If you are an Arts Group and need in-kind professional help, eg you need a lawyer to vet your tenancy agreement, please sign onto The Kind Exchange and seek that service
Its in online platform that matches Singapore based professionals who want to volunteer their services to not-for-profit groups. Sort of like e-bay but for services

All you need to do is fill up info on that site to let them know what you need. The more specific you are, the better. If a professional sees your post and thinks he can help, you meet, talk terms out.

Like all good ideas, it is brilliant in its simplicity

Of course, if you are a professional and would like to volunteer your services, as a lawyer, accountant, web designer, please sign up as well.

Please tell all your arts group friends about it. I would really like it to take off. They welcome all not for profits

Martyn See said today that Speakers’ Cornered (up on You Tube), about the stand off at Speakers Corner during the IMF conference has been PASSED NC16 by the Board of Film Censors (BFC). He submitted it in Dec 2007 and now he’s got an answer.

I had the chance to see it at a recent screening and I have to say that anyone studying Singapore must watch it. Infact I encourage schools to show it as part of National Education too. I am not being disingenious. I am just suggesting that its extremely helpful to learn about Singapore by studying Singapore from different lenses. With the NC16 rating perhaps schools can show it, have a discussion about it after.
The Film Act saga is far from over with this BFC decision and it may be premature to say this: I am glad Martyn persisted these past few years. He was called up for interviews every few weeks for 15 months. They confiscated his tapes and camera and when the investigation ended, Martyn continued to make the same sort of films. Any lesser person would have clamped up, shut down and left long ago.

Are the suits are realising that the Singapore Brand needs serious work. Adrian Belic an American documentarian was in town recently and as I took him around, he said something that shocked me “I don’t understand why people here don’t seem to be in angst, that can’t be right.” He was surprised that most people he had met appeared free. Poor guy, he thought that he was missing out on meeting real people. It was hard to explain to him the concept of a soft authoritarian state. It might be too much like science fiction.

During the Q&A after the screening of Kerongchong for Pak Bakar, Abdul Nizam Hamid the director said he made contact with the cinematographer of P Ramlee’s films Abdul Bakar by sliding letters under the door of his house. In the letter, explained why he wanted to meet Pak Baker. He didn’t deliver the letter himself, he got his wife to do it. Its less threatening I suppose, being petitioned by a woman.

The older Abdul must have been moved and decided to talk with the younger. This film is ostensibly an ode to Mr Bakar, but its more about Nizam, a director wanting, needing to connect with a filmmaker from another era.
This reminds me of the letter I wrote to photographer Marjorie Doggett to ask if I could meet her to interview her. I wrote her two long letters she didn’t reply. One day, one and half years later, we finally met, and the material became an integral part of Invisible City

We seek solace, encouragement from those who have trod on the same paths before us. And like Nizam, we came away not with some specialised knowledge of the craft, but a strong sense of the passing of time.

The Q&A at the world remiere of Nizam’s film, with me moderating it

Picture is stolen from a nutshellreview, Stefan’s blog which provides extensive SIFF coverage.