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Dreaming of Min in EXiS, Korea

2009-10-17T20:40:00.007+08:00

Dreaming of Min, by Sherman Ong, 2009 (foto:Han Tan)

Escape Of Silence
A Singapore Programme at the Experimental Film And Video Festival in Seoul (EXiS)

Date: 12 September 2009 (Saturday)
Time: 1430
Venue: Samillo Changgo Theatre, Seoul
Duration: 86 min

This programme starts with a series of experimental videos that do not feature dialogues. A minimal exposition on the act of inspiration; a handiwork about to transcend the boundaries of its own craft; a balloon that flies into a room; a surreal cast that disappears into the forest; a boy and a mysterious sink; a sleepless lover in a foreign city; a monologue lamenting the bloom and doom of a transient love. Through these videos, one is challenged to explore the idea of escape - from Singapore, from reality and the boundaries of what is one's own and what is alien and foreign. In this journey away from Singapore, what have they found? Inspiration, love, a heightened sense of identity? Some of these videos were made by Singapore filmmakers while they were away from Singapore - Sewing Room in the Netherlands, Sink in Thailand, Wanderlust in Japan, 24hrs and Autopsy in Korea.

The films in the second part of the programme present different ways in which the filmmakers confront the boundaries of social and political debate or controversy. Beginning with the dreams of two women in Singapore, the films portray them attempting to transcend their social conditions, one as Imelda Marcos, former first lady of the Philippines, and the other as the Queen of Korea. It is then followed by three short films where the filmmakers wrangle with more contentious topics: Autopsy, a mother coming to terms with her son's sexuality through a personal dialogue with him; and two banned works that feature the voices of the artists despite the restrictions on their art form.

This programme was visualized as a series of films that utilize the gradual transcendence of sound to illustrate the vocal, volatile human emotions and relationships. From silence and quietness, the films envelope lyrical musicality before exploding into rantings of punk and rock.

Curated by Tan Bee Thiam, Asian Film Archive.

Jakarta Biennale XIII: Of Human and International Relations

2009-10-17T17:34:00.004+08:00

AsiaViews, Edition: 01/VI/Jan/2009
Jakarta Biennale XIII:
Of Human and International Relations.

Jakarta Biennale Blog

The Jakarta Biennale is the oldest Biennale in Indonesia. Now in its 13th edition, the Jakarta Biennale, organized under the auspices of the Jakarta Art Council, turns its attention to the city and the spaces within it.

Like any other metropolitan city, Jakarta with its 10 million inhabitants, suffers from the neglect of the human individual. Commercial gains, economic profit, greed and a chilling indifference have made the city a place with little space for the cultivation of the human spirit.

Through activities held in public spaces throughout the city, the 13th Jakarta Biennale attempts to strike a balance.

The early signs of the biennale’s conceptual design was indicated in The Women Photographers exhibition Mata Perempuan (Woman’s Eye) which kicked off the Jakarta Biennale in December 2008 . Though the exhibition itself was not up to standard in terms of quality and display, it expressed the basic problems of the big city that the 13th Jakarta Biennale wishes to tackle. The images portrayed were not, however, about the use of spaces such as megablocks, industrial estates and malls that rob the city of its green, but rather about the feeling within that construction: aloneness and alienation.

The Jakarta biennale is not the first biennale that relates to a city. It is, however, the first in Asia that gives attention to the social problems that a city spawns, not so much its historical buildings.

The 13th Jakarta Biennale, which comes under the main theme “ARENA”, is divided into three sub-thematic categories: zona pemahaman (comprehension zone), zona pertarungan (battle zone) and zona cair (fluid zone). In the city construct, where the spaces tend to be filled with economic, industrial and commercial concerns, the Jakarta Biennale wishes to create another space, one that spurs, creates and appreciates the arts thus creating balance to the human spirit. With that purpose in mind, both the battle zone and the comprehensive zone initiated art for community participation in public spaces.

Apart from its local focus, the 13th Jakarta Biennale takes pride of place among the international biennales held in Asia. For the first time since 1985 and in the history of Indonesian biennales, as well as in Southeast Asia, the 13th Jakarta Biennale explored the similarities of culture, tradition and art praxis between the various art works across Southeast Asia.
On 6 February, the exhibition of what is called the Fluid Zones, opens at the National Gallery in Jakarta, until 27 February.

The Fluid Zones comprise two parts: On the Map and Traffic.
On the Map features works by 14 Indonesian artists in their 30s and 13 artists of the same age group from the region, many of whom are well-known. Among the Indonesian artists are the very popular Eko Nugroho , Kus Widananto aka Jompet, Handiwirman Saputra, Tintin Wulia side by side with first-time biennale participants like Videobabes. Artists from the region include, among others, Dona Ong (Singapore), Vincent Leong (Malaysia), Montri Toemsombat (Thailand), Jason Banal (Philippines), and Hoang Doang Kam (Vietnam).

Traffic shows works by artists of various ages such as Victoria Cattoni (Australia), Stani Michiels (Belgium), Sylvain Saily (France), Nadiah Bamadhaj and Sherman Ong (Malaysia), Sara Nuytemans (the Netherlands), Phil Collins (U.K.), Adria Julia (Spain), Uschi Huber (Germany) and Takuro Kotaka (Japan), all of whom have had residency in one of the countries in the region.
A catalog will be published with essays by curators, critics, and arts lecturers focused on the Southeast Asian art scene. The contributors include the Netherlands-born Dr Thomas Berghuis, currently residing in Australia, who will give an analysis of artists’ mobility in the region. Prof Patrick D. Flores from the Philippines will review the history of Southeast Asian contemporary art, whilst Adeline Ooi from Malaysia will explore the trends and current issues in the works of young artists from the region. Indonesia will be represented by Enin Supriyanto with his review of the latest development of art infrastructure in Southeast Asia. Agung Hujatnikajennong, curator of the Jakarta Biennale Fluid Zones 09, will elaborate on the curatorial theme of the Jakarta Biennale ’09 and the works in the exhibition.

On 8 February, 3 – 5 pm, there will be talks given by artists at the National Gallery.

On 10 February, 9 am – 4 pm, a seminar will be held on Southeast Asian contemporary art featuring Dr Thomas Berghuis, Prof Patrick Flores and Nuraini Juliasturi as speakers.

For more info, call The Jakarta Biennale at The Jakarta Art Council at +62 21 319 37639, 3162780, 39899634, or Iwan at +62 8159213952. E-mail: Jakarta.biennale.09@dkj.or.id www.jakartabiennale09.com

By Carla Bianpoen

Senses of Cinema 2006 World Poll

2009-10-17T15:45:00.006+08:00

It’s the year of ’Cinema of No Mercy'by Jit Phokaew

Is it easy to kill/pray?, a film by Sherman Ong, 2005

Kent Jones said in his Film Comment article that torture was a big item in 2006’s Cannes crop. I think he is very right, though I haven’t seen many films from Cannes yet. Cinema I saw in 2006 is full of unforgettable images or stories of extreme suffering or merciless people. As for physical cruelty, the most unforgettable scenes include scenes of torture in Flandres (Bruno Dumont, 2006), The Wind That Shakes the Barley (Ken Loach, 2006), Casino Royale (Martin Campbell, 2006) and “Masters of Horror”: Imprint (Miike Takashi, 2006). The painful scenes or stories also include: the hilarious collective vengeance in Chinjeolhan Geumjassi (Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, Park Chan-wook, 2005), the collective murder in The Wicker Man (Neil LaBute, 2006) and La Monja (The Nun, Luis De La Madrid, 2005), the ’invisible’ beating in Karov La Bayit (Close to Home, Vidi Bilu and Dalia Hagar, 2005), the near-lynching in Crónicas (Sebastián Cordero, 2003), the spousal abuse in Yeonae (Love is a Crazy Thing, Oh Seok-geun, 2005), the sexual abuse man did to woman in Ammahit Pissawas (The Passion, Saranyu Wongkrajang, 2006), woman did to man in Go West (Ahmed Imamovic, 2005), and man did to man in Omiros (Hostage, Constantine Giannaris, 2005), the organ chopping in The Prestige (Christopher Nolan, 2006), the extreme punishment in Wang-ui namja (The King and the Clown, Lee Jun-ik, 2005), the dog killing in Is It Easy to Kill/Pray? (Sherman Ong, 2005), the excrement eating in 13 game sayawng (13 Beloved, Chookiat Sakvirakul, 2006), the tar-and-feathers attack in the television series “Carnivàle” (2005), and the abuse of children in Running Scared (Wayne Kramer, 2006), Voces inocentes (Innocent Voices, Luis Mandoki, 2004), Golemata voda (The Great Water, Ivo Trajkov, 2004), Water (Deepa Mehta, 2005), and Quando sei nato non puoi più nasconderti (Once You’re Born You Can No Longer Hide, Marco Tullio Giordana, 2005). As for emotional cruelty, the most unforgettable parts include the zoo scene in Happy Feet (George Miller, 2006), the saxophone prohibition in The Lost City (Andy Garcia, 2005), a middle-aged woman applying for a job in Violence des échanges en milieu tempéré (Work Hard, Play Hard, Jean-Marc Moutout, 2003), the people’s indifference to someone in danger in Viva Laldjérie (Viva Algeria, Nadir Moknèche, 2004), and the ostracism of AIDS patients shown directly in My Brother…Nikhil (Onir, 2005) and told verbally in Heaven’s Meadow (Detlev F. Neufert, 2005). Watching all these scenes gives me the same feeling that I have when I read the newspaper. It’s the feeling that the world might be turning into hell.

My time w Gertjan (RotterdamIFF Programmer) and Uli (German Filmmaker)

2009-10-05T12:16:00.015+08:00

Forget Africa 29: Camera - Notes and travel diaries from programmer Gertjan Zuilhof researching a programme on African cinema with the slightly paradoxical title Forget Africa.

Sherman came a bit later to Dar-es-Salaam. Sherman Ong. Singapore filmmaker with Malaysian passport (Ong Beng Ann Sherman, as in that passport). Artist. Photographer. Theater and installation maker. Likes improvisation. Made a feature film in Japan (Hashi, 2008), that even the Japanese see as a Japanese movie. The first film of him I saw (and showed) was an Indonesian movie (Exodus, 2004).

Sherman had a busy summer. He took part in the Venice Biennale. He contributed to the big work on the memory of cinema, Life of Imitation, by Singapore artist Ming Wong (that got a Special Mention) and he competed in Cinema Digital Seoul in Korea with the film version of his installation work Flooding in Times of Draught.
Yes, Sherman works internationally and in a very personal way. Reasons enough to ask him for the Africa project.
I knew I would see Sherman only shortly - between him coming straight from Korean and we traveling on to Zambia - so I took some pictures for this blog during this overlap.
Too bad in Zambia my camera was stolen for a second time (this time I did not get it back) and the pictures were still on the memory card.
I liked my camera (that was also a gift) a lot so I had to get over that (I am, more or less, by now).

After my camera was stolen. With Cameraman Go and production manager Paul. With the camera of Paul's girlfriend. Picture made by Jakrawal Nilthamrong.

So I asked Sherman to send me some pictures he made himself. All the filmmakers in this project had their own choice of camera. Some preferred an older and trusted mini dv camera, others tried a new HD camera out. Sherman preferred the latest still camera. More filmmakers shoot nowadays with the video function of a still camera because the image quality is superior to that of a video camera. The sound only is a problem, but Sherman improvised his own solution for it. I took a nice picture of his camera on a cafe table. The brand name and type number were taped and it looked like a battered war photographers camera. Here the commercial shot of the camera, just to give you an idea.

Canon EOS 5D Mark II. Camera Sherman

So with the same camera he made some pictures of his cast. He is working on an improvised fiction film with the title Memories of a Burning Tree. I whish I could post the pictures in their full resolution, but with African internet and the picture ending up on this web side anyway, that is quite impossible.

Cast Link Rueben
Loyal readers might recognize this young man. He was Uli Schueppels assistant, body guard, line producer and in the end friend I guess. Now Link was selected by Sherman as one of his actors and I am quite curious to see him in this role. Link is an elegant and soft spoken man. Quite unlike most of his country men.

Still photo of Memories of a Burning Tree by Sherman Ong

Sherman also sent me some nice pictures of his shoot. In the use of space and light I see the hand of the filmmaker of Hashi.
Last thing he wrote me was that one of the actresses had malaria and that he was waiting for her to get better. Yes, we are in Africa.
I asked also for a picture of himself, but so far only the one below arrived. The resolution could be higher and you can see he did not take the picture himself. The situation is typical for shooting movies or pictures in slum neighborhoods in Africa. In no time the photographer or filmmaker is buried under a mountain of children. Dirty, dusty and smelly children I wrote here some time ago and a reader pointed this out to me. I don't think she minds that I did not change it. We went to Africa with fresh eyes. Fresh noses as well.

Sherman with neighborhood children

For more information and photos on Forget Africa, please go to:
Gertjan's Forget Africa Blog

Sherman with curious friends and camera

Cast Smith K. Kimaro
Click for Stills from Memories of a Burning Tree

Sherman with collaborators from the University of Dar Es Salaam Fine Arts Faculty, Tanzania
Click for Memories of Dar - friends and collaborators

Forget Africa in Rotterdam

2009-10-03T15:27:00.005+08:00

Still from Memories of a Burning Tree shot in Tanzania by Sherman Ong

ScreenAfrica : Focus on African cinema

The 39th International Film Festival Rotterdam has announced a first major focus - ‘Where is Africa?’ This most extensive programme devoted to independent African filmmaking at any Western film festival in recent years will include new short and feature length films, live performances, historical films, storyteller's cinema, debates and a series of commissioned films by non-African filmmakers. The 39th IFFR takes places from 27 January up to 7 February 2010.

The focus on African cinema, part of the festival’s main section ‘Signals’, will concentrate on the filmmaking culture in sub-Saharan and Central parts of Africa. Festival programmer Gertjan Zuilhof, who took the initiative, about the project, said: "There is no real reason to do it now other than that we maybe should have done it much earlier. It is obvious that Africa is not represented at international film festivals or if so only by one or two token films. The idea was to go to the least represented countries and meet the local filmmakers. Partly, contemporary filmmaking in these countries is influenced by video and hip hop cultures. A number of artists have developed themselves into filmmakers after making music videos for their musician friends. However the films in ‘Where is Africa?’ will be most diverse in style and approach, from documentary to baroque fiction."

‘Where is Africa?’ includes of a series of events, presentations, performances, debates and screenings brought together by Alice Smits and Lee Ellickson, co-directors of the Amakula Kampala International Film Festival in Uganda. This part of the Africa focus will present short and feature length films, storyteller’s cinema (innovative live performances that combine storytelling and film), musical re-interpretations of classical African movies, works by maestro’s and pioneers of African cinema, rarely seen films from archives and events by artists who use film or video in their works or performances.

A special part of the focus will be ‘Forget Africa’. The IFFR asked twelve non-African filmmakers to get involved and, travelling through an African country of their choice, use their first impressions to each make a film. ‘Forget Africa’ will include the world premieres of commissioned films by Philipino filmmaker Khavn De la Cruz (Cameroon), Malaysian filmmaker Tan Chui Mui (South Africa), US-filmmakers Kimi Takesue (Uganda) and Deborah Stratman (Malawi), Indian-American filmmaker Pia Sawhney (Rwanda), German filmmaker Uli Schueppel and Singaporean artist Sherman Ong (Tanzania), Beijing based Philippine filmmaker Joanna Arong Vasquez and Thai artist and filmmaker Jakrawal Nilthamrong (Zambia), Indonesian filmmaker Edwin (Kenya), US-filmmaker Kevin Jerome Everson (Angola) and Austrian artist Ella Raidel (Mozambique).
Forget Africa is supported by the IFFR's Hubert Bals Fund. Other partners who back Forget Africa are the Göteborg International Film Festival and its Fund, several funds within the countries of the non-African filmmakers involved and the Goethe Institutes in Africa. On the Rotterdam festival's website, Gertjan Zuilhof blogs about his travels and meetings with filmmakers.

The IFFR will announce more focus programs as well as the lineup of its competitions, other main sections (Bright Future and Spectrum), CineMart and Hubert Bals Fund selections during the upcoming months. In 2009, the Rotterdam film festival counted 341,000 admissions and was attended by 2,500 international guests.

Special Mention for Ming Wong and Singapore Pavilion @ Venice Biennale 2009

2009-06-08T19:07:00.008+08:00

Still from Ticket Seller by Sherman Ong @ Singapore Pavilion, Venice Biennale 2009

Singapore Pavilion
Venice Biennale
7 June - 22 Nov 2009
Curator: Tang Fu Kuen
Artist: Ming Wong
Contributing Artists: Neo Chon Teck, Wong Han Ming, Sherman Ong

The Singapore Pavilion, entitled Life of Imitation, stages the co-existence of multiple worlds where language, gender, appearance and traditions constantly negotiate with one another. In playful and imperfect acts of mimesis and melodrama, this exhibition attempts to hold the mirror up to the Singaporean condition related to roots, hybridity and change.

Artist Ming Wong illuminates on Singapore’s significant cinematic legacy, while inserting a set of performative video interventions that reflexively address identity formation. His aesthetic strategy is to re-enact the characters and lines in specific scenes or situations that relate to otherness. The mimicry is sly and comic, and the video loops soon expose slippages in acting guises and stances. These imperfections of copying allow for a critical recognition of difference and ambiguity.

As part of commemorating yesteryear cinema, the country’s last surviving billboard painter, CT Neo, has been commissioned to collaborate with Ming Wong to create 3 canvases to be unveiled in Venice. Also seen for the first time outside Singapore are the rare artefacts by private collector HM Wong who has lovingly reconstructed - in the form of A4 paper ‘artworks’ - the evolution of local cinema buildings in the last century. This complements Ming Wong’s journey from Singapore to Malaysia photographing the fate of once beautiful but now deserted ‘architectures of entertainment’. In parallel, film-maker Sherman Ong’s ‘creative documentary’ brings us encounters with fabulous individuals whose deeds and aspirations constitute Singapore’s collective film memory.

Gone in 49 seconds...

2008-11-27T00:22:00.003+08:00

http://mus-mus.org/at600/mm_photos.htm
At 600 internet time 4 Nov 2008, a very dangerous ginger escaped through the toilet window of a detention centre. During a re-enactment, it took only 49 seconds to go out the window, scale a fence, climb onto the roof of the covered walkway, and jump out of the compound. A public eyewitness saw a limping ginger with the shadow of the angel of death running pass a dead giraffe towards the southwest, a direction that is auspicious for his escape according to a geomancer.

Hashi @ Bangkok World Film Festival 2008

2008-11-05T18:37:00.005+08:00

LIMITLESS CINEMA: HASHI REMINDS ME OF RIVETTE AND APICHATPONG

1. HASHI (2008, Sherman Ong, Japan, A+++++++++++++++)
This film gives me the ultimate pleasure of narrative freedom, or freedom from narrative, or whatever. It’s the same kind of pleasure I experienced when I saw UP DOWN FRAGILE (1995, Jacques Rivette, A+++++++++++++++) and MYSTERIOUS OBJECT AT NOON (2000, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, A+++++++++++++++). These three films, or the stories in these three films, are the works of collaborative efforts between the directors and their cast. I love the indeterminable directions of the stories in these three films. Watching HASHI gives me the same kind of pleasure that I have when I talk with a group of friends. We can talk in any topics we like. We can change the topics whenever we want to. Some of us may be obsessed with some topics and keep returning to those topics. We can also sit still from time to time and enjoy the silence. I love many scenes in this film, because they seem to have no special meanings, no special messages. They are just scenes to experience. We don’t have to find any meanings or messages in these scenes.

Flooding in the Time of Drought @ Singapore Biennale

2008-10-31T02:20:00.007+08:00

fotocredit:TanHaiHan

September 2008

ARTicle: The Singapore Biennale Companion
in medias res: Taking to the dead in Hans Op de Beeck and Sherman Ong

by Adele Tan

‘Wonder’, as this year’s biennale theme, comes to us as a blithe proposition. It proposes to probe our curiosity and inquiry, and imbue us with enchantment -- an antidote to our urban jadedness.

Picture my surprise then when it exhibited an uncanny predilection for catastrophe and death. Or at least this is the case with the following two artists: Sherman Ong and Hans Op de Beeck. Both artists are aesthetically invested in rather different media: film for Ong and sculptural installation for Op de Beeck. Both are similarly driven by narrative, or rather an urge to dispel narrative by taking apart the conventional flow of storytelling in order to insert us right in the middle of life’s inchoate and sometimes absurd activity. Ong’s and Op de Beeck’s works for the biennale maintain at their centre an unshakable sense of disquiet. One thus “wonders” if these two may yet be prophets of unsettling, but necessary stories that we hesitate to tell ourselves.

For Ong, a Malaysian-born but Singapore-based photographer and film-maker, his latest offering speculates on the very real possibility of impending climatic disaster to devastate the country. Perhaps a knowing nod to Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel Love in the Time of Cholera, Ong’s two-part film is also aptly though contrarily titled Flooding in the Time of Drought (Banjir Kemarau), conveying the horrific collision of antinomies. Where love in the former can be said to counteract the plight of pestilence, flooding and drought in the latter are the two inhospitable extremes of too much and too little.

Ong puts to us a dystopic situation in the proximate future when Singapore suddenly runs out of water and no information is forthcoming from the government. The issues propounded here are deeply familiar; we are surrounded by water but little of it available for domestic consumption, thereby jeopardizing Singapore’s long-term survival. Newater is a stopgap measure that cannot hold at bay the rising sea-levels engulfing our shorelines in the era of global warming. Images of the tsunami-battered Bandar Aceh still chasten our imagination with destruction.

But shot almost entirely in serene domestic settings -- rooms in HDB flats which form the film’s separate but connected bubble-cell structure -- it betrays very little of the distress caused. Instead, we get shown people and families quietly coping with the humdrum of cooking, drinking, washing and cleaning, or as we like to say “life goes on”. The “drought” is but a minor distraction because lack in Singapore gets quickly ameliorated by money and imports, as is with foreign labour. The film’s actor-participants of migrant PRs give it a polyphony of regional languages, but more than that, their own life stories are scripted in to become unusual grist to the Singaporean mill. It is through these voices that rational decisions of common survival get dispersed and mitigated by yet more uncommon ones of divided national or cultural loyalties and imbricated histories.

Reminding us how our island-state is imperilled by its size and lack of natural resources is the easy sober message -- the siege mentality being politically inculcated as birthright. More difficult is the enterprise to entertain the problem in a poetic formulation. One gathers that Ong wishes to pursue through his filmic medium the human dimension or rather the human cost in desires of such epic devastation. This is no Hollywood disaster blockbuster that parries the contradictions with ever more spectacular explosions. The structural weaknesses of the country instead get translated into human fallibilities.

Ong intimates that survival is to be found in the harmony of the yin-yang forces but the film impresses upon us the shift towards the impossible situation as captured in the proverbial ‘between the devil and the deep blue sea’. Flood is not counterbalanced by drought. If anything, the film, like a good piece of critical art, throws us momentarily into an abyss. Key to this is the surreptitious interspersing of deathly moments throughout -- the Indonesian man on the bus in the film might well be justified in his lament that Singaporean commuters in general look as unfriendly as death. The film begins with a woman’s menstrual blood dripping onto her stool and does not let up in its other references to killing and dying: an Indian security guard is murdered in a break-in; a boy is dressed as female according to Thai folklore to prevent the sudden-death syndrome; and an Indonesian girl who donates her kidney to her male relative’s mother in exchange for academic funds recounts the rape and murder of a girlfriend in the Indonesian riots ten years ago to that relative whilst he continues on with his exterminator video game.
In such circumstances of desperation, decisions are taken on a quantum of unknowingness, where everything is a tangential movement. Ong has previously plumbed this line of inquiry in his photographic series Monsoon - The Mechanics of Rain, Mobility and Intervention (2006), circulating around the expected seasonal change at work but also the incalculable disruptions caused to physical and social landscapes. Monsoon took the streets of Hanoi as its object, representing it as a sequence of blurred, drenched image surfaces, the photographs taken through the glass window of a moving van in the middle of a squall. But where Monsoon pursues the dogged persistence of life, Flooding in the Time of Drought chases us into a dead-end suspense that is the dreamed up nightmare of Singapore.

This is not dissimilar to one’s encounter with Op de Beeck’s installation Location (6) within Shigeru Ban’s Containart Pavilion. We are led through a long corridor into a lofty igloo-like dome which reveals itself as a small observatory for a fictive panoramic vista of a desolate snowed-out modelled landscape enhanced through artificial fog and bright white lights. Even in its supposed immateriality there is an experience taken to be authentic and credible. Yet we aren’t quite sure if the forest scene is an enchanting tromphe l’oeil for there is no palpable sense of the living, only a bleak arctic soul that gently harbours the mordancy of life. The Belgian artist’s penchant for stagey, filmic settings co-opts us into becoming his actors, sometimes close to becoming his inhuman props. We can however commend his intentions to provide us city dwellers with silenced, emptied out spaces to reflect and contemplate our “great ineptitude … to deal with time, space and each other”. His gift of imaginary privation is therefore moral.

The narrative drive of the installation comes largely from the multidisciplinary working modes of Op de Beeck, derived from his earlier short stories and from which it gets parsed or parlayed in diverse directions. Location (6) has spawned Possible Panoramas, a series of five large-scale landscape prints created first in watercolour and ink; and Constructions, three monochrome white scale sculptures of imaginary panoramas made out of wood, metal, cardboard and polystyrene constructed during the R&D phase of the installation. The artist wants us to move between inside-looking out and outside-looking in, to be in spaces where not everything is in place even when we are tricked into illusionistic fineries. Op de Beeck’s earlier video projection Loss (2004) possibly shares even more affinities with Ong’s biennale film -- the viewer was let into a cold dark space with a hauntingly sound-tracked filmic sequence of images of late nineteenth-century city architecture and parks gradually turning into spectres of a ruined and muddy terrain, just as the Belgian coastal region was right after the First World War. But where Op de Beeck gravitates towards the lyrical memory of historical trauma, Ong has no such ‘consolations’ from the past. Instead, Ong seeks a disruption in the ideological promise of tomorrow which has been sold to us with historical traces held as ransom.

It must be mentioned that Location (6) was not entirely meant for us, having been co-produced by the Holland Festival in Amsterdam and having premiered there in June 2008. The melancholic vision of Op de Beeck’s landscape is therefore decidedly European. When transposed to Singapore’s tropical climes, to be as ridiculous as it is serious, it’s hard not for it to be tinged with novelty.

But this does not mean that the work does not speak to our location. As with Ong, its apocalyptic musings offer metaphors that allow us to suture a morsel of mortality into our banal activities. Death is not an endpoint, a forbidden territory by law and commemorated by ritual. It is perhaps the one nasty vector that propels creation. To think with death is not a perverse condition but a privilege which we must not cede to the authorities. Art is only one way to begin such thinking and biennales can be wonderful places to examine where we have all gone dead.

Adele is a writer and critic. She is completing her PhD at Courtauld Institute of Art in London and is Assistant Editor at the London-based journal Third Text.

Exodus @ Mori Art Museum Tokyo & Martin Gropius Bau Berlin

2008-08-18T21:42:00.012+08:00

Exodus DVD is available at http://www.objectifsfilms.com

The Tropics. Views from the Middle of the Globe
An exhibition of the Goethe-Institut and the Ethnological Museum – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
Curators Alfons Hug, Peter Junge, Viola König

Venue: Martin-Gropius-Bau
12 September 2008 to 5 January 2009
www.gropiusbau.de

Twenty years after the trailblazing show Les Magiciens de la Terre in Paris, the “Tropics” exhibition in the Martin-Gropius-Bau is once again attempting to explore in troubled times the currents of energy and subtle discords between the hemispheres, to show which cultural forces are working in harmony and which in opposition to one another. The exhibition aims to create an incorruptible, crisis-resistant stock of images that permits a non-hierarchical view of the world.

The general idea is to re-aestheticize the subject of the tropics, not to look at them from a political and economic viewpoint for once, but to concentrate on culture as a counterweight. The concept of the tropics was always a cultural construct, and not just for those who lived outside them. Notions taken from literature and the plastic arts always came between the nature of the tropics and its perception by human beings. Interpretations and ways of seeing the tropics are like a library of images or a museum of make-believe, a repository of our dreams and secret desires. Even today it is still the artists who shape our view of the tropics.

Participating contemporary artists:
Franz Ackermann (Germany), Pilar Albarracín (Spain) Alexander Apostol (Venezuela), Fernando Bryce (Peru/Berlin), Edward Burtynsky (Canada), Roberto Cabot (France/Brazil), Marcos Chaves (Brazil), Walmor Corrêa (Brazil), Daspu (Brazil), Maurício Dias/Walter Riedweg (Brazil/Switzerland) Dinh Q. Lê (Vietnam), Mark Dion (USA), Adriano Domingues (Brazil), Theo Eshetu (Ethiopia), Sandra Gamarra Heshiki (Peru), Andreas Gursky (Germany), Candida Höfer (Germany), Pieter Hugo (South Africa), Jitish Kallat (India), Mariana Manhães (Brazil), Milton Marques (Brasilien), Beatriz Milhazes (Brazil), Marcone Moreira (Brazil), Marcel Odenbach (Germany), Paulo Nenflídio (Brazil), Denis Nona (Australia), Sherman Ong (Singapore), Vong Phaophanit (Laos), Navin Rawanchaikul (Thailand), REA (Australia), Caio Reisewitz (Brazil), Mauro Restiffe (Brazil), Julian Rosefeldt (Germany), Hans-Christian Schink (Germany), Gerda Steiner/Jörg Lenzlinger (Switzerland), Thomas Struth (Germany), Fiona Tan (Indonesia/England), Guy Tillim (South Africa), David Zink Yi (Peru/Berlin)

MORI ART MUSEUM TOKYO
In-between Asian Video Art Weekend
1 August (Fri) - 3 August (Sun) 2008

As a part of the ASIAN Summer In Roppongi Hills celebration of Roppongi Hills' 5th anniversary, the Mori Art Museum will hold a special screening of video art from Asia. "In-Between: Asian Video Art Weekend" will be held on the first weekend of August. The use of moving pictures in artistic expression gained popularity in the 1970s with the development of video technology. Since then, each new technological breakthrough has seen moving pictures utilized in new and exciting ways. In recent days, video art comes in the forms of long and short films, documentaries, home-videos, road movies, interviews and animations. The "In-Between" event will consist of screenings of single-channel works by 11 artists from Japan, China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia and Thailand. Exploring a range of dichotomies relevant to Asia's rapidly hybridizing cultures – life and death, reality and fantasy, memory and truth, local and global, conscious and subconscious, old and new – the works illuminate problems and issues that have arisen, and also depict visions of new futures unlike the past.

Participating Artists:
Cao Fei (China), Chen Chieh-Jen (Taiwan), Kondoh Akino (Japan),
Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba (Vietnam), Sherman Ong (Malaysia), Peng Hung-Chih (Taiwan),
Araya Rasdjarmreamsook (Thailand), Sawa Hiraki (Japan), Sun Xun (China),
Tanaka Koki (Japan), Yuan Goang-Ming (Taiwan)

Zeit-Foto Tokyo: Hanoi Monogatari - solo exhibition

2008-07-06T19:03:00.004+08:00

Zeit-Foto Tokyo: Hanoi Monogatari

Opening: 6pm Tuesday 8 July 2008
Exhibition runs from 8 to 31 July 2008

Venue:
ZEIT-FOTO SALON
MATSUMOTOBLDG.4F, 1-10-5 KYOBASHI,CHUO-KU,
TOKYO,JAPAN
ZIP CODE :1040031
TEL :81 (3) 35357188
FAX : 81(3) 35357112
E-mail : ZF@zeit-foto.com
http://www.zeit-foto.com

You are cordially invited for the opening of

Hanoi Monogatari
a solo exhibition by
Sherman Ong

A photographer and filmmaker from Singapore/Malaysia, Sherman was an artist-in-residence at the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum in 2007. He will be presenting works at the upcoming Singapore Biennale, the Jakarta Biennale, the Mori Art Museum Tokyo, and the Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin.
This exhibition comprises two series of works made during his residency with the Goethe Institut Hanoi Art Connections Project.

~ Hanoi Haiku
HanoiHaiku is presented like a visual Haiku. Left untitled, the juxtaposition of images produces their own narratives, temporal connections, and is open to many interpretations infused with the personal experiences of individual viewers. Similar to the Japanese Haiku, they are observations in its purest form, distilled into a simple gesture, a moment of reflection, a point in a continuum, touching on the beauty of imperfection, in delicate, quiet, nuanced moments.
Selected works from this series has been shown at PhotoQuai Musee du Quai Branly Paris; Angkor Photo Festival, Cambodia; the Singapore Art Show; Hanoi Fine Arts Museum, Vietnam; Month of Photography Asia, Singapore and WM Gallery, Amsterdam.

~ Monsoon - The Mechanics of Rain, Mobility and Intervention
The word ‘monsoon’ comes from an Arabic word ‘Mausim’ which describes a seasonal shifting of wind directions. The monsoons govern life in most parts of Southeast Asia, determining the profitable months of beach resorts and the agriculture calendar of farmers throughout the region. The landscape changes and human mobility is affected during the monsoons, but this intervention also creates a seasonal shifting in mindsets and psyches of the people as they go about negotiating this transient watery terrain. The sudden, heavy downpours have turned the region into one of the water-rich areas of the world but without the proper means of harvesting rainwater, the region still suffers from water-related problems.
This series contemplates the impact of the monsoons and its intervention on human mobility, the landscape and the psyche of the inhabitants of Hanoi. Taken through a moving van with the windows wound up, the images offer another way of looking at the urban landscape through the intervention of water, wind and glass. This series was presented at Another Asia, the Noorderlicht International Photo Festival in the Netherlands in 2006.

For map & direction, please visit http://www.zeit-foto.com/map/index_e.html

Self-portrait as Text

2008-07-05T21:55:00.003+08:00

created from an interview questionnaire:

Month of Photo Asia: HanoiHaiku - solo exhibition

2008-06-13T03:57:00.005+08:00

MOP: HanoiHaiku by Sherman Ong

Opening: 7pm Thursday 19 June 2008
Venue:
2902 Gallery
Old School, 11B Mount Sophia,
#B2-09, Singapore 228448
Tel: 6339 8655
www.2902gallery.com

Exhibition runs from 19 June to 5 July 2008

Please join us for the opening of HanoiHaiku by Sherman Ong, a photographer and filmmaker participating in the Singapore Biennale 2008. HanoiHaiku is presented like a visual Haiku. Intentionally left untitled, the juxtaposition of images produces their own narratives, temporal connections, and is open to many interpretations infused with the personal experiences of individual viewers.

Similar to the Japanese Haiku, they are observations in its purest form, distilled into a simple gesture, a moment of reflection, a point in a continuum, touching on the beauty of imperfection, in delicate, quiet, nuanced moments.

Shown as a complete series for the first time in Singapore, these works were made in Hanoi, Vietnam during Sherman’s residency with the Goethe Institut Hanoi. Selected works from this series has been shown at PhotoQuai Musee du Quai Branly Paris, Angkor Photo Festival, the Singapore Art Show and in Amsterdam. This series will be exhibited in a solo show in Tokyo and the Jakarta Biennale later this year.

For map & direction, please visit http://www.2902gallery.com/location.php

+++++Events on Sunday 22 June 2008+++++

ARTIST TALK by Sherman Ong
"HanoiHaiku - Between Cinema and Photography"
Sunday 22 June, 3pm @ 2902 Gallery

FILM SCREENING
Hashi | はし
Japan/Singapore/Malaysia | 2008 | 111 mins |
Japanese with English subtitles
http://hashithefilm.blogspot.com/

Sunday 22 June, 5pm @ Sinema.sg
Tickets available from Sinema.sg
Ticketing hotline: +65.6336.9707
http://www.sinema.sg/oldschool/about-us/

Exhibited as part of the Month of Photography Asia
Organized by 2902 Gallery and Phish Communications.
And free booze from Martell!

SIFF08 - An Interview with Sherman ONG

2008-04-07T23:02:00.005+08:00

Award-winning photographer and filmmaker Sherman Ong will present his latest movie Hashi in this year's SIFF. Shot during his residency with the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum in Japan, his debut feature in the Japanese language, going by the stills and behind the scenes snapshots, look incredibly gorgeous, in a story that ”weaves around issues of love, relationships, insecurity, death and the blurring between dreams and reality”. I got acquainted with Sherman last month during a retrospective of Yasmin Ahmad’s films here in Singapore, and recently caught up with him again to talk about Hashi.

Stefan: Hello Sherman, I guess we're all curious to know how you got offered the opportunity of making a feature film during your residency with the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum in Japan. If you could share, what the offer encompassed, and whether there were any strings attached?

Sherman Ong: I applied for the residency when the museum had an open call for Asian artists. I was there as an artist working in photography and film (moving images). More info at: http://faam.city.fukuoka.lg.jp/eng/residence/rdc_index.html

They cover flight, accommodation, monthly expenses and an exhibition of works produced at the end of the 3 month period.

I didn't set out to make a feature film as the museum has no funds nor the capability to support a feature film production. I started with the initial idea to make a film without knowing the final duration. So I had to work with full knowledge of the limitations in terms of crew, budget, actors, and languages. Like life, we make decisions every step of the way given the set of variables before us.

Stefan: You had started with a script, and then it seemed like a very organic process when you decided to conduct auditions for the lead actresses, before incorporating the experiences of the chosen ones into the storyline. What made you decide to develop the story in this manner, and was it an arduous process in trying to gel them all together?

Sherman Ong: Not really, it depends on how you look at it. For some people or those who treat the script as being set in stone, it could be a nightmare. For me, the script was just a roadmap to a vision/objective… there are many roads to Tokyo - by land, by air, by sea... you decide... In fact it was quite liberating actually to work in this manner.

I try to work with 'typage' or casting by type. Typage refers to the selection of actors on the basis that their facial or bodily features readily convey the truth of the character the actor plays. Usually associated with the Soviet Montage School, these filmmakers thought that the life-experience of a non-actor guaranteed the authenticity of their performance when they attempt a dramatic role similar to their real social role. Typage is related to the use of stereotype in communicating the essential qualities of a character. [http://classes.yale.edu/film-analysis/htmfiles/mise-en-scene.htm]

Not knowing who I could get from the auditions, I wanted to make the story as fluid as possible, and changes to the script are still made during the shoot depending on the location and how the actors mould to the space. For me, the script can and should never be set in stone. It will be the death of the film, unless you are making a studio/Hollywood production where the whole film is completed at the storyboard stage.

'Typage' allows me to get a more natural feel with the actors, there are really no acting involved because they are doing the same thing in real life (except for one character which requires some acting). It was more like a documentary but even documentaries are almost always crafted and influenced by the agenda of the makes, very much like fiction films. For me, film (documentary or fiction) is never an objective medium.

I share Robert Bresson's idea of the director: the point is not to direct someone, but to direct oneself. The inputs and ideas from the people who come for audition form the collective experiences from which I could select and mould into a cohesive whole which finally ends up in the film. The process is no different than writing a script by oneself.

S: You had to rely on interpreters as you didn't speak Japanese (Do you now? :). Did you feel, during the making of the movie, that this served as a form of barrier for direct communications between you and your cast and crew members, or did it allow an opportunity for you to take a step back and look at things from a very neutral eye?

SO: I don't speak Japanese. Not knowing the language also has its advantages. In fact, it worked wonderfully for me. Not having to rely on language, allows me to use others forms and methods of communication during the filming process. I think language itself is a barrier to 'true' communication.

Humans at our most basic level, can sense fear, danger, sadness, happiness, of another individual just from the tone of the voice or from the presence/aura of the individual. You know/sense the state of being of the other even if you don't understand what he/say is saying. Animals are the clearest examples of this - dogs can immediate sense if we have good or bad intention towards them. Without language, I had to rely on my instincts, intuition, feelings which I don't have to rely on so much if I had the capability of language. It was liberating to work this way.

If you reflect on the writings of Gertrude Stein - I think it is not what you say, but how you say it which matters. The audience will get the meanings from the tone of voice, posture, facial expression - the whole being of the individual. Words fail humans, because language acts like a mask, a barrier to the real intentions of the individual.

[Increasingly, she developed her own highly idiosyncratic, playful, sometimes repetitive and sometimes humorous style. Typical quotes are: "Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose"; "Out of kindness comes redness and out of rudeness comes rapid same question, out of an eye comes research, out of selection comes painful cattle"; about Oakland, "There is no there there"; and "The change of color is likely and a difference a very little difference is prepared. Sugar is not a vegetable."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertrude_Stein]

Using interpreters also mean that the process is slower which is not actually a bad thing, like editing on the Steinbeck. I guess you slow things down and choose simple words to convey your thoughts. I think during the pre-production/rehearsal periods where I have to rely on language to convey my initial ideas and concept, there was some miscommunication but once the actors get the essence of my ideas it was smoothly sailing. I gave the ideas/essence of a scene to them and they would write the script in their own words.

I watched Cafe Lumiere and realized that Hou Hsiao-hsien didn’t understand Japanese when he made Cafe Lumiere.

S: You once cited Taiwanese directors Tsai Ming-liang and Hou Hsiao-hsien as your influences. I haven't seen Hashi yet, but does the movie exhibit any obvious tribute or pay homage to the works of those Taiwanese auteurs?

SO: Not consciously, I think. Obviously there are influences from the Taiwanese New Wave and Japanese cinema like Ozu, Naomi Kawase, etc but mainly because being of Chinese descent, I am drawn to the essence of what constitute the East Asian culture in general. I think East Asian auteur cinema share so much similarities with other auteurs of world cinema from Europe, Central/South Asia, Latin American cinema or the American indie, which also form part of my influence.

S: And I'll be asking all filmmakers in this interview series the same last question, what do you currently feel about the Singapore film industry (if we can already start to call it so!) at this point in time, given that the SIFF has finally enough material to come up with a Singapore Panorama section, with an unprecedented vast spectrum of 13 features and documentaries making their respective premieres in Singapore?

SO: I think the 'industry' has definitely increased in output and with digital technology, the barriers to entry are lower. However, I think the main problem holding the industry back, at least in the beginning, is that we lack a local market to support the local films. As a small country, the small market is part of the DNA of Singapore. You can't change it without repercussions. To succeed as an industry, we can learn a lot from the history of Singapore Airlines.

But it is a different story for individual Singapore filmmakers trying to make their films. I think we still lack the full budget support schemes for emerging or budding filmmakers to make their first few films. Of course this is not a birth right but given that Singapore, categorized as a developed country, is no longer eligible for film funds available to filmmakers in developing countries, the local filmmakers may not be able to raise the rest of the budget to make their films. And private financing schemes are still patchy at best. Local filmmakers could still make a decent film with just a digital camera and a laptop. With enough indie films, maybe we could have an 'indie film' industry, but it will not make a film industry like Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia or even Malaysia.

If the Singapore film industry takes the route of Singapore Airlines, you don't really need local pilots to fly the planes, do you?

S: Haha, I think that’s a very succinct analogy you provided! You’ve got a point there too! Thank you for your time and for the sharing of your valuable insights, and I look forward to the screening of Hashi this weekend!

There will be 2 screenings of Hashi at this year's SIFF. The first screening is on 6 April Sunday 4:15pm and the second is on 13 April Sunday 7pm at Sinema Old School. Sherman will be in attendance for the 6 April session, and on 13 April, the director, producer and actress will be in attendance! Tickets are still available!

Book your tickets now by clicking here:
6 Apr Screening - SOLD OUT!
13 Apr Screening

CUT: New Photography from Southeast Asia

2008-03-30T01:35:00.005+08:00

CUT: New Photography from Southeast Asia

Valentine Willie Fine Art cordially invite you to the opening of

[CUT: New Photography from Southeast Asia]
On Wednesday, 13 February 2008, at 8pm.

The exhibition will continue until Saturday, 1 March 2008.

This groundbreaking exhibition of emerging photography from the Southeast Asian region focuses on young artists and the range of approaches to photography coming up now. For some time now, photography has been a major genre in the broader international art scene, yet it remains overlooked, and perhaps under-explored in the local contexts in our region. However, a younger generation of artists and photographers is probing the tremendous potential of photography, exploiting its powerful associations with memory, voyeurism, identity, exoticism, truth and illusion.
CUT brings together a sense of how photography is emerging as a discipline, or base medium in contemporary art from Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore. Currently the line-up of 12 participating artists includes artists who work with photography as part of their practice such as Montri (Thailand), Poklong Anading (Philppines), Lena Cobangbang (Philippines), and Angki Purbandono (Indonesia), as well as artists who are focused more purely on photography such as Steve Tirona (Philippines), Sharon Lam (Malaysia), Tino Djumini (Indonesia) and Sherman Ong (Singapore).
From Legoland dioramas to Hanoi in monsoon season to documented performance, the approaches at play are at turns raw, gutsy, dark, humorous and romantic. In the rapidly changing context of Southeast Asia, with its falling regimes and rising cities, these artists' works offer a sharp slice into the realities and fantasies of our singular, and shared experiences.

More info at :
1st Floor, 17 Jalan Telawi 3, Bangsar Baru, 59100 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
tel: 603 2284 2348
fax: 603 2282 5190
www.vwfa.net

Digital Homelands - workshops for National Museum Singapore

2008-03-30T01:04:00.006+08:00

DIGITAL HOMELANDS SINGAPORE
Presented by the National Museum of Singapore

From 15 January 2008, the National Museum of Singapore will be launching Digital Homelands Singapore, a national project inviting all Singaporeans to create a short 5-8 minute video in digital format, that captures a specific experience or memory of a place in Singapore.

More info at http://www.digitalhomelands.sg/

Art, Life and Identity - Artist Talk, Wee Kim Wee Centre, SMU

2008-03-30T00:54:00.005+08:00

Art, Life and Identity

Synopsis

The Speaker will be sharing some ideas about Art making, drawing inspiration from Life to find his vision and relating with the past in order to understand the present.

Date:	22 August 2007, Wednesday
Time:	1230 - 2pm
Venue:	Lee Kong Chian School of Business Seminar Rooom 1.2 Level 1 Wee Kim Wee Centre, Singapore Management University For enquiries, contact us at weekimweecenter@smu.edu.sg

Minority report - Streats, 14 Sept 2004

2008-03-30T00:30:00.007+08:00

Minority report
Film-maker Sherman Ong prefers studying small communities through his films
By SHARLENE TAN for STREATS, 14 September 2004

MINORITY issues strike a chord with film-maker Sherman Ong. The 33-year-old Singapore permanent resident, who was born in Malacca to Straits Chinese parents, came to Singapore to study when he was 19 and found that life was pretty different across the Causeway.

“The Chinese in the other South-east Asian countries, other than Singapore, are always in the minority but socially and economically, the situation is different. They have the largest stake in those areas, although numerically they are fewer. So these are things that are interesting to explore,” he said. And his three films all touch on this issue.

His most recent film, Exodus: Wanita Yang Berlari (Woman On The Run), explores the relationship between ethnic groups in Indonesia through an encounter between a workingclass Chinese shampoo girl and a Javanese court dancer. The story is conveyed through dance rather than dialogue and was a collaboration with the Indonesia Contemporary Dance Centre.

“It was like a test. Cinema is about conveying meaning with visuals and I wanted to see if I could convey the message without dialogue. “Film is about showing, rather than telling. If you show, it forces the audience to think and it’s more effective to convey your message at that level as you’re using the audience’s experience to fill in the gaps,” said Ong, who has taught film courses at visual arts centre Objectifs and at polytechnics. The film was recently screened at La Cittadella del Corto, an international short film festival in Italy where Ong was invited to be a member of the jury.

His second film, State of Things, is a six-minute documentary on Singapore’s national anthem. He explained: “It’s interesting that a lot of Chinese Singaporeans cannot speak Malay, yet the national anthem is in Malay. The national anthem is part of your identity as a citizen, yet many do not understand what they are singing.”

His first documentary, The Ground I Stand, was made in 2002 and won the Gold Award for best documentary at the 7th Malaysian Video Awards. The documentary gives an insight into the life of a 75-year-old Malay woman who lives on her own in an HDB flat.

Ong did not start off in the film and media industry. Instead, he studied law at National University of Singapore (NUS), realising in his final year that a law career was not for him. Explaining why he found a career in law unsuitable, he said: “You tend to meet people in mostly unsavoury circumstances. There is animosity, and the energy is very different, like in divorce cases. It’s very cut and dry and I’m not the kind of person to go by the book and follow the rules.”

Ong, who had done photography and videos for his NUS hostel, was then offered a job as a video editor at a small production house where he worked for six months. He then worked for MediaCorp as a producer-director for three years before attending Ngee Ann Polytechnic’s cinematography course in 2000 on a Singapore Film Commission bursary.

Ong, who cited Taiwanese directors Tsai Mingliang and Hou Hsien-Hsien as his influences, chose not to go to school overseas, explaining: “When making films, you have to make judgments. Choices are more about confidence and experience rather than what you learn from school. School only teaches you the technical aspects.” Ong said that he learnt more about films from watching them, when he ushered at the Singapore International Film Festival during his university days. “It was so different to the films I’d seen before, which were mostly Hongkong and Hollywood movies. When you watch world cinema, you see a whole new way of doing films. It really opened my eyes to the whole film process,” he added.

Exodus wins Special Jury Prize at HK IFVA 2005!

2008-03-30T00:08:00.009+08:00

“Exodus excellently shows the pas de deux of a Chinese woman and a Javanese dancer. Music, choreography, cinematography and art directing all contribute to make this piece of work a treat to the eyes and ears.”
- Jimmy Choi, Jury HK IFVA 2005

“This ambitious work tackles class/ethnic-cultural/sexual conflicts through its layered structure, and the director handles it with ease. With the traditional Javanese dance as the medium, and through the body language of the main characters, it gives a vivid portrayal of tangled relationship and human drama.”
- Teresa Kwong, Jury HK IFVA 2005

Exodus - Wanita Yang Berlari
Indonesia/Singapore | 2003 | 29 min 53 sec | Indonesian w English subtitles
Trailer

Synopsis:
Two women and a man in cinematic dance,
Subtle emotions and hidden desires,
Revealing truth and deadly beauty.

Exodus deals with the unspoken nuances of human emotions. An encounter between a lower-class ethnic Chinese shampoo girl and a Javanese court dancer sparks an awakening that manifests the dialectics of obsession and the transient nature of human affection. Set against the backdrop of the dominant Javanese culture, this story deals with the aspirations and identity of 2 two women, each gambling for a better life in a post-Suharto era.

Exodus - Le sinuose movenze di una giovane nazione

2008-03-29T23:59:00.008+08:00

Exodus - Le sinuose movenze di una giovane nazione
03 November 2004, di Christian Carmosino

Due donne e un uomo in una danza cinematica. Sottese emozioni e nascosti desideri, rivelano verità e bellezza mortali. Singapore è una nazione giovane, una società multiculturale composta da cinesi, malesi e indiani. Nonostante le dimensioni Singapore produce 8-10 lungometraggi l’anno, ma soprattutto circa 100 cortometraggi! Grazie al metissage delle sue culture, il piccolo stato asiatico rappresenta un interessante punto di osservazione sulle trasformazioni che il continente stà vivendo, ed Exodus è testimone eccellente di questa complessità.

Presentato in un evento speciale a La Cittadella del Corto e alla seconda edizione dell’Asian Film Festival a Roma, "Una donna in corsa" (come recita il titolo originale del film) di Sherman Ong, suggerisce l’esodo da una vita sempre uguale dove le possibili fughe sono quelle del sogno, della fantasia, dell’espressione corporea. Una stupida canzone ascoltata per radio basta a far partire la corsa. Ma è una corsa a rallentatore, in un tempo rarefatto dove avviene l’incontro tra due donne, un’assistente parrucchiera cinese di umili origini e una danzatrice di corte giavanese, un incontro fondato su una forma di comunicazione non verbale quanto sensuale: la danza. Un incontro che è anche scontro tra tradizione e modernità, tra tecnica precisione dei movimenti e libertà emotiva, quasi improvvisazione tribale.

La dimensione temporale e spaziale è completamente astratta, in essa le due donne ricreano lo spazio intorno a loro attraverso i movimenti: mani, braccia, fianchi, testa, compiono un viaggio esplorativo che dapprima è confronto e conoscenza, e successivamente inevitabile incontro.

Le sensuali movenze della danza sembrano perciò suggerire un travelling più sublime, del resto ampiamente sensibile, che ruota intorno all’animo umano, e l’unione sognante (o solo sognata) di due donne si risolve nell’esclusione di ogni possibile interferenza, come l’eliminazione simbolica dell’amante maschile, fino alla sublimazione delle figure. Parallelamente, attraverso la metafora che può essere applicata alla macroeconomia del paese, il film lavora all’ipotesi di fusione di due mondi e appartenenze sociali estremamente lontani.

La danza come elemento di conoscenza, ma anche di cambiamento, danza come mezzo di fuga e di scoperta della bellezza. Tutto in una coreografia di 30 minuti di grande impatto emotivo.
Scheda tecnica:

Titolo originale: Wanita Yang Berlari (Woman on the run)
Paese: Singapore
Anno di produzione: 2003
Regia: Sherman Ong
Produzione: Helly Minarti
Soggetto e sceneggiatura: Sulaiman S. Benongiann, Tjin Chen Fong
Coreografia: Chendra Effendy
Fotografia: Ketut Trisna Pramana
Montaggio: Wahyu Tri Purnomo
Suono: Kiki
Musica originale: Syahrial
Canzoni: Arie Wibowo, Tony Prabowo
Interpreti: Nungki Kusumastuti, Mira Tedja, Syahrial, Tuti Alwi, QQ
Durata: 30 min.
Formato: MiniDV

Ground I Stand - Berita Harian, 2 Oct 2002

2008-03-29T23:28:00.009+08:00

BERITA HARIAN: Santai: 2 Okt 2002
PENGARAH 'BELA' NASIB MINORITI
Oleh: Hasleen Bachik

Kalau ikutkan kelulusan, beliau boleh bergelar peguam. Kalau itu kerjaya pilihan, soal pembelaan menjadi tugasnya. Namun, Sherman Ong enggan 'turun naik mahkamah'. Sebaliknya, beliau lebih senang angkut kamera dan jadi pengarah. Lebih tepat lagi, 'membela' nasib golongan minoriti...

Baru-baru ini, dokumentarinya, The Ground I Stand (Di Mana Bumi Dipijak), mendapat Anugerah Emas Dokumentari Terbaik dalam Anugerah Video Malaysia ke-7.

Apa yang menarik, dokumentari kemenangannya sepanjang 25 minit itu mengetengahkan kehidupan seorang wanita Melayu setempat yang lanjut usia, Nyaterang Salleh.

'Saya memilihnya kerana secara peribadi, saya sendiri seorang warga Malaysia yang datang ke Singapura untuk belajar,' cerita Sherman yang berasal dari Melaka.

Nyaterang, 75 tahun, yang juga lahir di Melaka sebelum dibawa ke Singapura ketika berusia dua bulan, pernah tinggal di Kampung Eunos selama 25 tahun. Kini, beliau menetap sendirian di rumahnya di Kallang Bahru.

'Saya ingin tahu keadaan masyarakat Melayu di Singapura. Ia agak berbeza kerana saya lahir dalam lingkungan di mana kaum Cina membentuk golongan minoriti dan Melayu menjadi kaum utama. 'Apabila saya di sini, keadaan terbalik. Orang Melayu pula yang membentuk golongan minoriti. Ketika saya menemubualnya, saya turut meneroka hubungannya dengan kaum lain,' tambah Sherman.

Bekas penerbit/pengarah Perbadanan Televisyen Singapura (kini MediaCorp TV) yang menghasilkan rancangan dan iklan di sana selama tiga tahun itu menambah:
'Semasa saya bersama TCS menghasilkan rancangan televisyen, rancangannya agak condong ke arah tertentu. Ini soal sensitif tapi ia perlu dibuat kerana ia polisi mereka.

'Jadi untuk meneroka apa yang saya inginkan, saya perlu menghasilkan sendiri dokumentari peribadi seumpama ini. Ia bukan untuk mengkritik tapi menunjukkan kisah sebenar.'

Dalam dokumentari tersebut, Nyaterang menyingkap kehidupannya sebagai anggota kaum minoriti di Singapura dan hubungannya dengan kaum-kaum lain di sini.

'Di Malaysia, situasi berpuak-puak atau polarization agak ketara terutama di peringkat sekolah dan universiti. Orang Melayu dengan orang Melayu; orang Cina dengan orang Cina; begitu juga orang India.

'Itu yang ingin saya teroka dan ketahui di sini...' ujar Sherman, bekas pelajar Maktab Rendah Hwa Chong yang ke Singapura di bawah Biasiswa Asean.

Di samping itu, Nyaterang, ibu tiga anak, turut berkongsi laluan hidupnya setelah ditinggal suami - bagaimana beliau menyara hidupnya kini dan melalui usia senjanya.

Sebenarnya, dokumentari tersebut adalah bahan asal daripada siri enam video yang Sherman, anak sulung dua beradik, hasilkan untuk Muzium Seni Singapura.

'Ketika itu, saya sedang menghasilkan video yang bertema 1960-an dan sedang mencari mereka yang pernah melalui era tersebut untuk berkongsi memori.
'Saya mencari seorang yang bukan berasal dari Singapura tapi kemudian menjadi warga Singapura... dan bagi saya mak cik ini telah lalui kehidupan yang agak menarik.

'Saya memilihnya kerana dalam usianya yang agak lanjut, pemikirannya tetap jelas...' kata Sherman, yang juga pernah mendapat dermasiswa Suruhanjaya Filem Singapura bagi pengajian Filem, Bunyi dan Video di Politeknik Ngee Ann.

Menyentuh keputusannya beralih bidang daripada guaman kepada filem, Sherman berkata: 'Bagi saya, jika ia ingin dijadikan kerjaya profesional, kita harus berasa seronok melakukannya... saya tak fikir saya akan cemerlang dalam bidang itu.'

Kini Sherman bukan setakat memenangi sebuah piala, wang tunai RM3,000 ($1,404) dan bekalan 10 gulung filem Kodak (filem 16 mm) yang berharga sekitar $2,000, karyanya itu turut dibeli.

'Saya diberitahu, NUS (Universiti Nasional Singapura) akan meletakkannya dalam perpustakaan bagi bahan koleksi Singapura/Malaysia,' ujarnya. Malah, beliau sudah pun menerima tawaran mengarah salah satu daripada 13 episod drama Melayu di NTV7 berjudul Odissi atau perjalanan.

The Ground I Stand - Zhao Bao 2002

2008-03-29T23:22:00.006+08:00

A Brief Introduction

2008-03-29T22:49:00.010+08:00

By Dr. Khoo Gaik Cheng 20 June 2004

Sherman Ong’s works thematically provide a space for representing minority voices. Ong first made a splash with The Ground I Stand at the 2002 Malaysian Video Awards where it won the Gold Award for Best Documentary. Through an interview with a 75 year-old Malay woman, Nyaterang Salleh, living in a HDB flat in Singapore, the film gives a personal account of one woman’s life experiences from the colonial era until modern-day times. Makcik Nyaterang’s philosophy of hard work, thrift, self-reliance and dignity deconstructs the latent stereotype of the lazy Malay. Through her life, she has worked as a maid, masseur, made tapioca chips and pickled mangoes to sell, taken in sewing, and pawned her jewelry to send her three children to school. Finally, the sewing machine symbolizes female autonomy as we see her at her sewing machine, still trying to make ends meet without depending on handouts. What is doubly striking about this documentary is that it also touches on the condition of senior citizens who live alone. Makcik Nyaterang explains that she has not gone out by herself in the past six years for fear of falling down. Yet, at the same time, pity is not what the film elicits for its spunky subject. Instead, the viewer is filled with wonder, respect and warmth for her as “guests” in her tiny flat for this visit/interview.

State of Things was made in response to the “Emergency Filmmaking Project: RSVP” organised by the Substation in which filmmakers were asked to respond to the state of the world or their immediate environment using digital video. Ong elicits responses from young Singaporeans by giving them two lines on a piece of paper that the film audience isn’t privy to. Many of the respondents only have a vague idea of what the two lines mean. As the audience, we feel our way around the unprovided message like a blind and curious person. In trying to piece together the responses, we are all too aware that it is something uncannily familiar, something learnt in school, whose message is fundamentally idealistic in its nationalist conception but somehow far removed from the reality of most young Singaporeans. It is this ignorance, this game of hidden truths that the filmmaker plays with his audience which needs close scrutiny: ultimately, Ong asks viewers why there is such a gap of comprehension between the meaning of the two lines given and the conjectured meanings that some of the respondents offer. Without giving the game away, let me say that Ong is gesturing toward the marginalisation of minority language in Singapore, a marginalisation made all the more poignant by his deliberate choice of performers at the film’s conclusion. Still, I believe a much broader social context for the interviews would help strengthen the filmmaker’s point about the state of ethnic relations in Singapore today.

Exodus - Wanita Yang Berlari, Ong’s latest film again touches on minority issues but in a wider sense, this time focusing on a relationship between a working-class Chinese shampoo girl and a Javanese court dancer in modern-day Java. The film conveys its narrative through dance rather than dialogue and shows two women from vastly different backgrounds and of different characters meeting in conflicting dance styles. These differences in style embody rich layers of power relations: between ethnic Chinese and Javanese, poor and rich, and teacher and pupil. The shampoo girl, bored and attracted by the Javanese court dancer who comes to the hair salon one day, follows the latter home. There, she becomes companion to the dancer but refuses to be trained in the Javanese-like style of dance. Her rather wild modern dance movements signify freedom from the ordered grace of Javanese-like courtly dance and traditional ideals of femininity and beauty. She dances with her hair flying loose instead of in a neat bun, and rejects wearing a sarong which would constrain her movements. Stubborn and self-willed, she represents her own way, represents independence and female agency in leaving her boring dead-end job and following her heart’s desire. However, the film’s title begs the question, exodus from where and to where? Who or what are the women running from? And to what? The hybrid modernity of the worlds both women represent seems fraught with problems: the shampoo girl works with a Mak Nyah (banci in Indonesian) for an older woman boss but her position in this liminal space seems precarious despite the openness and acceptance of her boss. The wealthy Javanese woman’s dance, I’m told, is a contemporary dance with Javanese elements and the accompanying music is influenced by Minangkabau singing and instrumentation styles. Yet how do these more women-focused elements affect what are clearly patriarchal forces in the film (evident in the way the male musician keeps an eye on the two women)? In the rather utopian ending of the two women dancing together, taking turns to support one another in an uncertain future, it is anti-patriarchy that is clearer for the non-Indonesian audience than the message about ethnic minority relations. Similarly, the final shot of cars crossing the train tracks parallels the other transgressions or all that is “songsang” in the film.