Edmund Yeo

Posted this on Facebook a few days ago. Post by Edmund Yeo . (So I will post it here too, but with amendments. And links to previous blog posts related to these books. To help me remember.)

This was actually posted on Twitch a while ago (my friends at Toronto J-Film Pow Wow covered it too ), but I've been so busy with my own shoots back in Malaysia that I didn't get around to sharing it with you guys. My experimental short, THE WHITE FLOWER, which I shot last year, is finally making its world premiere at the Hong Kong InDpanda Short Film Festival next week. To commemorate this, I cut together a trailer for the short. It's an experimental film based on Yasunari Kawabata's short story of the same title, constructed mostly with still photos like Chris Marker's LA JETEE. It's my third Kawabata adaptation after LOVE SUICIDES and KINGYO. Here's a synopsis. A young Chinese woman living in Tokyo is haunted by remnants of a forbidden relationship and a dark family past. She ends up in a sanitarium and meets a doctor conflicted between his job and his personal feelings. After being discharged, she meets a wandering Thai filmmaker contemplating

27th of July, two days ago, the first screening of KINGYO was held as part of the short film competition program in the Skip City International D-Cinema Festival 2010. I was surprised by the amount of audiences, being a Tuesday morning and all. Mine was the last one to play, so I got to watch the other three short films, which were all really diverse in tone and genres: A fantasy black comedy, a cyberpunk samurai actioner, and a coming-of-age tale. Left the hall when KINGYO started playing, so not entirely sure of its reception. The filmmakers and cast members were all invited onto the stage after the screening to introduce themselves and what they wanted to say about their films.

My short film, LOVE SUICIDES (2009) has also been temporarily uploaded online last month as part of Brazil's Fluxus 2010 - International Film Festival on the Internet, so I decided to allow the folks at GUA to host the short for a while as well.

I mentioned in my previous post that the Thai-language short film that I wrote and produced, LADYBIRD'S TEARS, will be having its world premiere at the 23rd Singapore International Film Festival tomorrow (19th of April, 2010). Aside from that, both the shorts that I wrote and directed, LOVE SUICIDES and KINGYO will also be part of their Asian Shorts program. It's quite an honour to have 3 shorts that I was involved in being presented at the film festival.

Yesterday, as I walked out of my place, the sky was very blue.

My friend, Kelly (she's from Taiwan), had been preparing to do a very small-scaled short film, and had enlisted Kong's help to shoot it. She had wanted to shoot her place in a traditional Japanese house, and so her friend Anna, offered to let Kelly use her great-grandmother's house in Kamakura. Yesterday, Kong and Kelly decided to go to Kamakura to look at Anna's house. I decided to tag along because I've never been to Kamakura before.

Today's (actually, since it's 1am while I'm writing this, it's actually yesterday) a public holiday in Japan. It's Seijin No Hi (Coming-of-Age Day). On this day, ceremonies are held at local city offices for young adults who reach the age of 20. Women go out in furisode (a style of kimono with long sleeves draped down, which is necessary, since it's winter), men occasionally go out in traditional clothes, but nowadays they usually wear suits.

I felt a sense of nationalistic pride when I went to catch SELL OUT! at TOKYO FILMeX on the 24th, last month. Took me quite a while to finally catch the film since I wasn't around during the film's local theatrical release in Malaysia couple of months ago. I enjoyed the film, though I liked the satirical, comedic parts more than the musical parts. SELL OUT! Lead actress Jerrica Lai, who had a great voice and was awesome in the film, would later give another wonderful performance at the stunning WOMAN ON FIRE LOOKS FOR WATER, produced by, well, me.

I've been having problems sleeping again. The past week when my family were around, I had my most normal sleeping schedule in MONTHS. Sleeping around 1am, waking up around 8-9am, it was healthy. After finishing my latest THE WHITE FLOWER (I now have the film in screener DVDs, but there will still be some minor tweaks here and there before it really premieres), its month-long post-production leading to some of the craziest, most irregular sleeping time for myself (I would take a brief nap from 11pm to 1-2am, wake up, orchestrate net meetings with Niklas the cinematographer and Woan Foong the composer, getting materials for them to continue the progress of the film, and then updating them by uploading some footage online for them to view etc.) I started having breakfast before I sleep at around 9-10am. still from THE WHITE FLOWER The best thing is that I get to skip lunch (which isn't served for free in my dorm, haha) since I often sleep through the noon and wake up around 2pm. I

I have blamed my recent sleeping problems on work (the heavily intense post-production of my short film THE WHITE FLOWER), I've even constantly tweeted (+facebook status update) about it. But moments ago, a guzheng-playing Twitter friend Seren Koo replied to me by suggesting that writing down my ideas and what I want to do would liberate thoughts from my mind, and thus making it easier to sleep. I realized that my lack of sleep seems to correlate with my lack of blog updates. Many times, writing a blog post at night for me can be quite (mentally) exhausting (despite said post being deceptively mindless!), and I can just drift off to sleep after that. Thus I will start writing something long, and insightful and mentally taxing just so I can exhaust myself enough to sleep. Alas, the blog post you're reading now is probably not one of them.

I went to Honjo at Saitama yesterday for a KINGYO screening at the Unicus Cinema (it's a multiplex in a shopping mall called Unicus). I think it was for the opening event of their inaugural Honjo Kodama Area Film Festival. Both my film, and a Chinese-Japanese co-produced documentary (also from the lab I'm), Shaolin Kungfu, were there. My friends, Yang Yang and Zifeng, were the editors of that film. This is me in Professor Ando's (executive producer of KINGYO) car, heading to the multiplex, with Maiko, Zifeng and Yang Yang.

Internet access is limited (I only get it at the film festival place, not my hotel), so haven't been giving people as many updates as I wanted. One more hour before the second KINGYO screening in Venice. My two actresses, Luchino Fujisaki and Amane Kudo had just arrived last night, so they'll be present for today's screening. Hope the reception will be as warm as the one I got two nights ago. I'm on THE STAR today as well, in an article written by Allan Koay. I like the photo of myself because I didn't look fat. (it helped that it was a self-portrait)

(Photo by Martha K ) I'm flying back to Malaysia next Monday (3rd of August), and thus ends the dream-like 3rd session of my stay in Japan. Long have my Finnish friend Niklas and I have spoken about working on a project together, in fact, when we went to explore the abandoned ruins in Sagamiko back in May, our true intention was location scouting.

Love Suicides I have mentioned this briefly back in April, but I'll mention it again since I've gotten more details now that the official line-up of next month's Paris Cinema International Film Festival is out. So yup, LOVE SUICIDES, my first ever Yasunari Kawabata adaptation before I made KINGYO, is one of the 17 short films around the world selected for competition at the Paris Cinema International Film Fest.

Machine Girl of TWITCH had a very nice write-up of KINGYO.

Amane Kudo in KINGYO An unfinished cut of my 25-minute Japanese short film, KINGYO, will be screened at the Shinjuku Wald 9 for the Fuyajo Cinema Festival (click to their site for more info) on the 5th of June. Fuyajo (不夜城, translated as 'city without night') is an all-night event that runs from 10pm to 6am the next day. It's running on the 5th of June, and then the 6th of June.

Being a long-time reader of Twitch , I, was more than surprised and delighted when Todd did a write-up on my Yasunari Kawabata-inspired short film, LOVE SUICIDES. There's coverage from a Spanish site too! Thanks, guys!

HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR! GONG XI FA CAI! The shoot for KINGYO (my new film, some screenshots here , you can even read about its write-up on Toronto J-Film Pow-Wow, Edmund Yeo reworks Yasunari Kawabata in his latest short film "kingyo" ) ended on last Thursday night, amidst a heavy rain in Akihabara. As I was drenched in the rain, I was reminded of my CHICKEN RICE MYSTERY shoot nearly a year ago, when the end of a shoot was signaled by a heavy rain as well. After 4 hectic days of shoot, I felt relieved that everything progressed so smoothly. While I've always seemed optimistic to most people, previous experiences in student productions had taught me to always expect the worst but hope for the best during shoots. When a shoot ends, I always feel relieved, and giddy with joy that I managed to survive. And then there's always a feeling of gratitude towards my cast and crew, for enduring that journey with me. The cast and crew of kingyo had seen some crazy stuff during the

After finding all our primary cast members , I wondered how to put together the production crew. Maiko The Producer said that she will recruit help from people of the Tokyo University of the Arts (the place where Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Beat Takeshi are teaching), she then rented a DVD to show me, an omnibus with four segments, each an adaptation of a Kawabata Yasunari short story. I was impressed by the technical skills and production values displayed throughout the film. I agreed, it would be quite wonderful to have such experienced people helping us out. One day later, Maiko told me that she had recruited their help. Two directors of photography, a gaffer and a sound mixer. Aside from the sound mixer, they were not students, but alumni from the university, some are actually teaching there.