Word: uekrongtham
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...freedom, or does it need something to kick against? ERIC KHOO: I think that in order to tell a story and maybe even tell it better, it's sometimes to your advantage if there are going to be restrictions ... You have to think even harder as a storyteller. EKACHAI UEKRONGTHAM: From an artist's point of view it's always good to have no censorship, but in the real world that doesn't happen anywhere. There's some kind of censorship always - if not by the state, then by the society. BRIAN GOTHONG TAN: The suppression in Singapore and Asia...
...films back in 1989, and I can feel the change. A lot of the stuff that I couldn't get away with back then, we can get away with now. I think that they do want the population to be more creative and self-expressive. That's basically it. UEKRONGTHAM: Part of that relaxation could also be economically driven, because the government has expressly said that it wants to increase the GDP from the media sector by a certain percentage, and part of that is that they need to be seen as allowing freedom and creativity. TAN: Yeah, Singapore...
...when Sir Run Run Shaw left for Hong Kong and [influential Malaysian actor and director] P. Ramlee went back to Malaysia, things changed. If you think of movies produced back in the '50s, the budgets were, like, up to a million, and they were huge in Southeast Asia. UEKRONGTHAM: It's not so much about social control but trying to focus on economic progress. And maybe now is the time when they can focus on creating a film industry. You must remember that in an earlier age people were busy doing other things. Now we realize that we can make...
...Speaking of festivals, how did last month's Singapore International Film Festival (SIFF) leave you feeling about the state of local moviemaking? TAN: Their films are really good. There's a new wave there. UEKRONGTHAM: Suddenly we have a Singapore Panorama section [of local features]. KHOO: If you look at the short-film competition, which started about 12 years ago, there were very few entries then, but now they get over 100. There are all these polytechnics having film courses. I've noticed this whole change in how many young Singaporeans that want to be filmmakers want to direct...
...that can embrace more than just commercial cinema. When you look at Singapore, one thing I think we can pride ourselves on is the independent distributors that we have, and the amount of films that come through now, whether they be Iranian, French, German, from Hong Kong, or Korean. UEKRONGTHAM: Whenever I'm away, I can come back and get my art-house fix. You are spoiled for choice here. I can watch three or four films a day. KHOO: I think that if we didn't have the SIFF, film appreciation would be on the level of Hollywood movies...