Part of Making Community takes place in the Tiong Bahru neighbourhood which since has become a poster child for the ideal Singapore neighbourhood (scale, scale, scale, location, location, location) The conference itself takes place within a Tiong Bahru institution, the Society for the Physically Disabled at Chay Yan street which in the context of this conference is apt. The conference site is alive site that is continually updated and connected. Impressive and very new media. To register, go to http://makingcommunity.sg and click on Registration. The 2 day event is S$85, including a ticket to Mem Morrison’s play Ringside.

Singapore film culture and community cannot be written about without mentioning Toh Hai Leong. He seemed to be at every major Singapore film milestone by sheer force of will. I have yet to meet anyone who loved films and was as passionate about it as Hai Leong was. He was Singapore film’s most ardent supporter.

I first met him at the Singapore Film Society screening of Citizen Kane in the early 90s. He was then the secretary of the Society at a time when film culture was defined by film societies such as these. I didn’t have the money to buy a membership but still wanted to watch Kane, so he sneaked me in. I have never forgotten that moment of kindness. From that time, sensing a kindred spirit, everytime we met, he would talk about the latest film he had seen, his writing (reams, long hand) and the latest festival he had been invited to (Hong Kong usually). He spoke very fast, spoke non-stop and spoke always about film. He was and still is my most intense brush with cinephilia. It was as if his life depended on it, and perhaps it did.

When film culture shifted gears into the video era in the late 90s, and film watching (and filmmaking) democratized beyond the Goethe Institute and the Film Society, many of us gathered around the Substation, an arts space which programmed our films. Hai Leong was there too. He hung with us wannabe-filmmakers, most half his age, drinking tea at the shabby S11 after screenings. He still spoke fast, and he still talked film with an intensity that could be scary. There was a hunger in him for friendship, for a community and it seemed that he found that in films and amongst filmmakers. By then, he was supporting himself as a security guard and living hard but he came, and there was always a seat reserved for him at the Substation. We met again at the 2003 Bangkok International Film Festival. He could not afford the plane fare so he had bussed overland for two days to Bangkok.

This is not an obituary but it is in the past tense. Hai Leong was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes a few years ago and, how should I put it? He lost the will to look after himself. He forgot his injections and he had to be retrieved from the brink several times. Something just snapped, perhaps his illness caused it, but along went his will to enjoy, to love and to care, not just for films, but for himself. Needless to say, he stopped showing up.

He now lives in a full-time care-center to ensure that he is fed, that he takes his meds and injections on time. I cannot bring myself to visit him but I am glad some of us in the film community still do.
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This picture was taken by Ho Choon Hiong at Hai Leong’s 52nd birthday on 21 Mar 2007. Some friends in the film community took him out for dinner.

Back row : L-R Mdm Kwa P Y, Jasmine Ng, Zhang Wenjie, Charles Lim, Wee Li Lin, Kristin Saw, Yuni Hadi, Philip Cheah
Front row:L- R Ho Choon Hiong, Toh Hai Leong, Chew Tze Chuan
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In 2007 Chew Tze Chuan made a documentary about Hai Leong’s struggle with his illness, called F. It premiered at the Singapore International Film Festival.

In Singapore, not too difficult as these German tourists have found. They found Lim Chen Sian and his merry men and women  excavating the City Hall and the Padang. The archaeologists are peaking under to find out what lies beneath before the earth gets churned in the construction of the National Gallery that is to be housed there. They will be there until 9 January. If you are in the area, when you go say hi, buy them nice iced Cokes! (or beer)

Chen Sian looking askance at German tourists, Wee Sheau Thng is in the pit, both in their regulation cargo pants they wore in Invisible City : )

Cricket Club in the background.

The German tourists must have been thrilled that they found gas masks and helmets from the Japanese Occupation in the field. I certainly was.

Happy new year

Book Launch & Meet the authors Jan & Yvonne
Date: Monday, 28 December 2009 at 7:30pm.
Venue: Books Actually 86 Club Street, Tel: 6221-1170.
Light refreshments provided.

From Friend’s School, Tasmania, Australia

“We seek to help our students develop into men and women who will think clearly, act with integrity, make decisions for themselves, be sensitive to the needs of others, be strong in service and to hold a
global perspective.”

From Raffles Institution, Singapore

“Nurturing Thinkers, Leaders and Pioneers of character who serve by leading and lead in serving”.

Yes, we are in the midst of the search for an Artistic Director for the Substation, and the mission and purpose of the Substation has been very much on our minds. What exactly does the Substation represent, and what outcome are we building towards? As they say “What is our value-add”?

Raffles statement seems the safest, to produce citizens to feed the system. The former two, centred on values,  the most anarchic. I would love to see how they effect those values. Its interesting that Doon school makes privations part of the curriculum. Famously, students are only allowed toast and tea for breakfast, privations necessary to allow them to stand alone if needed.

I had a great time Korea. Its my third trip there, and for the first time, I had time to watch many Korean films and  have conversations with Koreans – the DMZ International Documentary festival was sequested in Paju Book City so we had to gather in the hotel lounge every night to talk, there wasn’t anywhere else to go. The tone of the whole trip was set by a harrowing trip to the 38th Parallel on my first day. I think everyone who wants to understand Korea must make that visit. I was at DMZ because I was one of four directors commissioned by the festival to make a documentary about “peace and co-existence”.

Thinking about what to do for this and since we have free reign for this project I feel that now is time to take on an unfamiliar path, and from here on too. If it be a failure, it must be a spectacular one. Just priming you.

Meanwhile, here is a picture of some of my friends, amongst them Korean documentary luminaries, all sharing  soju and conversation. Lee Chung-ryul one of the directors came over with four boxes of roast pork to be shared with everyone.

I miss them.

Clockwise: Kim Dong-wan (Director, Repatriation checked shirt, bald ), Mun Jeong-hyun (Director, Grandmother’s flower), Lee Chung-ryul (Director, Old Partner), Hong Hyosook (DMZ programmer), Jung Sangjin (Cinus cinema chain owner)

As part of the opening, Erika Tan and I will be chatting. We will talk about our experience making work about/around archives. I will show a bit of  9th August where I processed through 40 years of national day parades and chat about Invisible City. We will both touch on artistic strategies we employ in making work about history.

Ivan Polunin’s gear, featured in I, Polunin, cameras, audio recorders, players of evey format, generation used to make his images