Edmund Yeo

Haven't updated in 4 months since 2018 started? Insane. So many things have happened! A brief trip in Tokyo during the first week of 2008. (brief appearance on NHK too) A trip to Europe in February for the Swiss premiere of AQERAT (it was my first time in Switzerland and the experience was awesome). Also stopped by at Berlin Film Fest before Switzerland for the first time since 2009. Started March with the Malaysia International Film Fest and the Malaysian premiere of AQERAT, met Ann Hui and Christopher Doyle at the closing ceremony! A day after the ceremony, and a day or two before my own birthday, I received a "Most Outstanding Filmmaker" award from the Malaysian Chinese Film Association during their annual dinner. I was really just there for the food, and to meet up with film friends, didn't know they were giving out awards. -_- Ended March with a film shoot in Hokkaido. Last scene for the day. It’s been fun, sh

The year is about to end, before it does I want to write about the International Film Festival of Kerala, which happened from Dec 8 to Dec 15, 2017 (I was there from Dec 7 to Dec 16, stayed throughout the duration of the festival). AQÉRAT was having its Indian premiere at the festival, as an opening film of its brand new section, Uprooted: Films on Identity & Space , which are mostly films about refugees, displacement and search for identity. The last time I ever been to India was 2007, so it took ten years to revisit the country. And Trivandrum, the city where the festival was held, was both familiar (reminds me of certain places in Malaysia) and not (the amazing audiences, the passion people have for cinema, it's one of a kind) Each screening venue were huge auditoriums or theatres with a capacity of more than 800 people, with some of them seemingly meant for thousand over audiences. And having attended many screenings at the festival, it was amazing to see that the s

This journal has existed since 2004, witnessing my days as a university student in Perth with dreams of filmmaking to the actual embarkation of my filmmaking journey. And thus it has witnessed many of my adventures and greatest triumphs, from my student short films in Murdoch during 2006 to directing a Japanese short film, KINGYO, that got into Venice Film Festival in 2009 to writing and producing Woo Ming Jin's TIGER FACTORY that got invited to the Director's Fortnight at Cannes Film Fest in 2010, and then winning the Sonje Award for Best Asian Short Film the same year at Busan Film Fest with another short film, INHALATION. There are a lot of ups and downs, though I'm sure I don't really write the downs that much. Exactly a month ago, November 3rd 2017, I received an award for Best Director at the Tokyo International Film Festival, for my latest film AQÉRAT (We, The Dead). My lead actress Daphne Low, who had worked with me since 2013 for the short film FLOATING

When it comes to filmmaking, I always have this yearning to shoot it at places I've never been to before. Every new project, we'll have to go somewhere we've never been to before, I think it coincides with my love for traveling. The past few weeks I've been visiting Kampung Bagan Sungai Lima (the "fifth river" in Malay), the village on this island are mostly on stilts. A quiet sleepy town, where people travel around only by walking or bicycles, it's almost as if I were transported somewhere else in time. Location scouting A post shared by Edmund Yeo (@edmundyeo) on Aug 9, 2017 at 12:09am PDT Ocean of dried shrimps A post shared by Edmund Yeo (@edmundyeo) on Aug 9, 2017 at 6:38pm PDT Waiting for a storm that never came. A post shared by Edmund Yeo (@edmundyeo) on Aug 9, 2017 at 10:40pm PDT A room with a view. A post shared by Edmund Yeo (@edmundyeo) on Aug 12, 2017 at 1:03am PDT Jetty of Five Rivers A post shared by Edmund Yeo (@edmundyeo) on Au

The great filmmaker Edward Yang passed away exactly 10 years ago. That was 2007. I remember it most for being the year I got into the film industry. It was that one year between my return from Perth (late 2006) and my subsequent relocation to Tokyo (April Fool 2008). 5 years ago, to mark the 5th anniversary of his passing, I wrote this post about his films. In that post, I remembered and chronicled my experiences of watching four of his films. (in this order) YI YI, THE TERRORIZERS, BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY and A CONFUCIAN CONFUSION. On the first time I saw YI YI: In the course of the film's 3-hour running time, I found myself mesmerized and amazed by the novelistic scope of the film, which seemed to cover every single aspect of humanity in the film. It was an absolutely rich experience, that the film would follow the lives of a typical Taiwanese family in the span of a year, beginning with a wedding and ending with a death, and the middle of it, we see the Father reminis

Exactly a week ago, I was taking a plane to Langkawi for a wedding. A few hours before I flew off, I paid my respects to Auntie Tan, a dear family friend who passed away the night before. While I was flying I wrote a post to remember her. I am writing this while I’m flying to Langkawi for a wedding. It’s one of those pleasant flights where I’m fortunate enough to have an entire row for myself. Too bad the flight is so short. Right now, I want to write about a very dear family friend who had just passed away yesterday. All these years, I’ve called her “Auntie Tan”. A great friend of my mom’s, a person our entire family had been very fond of. This morning before going to the aiport, I went to her house to pay my last respects. That was the least I could do. I was going to miss her funeral for a wedding, it almost felt like a dark cosmic twist. “Always cheerful, always smiling and always laughing, this is how I will always remember you. Thank you.” I said in my heart as