Founded in 2005, the Asian Film Archive aims to save, share, and explore the art of Asian cinema. It has recently published its June newsletter online. Click here to read it.

Posted By Alexis A. Tioseco

Singaporean filmmaker Royston Tan is a well known figure in Southeast Asian cinema, for his works both long (15 and 4:30) and brief (read on). Following the success of the initial release from its collection, the Singapore Shorts compilation, the Asian Film Archive has released a second set from its vault--Royston's Shorts, a DVD compilation of the short works of Royston Tan.

The DVD includes the films:
- Jesses - Sons
- Hock Hiap Leong
- 24hrs
- Mother
- The Absentee
- The Blind Trilogy: Blind / Old Parliament House / Capitol Cinema
- Careless Whisperer
- New York Girl
- Monkeylove

Bonus features for selected shorts:
- 4A Florence Close (1998), a rarely seen personal film
- Interview with Royston Tan, a 25 minute clip tracing the creative journey of the filmmaker
- Director's Notes
- Gallery of film stills, behind the scenes stills, storyboards and scripts online.

Click here for more information (including stills and an online essay) or to purchase a copy.

Posted By Alexis A. Tioseco

One of the most important works in Malaysian independent cinema, The Big Durian (2003) by Amir Muhammad (director of the The Last Communist) is now for purchase available on DVD. The synopsis reads:

Of the two Malay words that have found common use in English, one is “amok,” a word that aptly describes the actions of one soldier that took place in Kuala Lumpur in October of 1987. Armed with an M-16, Private Adam Jaafar ran amok, terrorizing the Chinese neighborhood of Chow Kit. His rampage triggered a citywide panic amid rumors of racial riots, and nine days later an infamous Internal Security Act clampdown was enacted. In the subsequent months, the Malaysian public's views of the police, media, judiciary, royalty and political process underwent a radical shift.

In The Big Durian, these events are recalled, recounted and recreated, in scenes and interviews that draw on both truth and rumor, and the often indistinguishable intertwining of the two. A hybrid of fact and fiction, this film serves as a powerful example of how perception and memory can corrupt the truth. Featuring almost two-dozen interviews, this documentary of reality and imagination demonstrates that even history isn’t safe. From the initial terror provoked by one disturbed man to the aftermath that shook all of Malaysia, The Big Durian reveals a much greater menace when the political and cultural landscape of a nation is forever changed.

It may be purchased via the National Film Network here: click.

Posted By Alexis A. Tioseco

Raya Martin's Maicling Pelicula Nang Ysang Indio Nacional (O Ang Mahabang Kalungkutan ng Katagalugan) [A Short Film About the Indio Nacional (Or the Prolonged Sorrow of the Filipinos) will have it's long awaited Philippine Premiere this Monday, sponsored by the French Embassy. Below are the details:

June 12 (Monday), 7:30 PM at the Shangri-La Plaza
With live piano music
Tickets at P50

The 11th French Film Festival

Quotes about the film:

"Tying the incandescent now to the warm coals of yesterday, a UFO (unidentified filmic object) just landed from the Philippines, Short Film About the Indio Nacional (or The Prolonged Sorrow of Filipinos) by Raya Martin shows all the signs of being in the best tradition of Apichatpong. In black-and-white, the faux-colonial imagery, looking as if it has been reconstituted from turn-of-the century archival footage, is the basis, here, for a secretly dialectic reverie about the birth of a nation. The experience is enigmatic enough that its manifest beauty is explicitly checked at its source."
-Jean Pierre Rehm, Cahiers du Cinema (translated from french)

"Best new film I've seen this year, easily."
-Noel Vera, Filipino film critic

"Raya Martin bases his work - without plagiarism - on the earliest forms of filmmaking. In fact, he reinvents silent film."
- Gertjan Zuillhof, International Film Festival Rotterdam

"One of the most accurate recreations of the silent film aesthetic since the arrival of talkies, A Short Film About the Indio Nacional (or the Prolonged Sorrow of Filipinos) avoids Guy Maddin-like gimmicks, instead harnessing the form to a tripartite tale of the burgeoning sense of freedom in the Philippines in the 1890s . . . Raya Martin's beautiful paean to the common man, or 'indio,' of the period is a fascinating work that intermittently rewards patience and confirms Martin’s place as a talent to watch."
- Jay Weissberg, Variety Magazine

" Shot in stately B&W long takes Martin's work recalls the films of Bela Tarr and Martin's countryman Lav Diaz, but with an eye for composition and detail all his own."
- Jason Sanders, Filmmaker Magazine

"In marrying the history of a nation with a historical film form through his unique vision, Martin has created one of the truly original works of contemporary Filipino cinema."
- Roger Garcia, San Francisco International Film Festival

"Director Martin compares the religious hypocrisy and bureacratic corruption of Spanish rule to today's reality, showing how times haven't changed much at all."
- Hong Kong International Film Festival

"Raya stringed together vignettes of the Indio peasants just before the Spanish arrived with their firearms, and the film's grainy complexion plus the way it fuses the quasi-narrative with anthropological artefacts - then transports it all into a near-subconscious level - are influenced, it seems, by Apichatpong Weerasethakul's first film, Mysterious Object at Noon. It's not a flawless movie, but Raya Martin is obviously a name to remember."
– Kong Rithdee, Bangkok Post

"I was struck by the film’s daring and often exquisite shifts in tone, as well as a very particular approach to late 19th century Filipino history. An early diegetic sound scene brings across the experience of insomnia like no movie I’ve seen, before young director Raya Martin makes a sudden jump into a wholly different (or is it?) realm of black-and-white silent pictorial storytelling."
- Johnny Ray Huston, San Franciso Bay Guardian

Noel Vera review for Business World Magazine

Posted By Alexis A. Tioseco

The Hubert Bals Fund of the Rotterdam Film Festival has announced its Spring 2006 Selection, and five Southeast Asian Projects have received funding. They are:

Post Production:
Before We Fall in Love Again, by James Lee (Malaysia)
Opera Jawa, by Garin Nugruho (Indonesia)

Script and Project Development:
Dance of the Executioner (Chem Treo Nganh), by Minh Nguyen-Vô (Vietnam)
Years When I Was Father's Child Outside, by John Torres (Philippines)

Workshops and Training
Cinemanila/Boracay co-production meeting, Philippines

Source: click

*****

Profile of Hubert Bals Fund

The Hubert Bals Fund is designed to bring remarkable or urgent feature films and feature-length creative documentaries by innovative and talented filmmakers from developing countries closer to completion. The HBF provides grants that often turn out to play a crucial role in enabling these filmmakers to realize their projects.

Although the Fund looks closely at the financial aspects of a project, the decisive factors remain its content and artistic value. Since the Fund started in 1988, well over 530 projects from independent filmmakers in Asia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Africa and Latin America have received support. Approximately 80% of these projects have been realised or are currently in production. Every year, the IFFR screens completed films supported by the Fund.

The Hubert Bals Fund is supported by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Dutch non-governmental development organisations Hivos and NCDO, the DOEN Foundation and Dutch public broadcasting network NPS.

Source: click

Posted By Alexis A. Tioseco