| |
| |
![]() |
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
SINGAPORE: Talk about suffering for her art ...
After the release of her film Gone Shopping in local cinemas, Wee Li Lin was hit with depression and secluded herself for three months.
During those “pyjama days”, she did not leave her house. “I was rescued by FaceBook Scrabble, a good hubby, good girlfriends and a very nice family,” she recalls.
That period last year was triggered by a negative review of her first feature film, a movie Li Lin wanted to make so badly, she self-financed it to the tune of around S$650,000. It bombed at the box office and she is still paying off the losses.
“It also helps that at heart I’m an optimistic person, although my mind can be very pessimistic. I’m also very dogged, if I feel strongly about something ... it’s really hard for me to throw in the towel,” says the fulltime film-maker who can rightly be tagged “Singapore’s most prolific female narrative director” on account of the number of short films (10) she has made since she returned with a BA in Art Semiotics from Brown University in 1996.
But what a difference a year makes.
Now Li Lin is one of nine in the inaugural batch of recipients for the Singapore Film Commission’s (SFC) New Feature Film Fund. Each film-maker gets S$250,000 to direct a feature film and their movies will be distributed by cinema chain Golden Village Pictures.
The grant is to encourage emerging talent although award-winning Li Lin, the lone female feature film-maker in Singapore’s film-making landscape, is the most experienced.
She is happy with this “major boost” for her next film Forever, a dark comedy about wedding vows, wedding woes, and wedding videos not being what they are.
“I had been so used to having doors slammed in my face... so it has been a very nice feeling to have doors opening now.” Forever has been invited to participate in two major feature film development events, the Network of Asian Fantastic Films in Pucheon in July and the Tokyo Project Gathering later this month.
But all this underlines that movie-making in Singapore can still be soul-sapping. “I cherish every short film experience I have had, flaws and all. But sometimes one does feel disempowered and underrated. There is a lot of pressure to make it big very fast and at a young age,” says Li Lin, 34.
“There is not much room for mistake or mediocrity, which certainly doesn’t allow for growth in our very young film industry. It’s important to work at your own pace and find your own voice.”
Local audiences, she says, are dismissive. “When they see a local film... they take the film not for what it is, but for what it isn’t... ” So her one wish is that the obsession with box office figures would stop because it is “unhealthy and destructive to the growth of Singapore film-makers” and do not tell the full story.
But what doesn’t break one makes one stronger.
After the bad review for Gone Shopping, Li Lin, who is now doing her Master of Fine Arts in dramatic writing at Tisch Asia, decided to make a director’s cut. That has done well on the international scene and helped get her back on her feet. She is off to Hawaii soon for the Hawaii International Festival where this version is in competition.
A far cry then from when even her choice of subject matter was questioned. But she is unapologetic that the movie — a darkly funny character study of three eccentric urbanites, one of them a tai tai, who escape to the shopping centre in search of a new frontier — is not about Singapore’s dark underbelly or its heartlanders.
“Shopping centres were the main landscape of my life when I was growing up. I attended Singapore Chinese Girls School which was opposite Specialists’ Shopping Centre and next to Centrepoint.”
Dad and Mum are the Wees of Stamford Tyres, and their middle child admits to a “charmed life”. Parental support has never been lacking.
But barbs and arrows do hurt. During those dark days the “lure to be a tai tai” loomed large when the challenges to be a film-maker appeared insurmountable. “Try not to use your parent’s money if you can!”, is her advice, saying that in her case, it was “doubly painful”.
“But if all else fails don’t let that stop you from making your first film as it does get easier to make the next one once the first one is in the can. Also, if you make something purely with the goal of success, you will never achieve it.
“It’s important (as a film-maker) to first and foremost tell a good story that will draw audiences into your world. So, it’s far more important to keep thinking about how to achieve that.”
And don’t diss the shopping centre. It could provide the inspiration... - TODAY/ar
|
