Edmund Yeo

Yes, it's National Day. Merdeka. Merdeka. But I'll talk about that later. For now I would like to talk about this BE. SWEET ON. dessert shop I visited on my last night at Seoul. Despite having returned from Seoul for a week, I am haunted by memories of its sublime dessert.

22nd of August. Saturday. My last day in Seoul. Decided to do some sightseeing instead of catching some films at CINDI. The first place I went to was the Namdaemun market , which reminded me of Petaling Street.

One more day left in Seoul. Yesterday was my last day in KOFIC lab. Mr. Oh has finished the colour correction and we also got ourselves some nifty end credits too. Once I return to Malaysia tomorrow, Ming Jin will be working on the sound mixing with Soundwave, then the film transfer. Too bad I won't be able to see all those. But I'll be excited to see WOMAN ON FIRE LOOKS FOR WATER having its world premiere at October's Pusan International Film Festival in glorious 35mm. *sob*

Justin Isis lacks abdominal definition For me, literature should be as exciting and energising as pop music. I am now 37 years of age, and of a generation for whom pop music was both a personal journey of discovery and something that has always been there. I suppose that for those younger than me, at least the 'has always been there' part of this description must hold, if not all of it. It has been a source of puzzlement to me, therefore, that the sensibility of pop music – all that is best about it in spontaneity, daring and role-play – somehow has not managed to permeate the world of literature. I don't mean this in any superficial sense, that authors should all start wearing shades and writing in American hipster slang (by golly!). No, literature need not relinquish any intellectual depth by learning from pop music – it can even gain some. Because, for me, interests in literature and pop music were equivalent and intertwined, when I first started having work pub

Here's an article from China Press. Didn't get to scan it, but link to original article is here . During the phone interview I was asked whether I was representing Japan at the festival, since Kingyo's a Japanese production, but I actually listed the film as a Japanese-Malaysian co-production. Rest of the blog post will be written in Chinese again. 哈罗， 我是杨毅恒。 今天和大家分享来自中国报的访问报道。

I was on Sin Chew Daily last Saturday, didn't know about it until some friends told me via Facebook. The article, which was about KINGYO going to next month's Venice Film Festival , is entirely in Chinese. But I was quoted as saying that "a friend of mine mentioned that going to Venice is like going to a 'Pantheon'." (actually I was quoting an interview article I read from my friend, Singaporean filmmaker Eva Tang 邓宝翠 " (in 2002, she was the first Singaporean filmmaker in history to get her short film into Venice Film Festival, we met in at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year) I'll include the entire article below. (The rest of this blog post will be written in Chinese...) 嗯， 大家好， 我就是杨毅恒。 这部落平时是用英文来写的， （因为自己的中文文笔蛮乱七八糟的）。 但是既然在下的短片“金鱼”入围威尼斯短片单元这好消息是中文报纸刊登的， 我就用中文来跟会对中文的读者们打个招呼以及分享这文章吧。 （这文章好像是上个星期六刊登的。 ）

Went to the Hongdae area again yesterday for the Seoul Fringe Festival . I'll post up videos of some of the nicer singing performances I saw when I return from Seoul (Youtube has disabled commenting and video uploading for Korean users). It was the Korean Liberation Day, and I thought I saw a demonstration in front of the Hongik University. In this video, you'll see me posing handsomely around the 40-second mark.

Third day in Seoul. Finally began work on the colour grading of WOMAN ON FIRE LOOKS FOR WATER in the Digital Intermediate Lab in KOFIC. Here's Ming Jin and I 'posing' with our main actor Chung Kok Keong in the lab.

Yesterday was my second day in Seoul. I managed to eat some delicious Korean BBQ for dinner.

Rukino Fujisaki and Takao Kawaguchi in KINGYO I knew about this a few days ago, but now the line-up's for the Corto Cortissimo (international competition of short films) of the 66th Venice Film Festival is officially out, I can finally announce it myself too. My short film, KINGYO, will be making its world premiere at the 66th Venice Film Festival next month. To be in the oldest and one of the most prestigious film festivals in the world is an honour beyond my wildest dreams. Of course, this would never have happened without the cast and crew of KINGYO, thanks, guys. Some of us will be going to Venice.

Reached Seoul this morning. Took a bus to the service apartment booked for us. Then headed off to the Kofic (Korean Film Commission) offices at 1pm. It was raining. That's the Nandaemun, located in the heart of Seoul.

I was sifting through the photos I took with my old camera when I found a number of production photos from WOMAN ON FIRE LOOKS FOR WATER, a feature-length film I produced earlier this year. The film's written and directed by Woo Ming Jin. This film, financed by the Asian Cinema Fund and the Hubert Bals Fund, was shot back in March at Kuala Selangor, and after returning to Malaysia last Monday, I've spent quite a number of days finalizing its edit with Ming Jin. We will be bringing the entire film to Korea tonight for the final stages of its post-production, like colour correction and film transfer. The film shoot lasted for nearly two weeks, and because it was quite hectic, I didn't really snap any photos most of the time.

Sorry for the lack of updates since I came back to Malaysia, been really busy with stuff. And I feel demotivated since internet connection here's light ears slower than the one I had in Tokyo, have difficulties uploading photos, let alone videos! Anyway, I was at the first day of the Klang Creative Fest 2009 yesterday because there was a screening of a couple of films I was involved in, like KURUS and THE ELEPHANT AND THE SEA, and after that I presented my short films, CHICKEN RICE MYSTERY (which just got invited to next month's Calgary Film Festival, I'm surprised it still has festival life!) my little-seen experimental video essay FLEETING IMAGES (I decided to take it out cos it got invited for competition at next month's Singapore Short Film Festival), LOVE SUICIDES (gonna be in competition at next month's Split International Film Fest in Croatia) and then AFTERNOON RIVER, which was shot in Klang back in April and was really commissioned for the Creative Fest.

I'm presenting three of my short films at the KLANG CREATIVE FEST, held in Klang Centro ( map ) on the 8th of August, 4:30pm. (exactly a year after the opening of the Beijing Olympics 2008 :D ) The first one will be the comedy, CHICKEN RICE MYSTERY, which won an Honourable Mention award and a Best Acting award (for lead actress Kimmy) in the BMW Shorties 2008 before screening at the Dubai and Naoussa Film Festivals (Greece).

The shoot for THE WHITE FLOWER ended around 12:30am this morning. I borrowed my friend Zhi Feng's house for the shoot. Everything was so hectic that I forgot to whip out my own camera until we were about to finish things.

The second day of the The White Flower shoot went on smoothly. I managed to wrap things up half past midnight. I will write about that later. I came home just now and received a MSN message from my dad that Uncle Martin, the husband of my dad's sister (I called him 'Ah Teong', which was from the Teochew dialect), had just passed away this morning from cancer.

The cast and crew of THE WHITE FLOWER on top of the Futtsu Viewpoint structure. From left to right: Niklas the cinematographer, Zhu Dan the actress, me, Toro Inamura the actor, Kong the assistant director/ reluctant actor 31st of July. Principal photography for my short film, THE WHITE FLOWER (mentioned in my previous post ) began.