Singaporean premiere of Woo Ming Jin's RETURN TO NOSTALGIA

Aside from The Second Life of Thieves now being available for viewing at FilmDoo, Woo Ming Jin's latest work, the documentary, Return to Nostalgia (which I executive produced and did the colour grading)

The 55-minute film will be having its Singapore premiere on 30th June, 7:30pm as part of the Singapore International Festival of Arts. Screening will be held at The Projector! Apply for a pass (so you can catch all screenings at the festival) or buy a single ticket here:

In fact, the version screened in Singapore will actually be a brand new version of the film. As I start to understand more on how to use Da Vinci Resolve during the past few weeks for colour grading, I decided to take his film and rework it again, being not too happy with its look in its previous iterations. It was good practice, and I regret a little that I didn't know how to use Da Vinci Resolve earlier.

SYNOPSIS:
Filmmaker Woo Ming Jin and his crew travel across the peninsula of Malaysia and Singapore in search of the lost film Seruan Merdeka (1947). Seruan Merdeka is the first post World War II film made in Malaya. It is also the first film in the history of Malaysian cinema to feature a biracial cast of Malays and Chinese.
While gradually uncovering information about the lost film, a doorway into one of Malaya’s most turbulent times – the Japanese Occupation – is revealed. In their recollection of the past, the crew gathers together testimonies and interviews from locals across all races and walks of life in an effort to examine the country’s history. Long forgotten memories of abandoned theatres, unspoken histories and lost films are brought to the surface in a startling confrontation between cinema and reality.

Nicole 赖淞凤 【和时光拔河】 MV 30秒预告 (30-second trailer of a music video I did)

前阵子执导了歌手NICOLE赖淞凤的【和时光拔河】MV， 听说已经在电视上播放了。 我自己什么都不知道， 只是昨天晚上在脸书上被人TAG了（好像是NICOLE的个人户口）， 才有机会看看这MV的30秒预告片!

THE SECOND LIFE OF THIEVES go to FilmDoo! + THE SECOND LIFE OF THIEVES interview with Woo Ming Jin

THE SECOND LIFE OF THIEVES (2014) by Woo Ming Jin, which I produced, co-wrote and edited, has been released digitally on FilmDoo! So please, go and watch it, I promise you it's something different from this part of the world. It's probably one of the rare gay films made in Malaysia.


Aside from that, FilmDoo had also done a really cool interview with Ming Jin about the film.

Liliosa Hilao and the Martial Law (a scene from River of Exploding Durians)

I first read about Liliosa Hilao a couple of years ago. I cannot really remember how did I actually stumble upon her story then. I was in Tokyo, I was binge-reading the colourful history of Philippines on Wikipedia, and like a labyrinth, it led me to unexpected places, namely the sad story of Liliosa Hilao. The atrocities that happened to her during Martial Law were painful to read, and after I was done, I remained haunted by it.

A few years later, when I finally started making my film RIVER OF EXPLODING DURIANS, I decided to incorporate scenes of a high school class reenacting forgotten ASEAN history, because I was hoping to preserve these in cinema. The truth is, our education system, our history books, just like those in this region, are rather insular and limited, many things weren't allowed for discussion. How then, can we grow if we were kept constantly in a bubble?

One of the scenes in RIVER OF EXPLODING DURIANS is a reenactment of Liliosa Hilao's story. I decided to upload it a few days ago when I heard of the ongoing political situation in Philippines, where Bongbong Marcos, son of Ferninand Marcos, was running for vice president. A subject of great consternation for many, especially those who had to endure Martial Law. Since many were discussing about how the atrocities were being forgotten, I realized I had to share Liliosa's story to the public.

It took 2 days before it caught on, and to my surprise, the feedback and responses since then had been overwhelming. It's something I've never experienced before. What moved me most was to actually hear from the family of Liliosa Hilao. When I was reading about Liliosa Hilao's story all those years ago, I would never expect to do something that could reach her family. Life is full of surprises. I'm very humbled by this experience.

I can't believe these videos of mine are 10-12 years old already...

Instead of working on my script, I ended up procrastinating and checking out my long dormant Youtube page.

I then realized that I've actually been a Youtube user since 2006. That's 10 years. That's a really long time!

I remember a couple of these video-sharing sites coming out around the same time during my final year in Perth, and I was trying a few time. All of them didn't last, except for Youtube.

Many of my really old videos are still there, stuff I shot when I just got to Perth. Learning how to operate a camcorder, teaching myself how to edit with an editing software (I was using Sony Vegas).

I have often wondered whether I should just delete these damn videos since I've already moved on. What I made then were embarrassingly personal (they are video diaries anyway), and not exactly the type of thing I would want people to associate myself. I want people to stumble upon trailers of River of Exploding Durians, Kingyo, Inhalation, Last Fragments of Winter etc. (ahem,  basically the stuff from this playlist) And not my Murdoch University student projects in 2006! Not the little "short films" I did with friends in 2005 and 2004 when I didn't even know what filmmaking was!!!

But then, they are part of the journey, and they lead to what I am now, so I'll just keep them... for the time being.

Most of them are snippets that seem more fitting for Facebook video. But Facebook hasn't existed when I shot them. So there.

These stuff were actually shot and edited in 2004, when I just got to Perth. They were literally the first ever videos I've ever done.

RIP Prince

Friend lost her laptop. Devastated. I told her to believe in humanity by watching Prince’s Super Bowl Halftime Show https://t.co/GxZ0YRaYYA

— Edmund Yeo (@greatswifty) April 23, 2016

Prince died two nights ago.

Since then, I've been posting and retweeting a lot about him on Facebook and Twitter.

I always knew who he was as he grew up, but wasn't really truly exposed to his greatness until I saw that Super Bowl Halftime Show. That was epic and spine-tingling.

Two days later, when a friend lost her Macbook and External Hard Disk, and was entirely distraught, all I could do was to ask her to believe in the goodness of humanity by watching Prince's Super Bowl Halftime Show.

WATCH: Woo Ming Jin's really funny IT'S POSSIBLE YOUR HEART CANNOT BE BROKEN starring fellow filmmakers Tan Chui Mui and Liew Seng Tat

This 2005 short film by Woo Ming Jin was made during the height of the period which some had referred to as the "Malaysian New Wave". It was a time when a tight-knit group of filmmakers in the country started making films together, or helping each other by taking different roles in the production. It was the rise of DV cameras and digital filmmaking, which gave many the chance to make their own films.

The two leads of this short film are actually fellow filmmakers Tan Chui Mui and Liew Seng Tat, who were a year or two before they each made their breakthrough feature debuts, LOVE CONQUERS ALL and FLOWER IN THE POCKET.

Here's the synopsis:

In this black comedy about the disintegration of a love affair, a young woman's (Tan Chui Mui) loneliness in the midst of Kuala Lumpur's metropolitan sprawl triggers a tenuous relationship with a naïve salesman (Liew Seng Tat) who has a tendency to please and over-emote.

Cast and crew's Instagram posts about Isao Yukisada's PIGEON shoot

Sharifah Amani plays Yasmin in PIGEON. Yasmin is named after the late great Yasmin Ahmad.

Well, the awesome thing about social media and smart phones is that many film shoots are now being chronicled and posted about endlessly, relentlessly, by the cast and crew of the film.

It wasn't like that 5-6 years ago, when all you had was one person taking production photos, and then posting them online later. (This blog had served this purpose back then with the earlier shoots that I was involved in)

As for the PIGEON shoot last week, naturally, the cast and crew, and even director Isao Yukisada himself, were posting photos on Facebook and Instagram while the shoot was happening. I don't exactly have everyone's Instagram account (director Yukisada has more of a following on Facebook, which he is more active on, but his Instagram account is growing)

I'm going to be sharing the ones from the director, the main cast members Sharifah Amani, Nas T, Sherry Alhadad, and also TK the line producer/assistant director and Boon the Production Designer. They all have really awesome accounts which are worth following!

I am actually in charge of doing the making-of documentary for this short film, and I'm thinking of incorporating these posts into my documentary. It's something I will have to think more about.

Now, enjoy the posts!

(Sharifah Amani's posts were particularly emotional)