 6, mak yong 7 – all these
forms of music originated from different countries.
For a programme that I produced about the music of the nusantara, or the
Malay Archipelago, entitled Rentra, I went to Solo to meet and interview
Pak Gesang who composed Bengawan Solo. For research, I also
went to Jogja (Yogyakarta) where they make angklungs8 and gamelan9
instruments. This is pribumi music, or music from your own region. For
example, when you think of boria, you think of Penang. But boria also
has Persian influences, just like the ghazal. Likewise, Dondang Sayang
is from Melaka, with its Portuguese influences that were later mixed with
Baba and Peranakan influences. The zapin10 and gamelan has a more
Arabic influence. So, from a cultural point-of-view, we cannot deny, forget
or ignore the external influences on our heritage. This kind of knowledge
is important and it’s missing among Malay youth now.
Now, for the RTM Station, I’m in the process of producing documentaries
about the development of Malay Pop Yeh Yeh music which started in
Singapore in the 1960s, and was influenced by The Rolling Stones,
The Beatles etc. This production spans 13 episodes, shows how the
movement started and includes interviews with many singers and
composers of the Pop Yeh Yeh scene.
66
10/8/12 4:29 PM
Yusnor Ef
What do you feel is your role in the contemporary context, as a
veteran of the scene?
With my ability to do research and with the experience I have in this field,
I feel I have a responsibility to try and compile and educate, in the form
of TV productions, books, and university lectures. I’m also working on a
book on how to use film footage to teach the Malay language. It comes
with a DVD, teachers’ guide and workbook. The book covers how to
teach the Istana, or palace language used in Malay films. I came up with
this idea because many teachers like to use films as a pedagogical tool,
but are not equipped with a structured method on how to do it. So the
teachers’ guide is very important. I’m also about to publish a book on the
Malay film industry.
And finally, what drives you? Why do you do all this work?
When I do artistic work, my first thought is whether this is good for the
people as a whole. Do not become like what the Malay proverb says:
“Indah khabar dari rupa,” which means the picture is really nice on the
outside, but inside there is nothing. So I believe we have to take our
heritage and our own history seriously. That has always been my driving
principle.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Indonesian musical form which predominately utilises the ukulele.
Malay wedding ceremony in which the bride and groom sits on
the Pelamin (bridal couch).
Henna staining ceremony.
Poetic form originating from Arabia.
Portuguese influenced music form that uses improvised poetry
within a set musical form.
Malay theatre form practiced in Penang, Malaysia.
Traditional Malay dance practiced in Kelantan, Malaysia.
Indonesian musical instrument made of bamboo.
Traditional Javanese percussion ensemble.
Traditional Malay dance originating from Arabia.
67
10/8/12 4:29 PM
Interview
Mohd Noor Mohd Yusofe (or Yusnor Ef) is a Cultural Medallion recipient and legendary figure
in the Malay music and film industry. He has written lyrics for more than 260 songs, composed
by songwriters like P. Ramlee, Zubir Said, Kassim Masdor and Dick Lee, 128 of which are
compiled in the CD, Aku Dia Dan Lagu. He is the author of P. Ramlee Yang Saya Kenal / The
P. Ramlee I Know (2000), 7 Magnificent Composers (2000), Melodies of Temasek (2005) and
Muzik Melayu Sejak 1940… an (2011). For his contribution to the arts, Yusnor was awarded
the Meritorious Award by the Composers and Authors Society of Singapore (COMPASS)
in 1997 and the Public Service Medal in 2002. He currently serves on the board of directors
of COMPASS and as president of PERKAMUS (Association of Malay Singers, Composers
and Professional Musicians). He is also the Chairperson of the National Arts Council’s Malay
Music Development Committee and is an advisor for the National Library Board’s digital
archive, Music SG.
68
10/8/12 4:29 PM
69
10/8/12 4:29 PM
Yusnor Ef with film crew and dancers on the set of his
documentary about the Pop Yeh-Yeh music of the '60s
for the Malaysian TV channel, RTM TV 1, in 2012.
Azura (1984) by Deddy M. Borhan
70
10/8/12 4:29 PM
Word on the Ground
When the Nusantara Rocked…
Bobby Dread
Growing up in a cramped one-room rented flat in the early 1980s with
parents and grandparents, one of our sole luxuries back then was a
simple radio casette player. Needless to say, those tiny speakers blared
constantly: 94.2FM. I don’t think the dial on our radio ever moved away
from that station frequency. Aside from broadcasting the usual Malay
music from all over the region, Radio 2 (or WarnaFM as it is now known)
broadcasted Islamic programmes and the call for the daily prayers.
It was very wholesome family fare, but there wasn’t much of a choice
either. It was the only Malay language radio station back then and
stations from neighbouring countries were quite out of reach for our
little radio’s antenna.
Fortunately, the station didn’t restrict its programming in terms of genre
or music from across the region. Back then the difference between
a Singapore artiste or a Malaysian one (or even an Indonesian) was
almost non-existent. The station played a well-balanced repertoire from
all the major artists in the Nusantara Malay Archipelago region. The
camaraderie back then was stronger. Malays from Singapore, Malaysia
and Indonesia shared a common language and a Malaysian producer
like Ahmad Nawab could work with Ambon, Indonesia-born Broery
Marantika and record the songs in Singapore. That was the norm. So it
was never weird for us to hear an evergreen P. Ramlee tune followed by
a Jamal Mirdad dangdut song to a ballad by Papa Rock Ramli Sarip. It
was an amazing introduction to a wide palate of the Malay lenggok or lilt.
From time to time, there was this young man who would knock on our
door holding a box. I recall that he didn’t quite look like he was local and
71
10/8/12 4:29 PM
Word on the Ground
in his strange accent, he would peddle the latest casette releases
to us. I don’t think those tapes were official releases, but they were
cheap. In the early 80’s, the big sellers were groups like Alleycats,
Black Dog Bone and The Flybaits. Influenced by contemporary
pop, disco and funk, these bands ruled the airwaves with their tight
musicanship and slick showmanship. However, my personal favourites
of that era were two virtuoso singers whose tragic lives added
poignancy to their songs.
As a six-year old kid, there was no other singer I would imitate more than
Sudirman Haji Arshad. Sudirman was still studying to be a lawyer when
he won a talent show in 1976. His rise to superstardom culminated in
him winning the Best Performer at the Asian Music awards in 1989
beating other much more well-known luminaries like Leslie Cheung and
Anita Sarawak. Sadly, he was struck down with a mysterious illness and
passed away soon after in 1992. What made Sudirman such an icon
in an industry that was mostly dominated by bland Malay music was his
willingness to experiment and break new ground in his art. The tried and
tested formula of ballads and sentimental sachharine tunes were not for
him. His repertoire consisted of only patriotic songs or traditional Malay
music. After exhausting this musical frontier, he turned to acting. His only
film appearance was the leading role in Kami, a 1982 film directed by
Patrick Yeoh, in which he played a vagrant who dreams of becoming a
pop star. Though the movie was received favourably, it didn’t do as well
as he’d have liked.
Jamal Abdillah on the other hand, scored a box office hit in the first
Malay film to hit 1-million ringgit with his role as a rich man's son in love
with a poor girl in the 1984 film Azura, directed by Deddy M. Borhan.
Like Sudirman, he was also a winner of the same talent show in 1979.
Though Sudirman was considered a positive role model, Jamal was cast
as the opposite when he was jailed for drug abuse at the height of his
career. Continuous drug problems and domestic issues hounded him
throughout his career. He only recently resumed his singing career after
going through rehabilitation. Blessed with matinee idol good looks and
72
10/8/12 4:29 PM
When the Nusantara Rocked...
a melancholic baritone, Jamal though, unlike Sudirman was a very shy
performer. He always hid behind his trademark sunglasses and seldom
communicated with his audiences. This added to his mystique and even
today, his voice really reflects the aches and pains of a wounded soul.
Once in a while, when I had saved enough pocket money I would head
to the dingy cassette store in our neighbourhood. Introduced to it by an
older cousin, he bought Search's seminal sophomore effort Langit Dan
Bumi in 1986 at that store. He and I probably spent hours staring at the
cassette sleeve while listening to the music. I was nine years old and
at an impressionable age when the burgeoning Malay glam rock scene
consumed me. The following year, a bunch of 19-year olds who called
themselves Wings arrived on the scene. At last, I had something to call
my own. While all the other major acts were well established before
I knew of their existence, here was a band, not that much older than me,
rocking out to a form of music more brash and raw than I had ever
heard before and in a language I understood. And so, an adolescent
Mat Rocker was born at a time when was the rock craze reached fever
pitch. Rock bands began forming so rapidly in that period; so much
so that in 1991, all the 12 finalist slots for the annual Song of the Year
awards were taken by rock acts.
I remember November 1992 vividly. That was the day when both Search
and Wings, two iconic bands of that era, gave up their defiant stance by
cutting their long hair, sporting a shoulder-length look that was deemed
acceptable on live television. The law had been enacted previously in
Malaysia. It was an attempt to nip the rock craze in the bud by banning
men with long hair from appearing on telelvision and live shows. While
other lesser-known smaller rock acts complied with the ruling, Search
and Wings were well known enough to flout the rule for a few months
before they finally gave in as well. It was a symbolic move; while it was
not enough to wipe out the massive influence of rock music on Malay
musical culture, it did dim the spotlight on it. In many ways, after that, the
industry slowly leaned towards contemporary R&B influenced pop music
that was more suited to the tastes of urban dwellers.
73
10/8/12 4:29 PM
Word on the Ground
Malay Rock's influence in general began to get eclipsed by a more
mellow pop sound and this was evident when Nash, the former lead
singer of Lefthanded, won Juara Lagu (Champion of Song Awards) 92
with a totally different image than his previous incarnation as a rocker.
Awie of the megaband Wings followed suit when he left the band to
embark on a very successful solo career with a radio friendly pop rock
sound. He even went on to star in several Yusof Haslam's blockbuster
movies.
With the advent of the Internet, radio in its current format has struggled
to stay relevant. The current generation, with its short attention span and
a desire for immediate gratification won’t know the delight I had when I
was growing up, of having your favourite song surprise you unexpectedly
on the radio, or of those trips to that dingy cassette shop, to buy one
album and listen to it again and again.
74
10/8/12 4:29 PM
When the Nusantara Rocked...
A 35-year old construction worker by day, a rock’n’roller by night, Bobby Dread wears different
hats as the co-owner of guerilla recording studio The End of Recordings, rhythm guitarist
for the critically-acclaimed Malay indie-punk outfit V, and also the lead singer with lounge
lizard rockers The Guilt, who have performed at major local festivals, including Baybeats
and ZoukOut. He also works with local indie production team SubsceneTV who have been
actively documenting emerging bands in the region. Bobby has also edited and directed
several of V’s music videos and intends to continue experimenting with digital filmmaking.
75
10/8/12 4:29 PM
Write to us
Submissions are eagerly encouraged. We’re keen on writings on cinema that
include, but are not limited to:
–
–
–
–
–
–
overviews of a director’s work;
photo essays celebrating or studying images in a film;
explorations of one particular film or groups of films;
analysis of moments within a film;
situating a film within its historical/political context;
stories or narrative non-fiction pieces inspired by films.
We are not looking for academic treatises, nor are we interested in lightly
journalistic film reviews. We’re keen on writing that is sharp, intelligent and
knowledgeable, though not without humour. Each piece should be between
1,500 to 2,500 words long.
For submissions and letters to the editor, email:
nhb_nm_cinematheque@nhb.gov.sg
or write to:
The Cinémathèque Quarterly
National Museum of Singapore
93 Stamford Road
Singapore 178897
76
10/8/12 4:29 PM
Credits
Editor Vinita Ramani Mohan
Editorial Adviser Ben Slater
Editorial Intern Tay Huizhen
Programme Text Zhang Wenjie, Warren Sin, Low Zu Boon
Graphic Design LSD Corporation
Cover Image Les Enfants du Paradis / Children of Paradise (1945) by Marcel Carné, Image:
Collection Fondation Jéròme Seydoux-Pathé © 1945 - PATHÉ PRODUCTION p24–39
Documenting Affect © Ho Rui An, 2012 p40–53 Addendum: The Quiet Man Continues © Noel
Vera, 2012 p54–69 Interview: Yusnor Ef © National Museum of Singapore, 2012 p70–75 When
Nusantara Rocked… © Bobby Dread, 2012
The Cinémathèque Quarterly October–December 2012 is published by the National Museum
of Singapore
ISSN: 2251-2993
All information is correct at the time of print. Every reasonable care has been taken to ensure the
accuracy of information within, hence, neither the publisher, editor nor writers may be held liable
for errors and/or omissions however caused. Every effort has been made to identify copyright
holders. We deeply regret that if, despite our concerted efforts, any copyright holders have been
overlooked or omitted. Any reproduction, retransmission, republication, or other use of all or part
of this publication is expressly prohibited, unless prior written permission has been granted by the
National Museum of Singapore or the appropriate copyright owner. The Museum reserves the right
to make changes and modifications to the programme without prior notice. The views and opinions
expressed by the writers in this publication and the speakers and facilitators in the programme
do not necessarily reflect the views of the editor or the official policy and position of the National
Museum of Singapore.
77
10/8/12 4:29 PM
About Us
About the National Museum of Singapore Cinémathèque
The National Museum Cinémathèque focuses on the presentation of film in its
historical, cultural and aesthetic contexts, with a strong emphasis on local and
regional cinema. Housed in the 247-seat Gallery Theatre, the National Museum
Cinémathèque offers new perspectives on film through a year-round series of
screenings, thematic showcases, and retrospectives that feature both essential
and undiscovered works from the history of cinema.
Besides the presentation of film, the National Museum Cinémathèque is also
active in film preservation, especially the heritage of Asian cinema, and has
worked with regional film archives to restore and subtitle important film classics.
With an imaginative and diverse programme that includes Singapore Short
Cuts, World Cinema Series, and Under the Banyan Tree, the National Museum
Cinémathèque aims to create a vital and vibrant film culture in Singapore.
About the National Museum of Singapore
With a history dating back to its inception in 1887, the National Museum of
Singapore is the nation’s oldest museum with a young soul. Designed to be
the people’s museum, the National Museum is a custodian of the 11 National
Treasures, and its Singapore History and Living Galleries adopt cutting-edge
and varied ways of presenting history and culture to redefine conventional
museum experience. A cultural and architectural landmark in Singapore,
the museum hosts vibrant festivals and events all year round – the dynamic
Night Festival, visually arresting art installations, exciting performances and
film screenings – in addition to presenting lauded exhibitions and precious
artefacts. The programming is supported by a wide range of facilities and
services including F&B, retail and a Resource Centre. The National Museum of
Singapore re-opened in December 2006 after a three-year redevelopment.
78
10/8/12 4:29 PM
Ticketing Information
www.sistic.com.sg / (65) 6348 5555
SISTIC counters islandwide or National Museum Stamford Visitor Services:
10 am–7.30 pm
Concessions
Concession rates for most programmes are available to students (full-time,
with valid student pass), seniors (aged 60 years and above, with valid identity
pass showing proof of age), NSF (with valid 11B pass), National Museum
Volunteers, National Museum Members, NHB Staff and MICA Staff. Passes
have to be presented when purchasing tickets.
General Enquiries
(65) 6332 3659 / (65) 6332 5642
Film Classification Guide
G
(General) Suitable for all ages.
PG
(Parental Guidance) Suitable for all,
but parents should guide their young.
PG13 (Parental Guidance 13) Suitable for persons aged 13 and above,
but parental guidance is advised for children below 13.
NC16 (No Children Under 16) Suitable for persons aged 16 and above.
M18
(Mature 18) Suitable for persons aged 18 years and above.
R21
(Restricted 21) Suitable for adults aged 21 and above.
For further details and the latest film ratings, please visit
www.nationalmuseum.sg
79
10/8/12 4:29 PM
Getting to the Museum
MRT
B
Train
Bras Basah MRT Station (5-minute walk)
Dhoby Ghaut MRT Station (5-minute walk)
City Hall MRT Station (10-minute walk)
Bus
YMCA Bus-stop (08041)
SBS: 7, 14, 14e, 16, 36, 64, 65, 111, 124, 128, 139, 162, 162M, 174, 174e, 175
SMRT: 77, 106, 167, 171, 190, 700, 700A, NR6, NR7
SMU Bus-stop (04121)
SBS: 7, 14, 14e, 16, 36, 111, 124, 128, 131, 162, 162M, 166, 174, 174e, 175
SMRT: 77, 106, 167, 171, 190, 700, 700A, 857, NR7
Taxi
Pick-up and drop-off points are at the Fort Canning entrance or the Stamford entrance.
P
Car
Limited parking facility is available at the National Museum. Other parking facilities are available at
YMCA, Park Mall, Singapore Management University and Fort Canning Park.
80
10/8/12 4:29 PM
10/10/12 8:32 AM
8–11 November
Various Timings (Page 22)
PERSPECTIVES
FILM FESTIVAL 2012:
BREAKTHROUGHS
IN CINEMA
10–20 October
Various Timings (Page 16)
MAJULAH! THE FILM MUSIC
OF ZUBIR SAID
7.30 pm (Page 8)
WORLD CINEMA SERIES
O Drakos /
The Fiend Of Athens
Nikos Koundouros
13 November
November
October
7.30 pm (Page 12)
WORLD CINEMA SERIES
Les Enfants du Paradis /
Children of Paradise
Marcel Carné
6 December
December
National Museum of Singapore
93 Stamford Road
Singapore 178897
www.nationalmuseum.sg
10/10/12 8:32 AM

Oct–Dec 2012 Cinémathèque Quarterly

Transcription

Similar documents

Oct 2013 reg layout

REEL-Recovery-Film-Festival - Lifeskills Of South Florida

Hrithik Roshan CityMasala August 2011 interview

Polish Film Festival Flyer 8_5x5_5

here

mapping perception - European Media Art Festival

Tom Malloy Press Kit

ASEF at Tropfest Roughcut

When Bebo dropped in

A Terrain of Legends reviewed in