Cinema of Singapore
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Cinema of Singapore | |
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SGD 189 million | |
National films | SGD 9.24 million (4.9%) |
Cinema of Singapore |
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List of Singaporean films |
1990s and 2000s |
2010s |
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 |
2020s |
2020 2021 2022 |
Despite having a flourishing Chinese and Malay film industry in the 1950s and 1960s, Singapore's film industry declined after independence in 1965.[5] Film production increased in the 1990s, which saw the first locally produced feature-length films. There were a few films that featured Singaporean actors and were set in Singapore, including Saint Jack, They Call Her Cleopatra Wong and Crazy Rich Asians.
1950s and statehood, separation periods
The role of Singapore as a film making hub for Malaya and Singapore (later Malaysia) declined with the three-way standoffs between film unions, Shaw Brothers Studio and Lee Kuan Yew's government driving its superstar P. Ramlee northward to Kuala Lumpur to start his own production studio in 1964.[6] Even with the separation from the Federation, Lee's government throughout his tenure placed little priority on continuing its own homegrown film-making culture in preference to policies boosting its economy, which he later expressed deep regret after his retirement.[7]
After 1990
Early 1990s pioneers
The first fully Singapore funded film came in 1991's
Army Daze, made in 1996, took a humorous look at Singapore's national service, and turned in high profits at the box office.
In 1997 came another Eric Khoo feature film, 12 Storeys, a highly acclaimed production which was the first Singaporean film to be shown at Cannes. Interweaving 3 stories about life in the HDB high-rise flats, 12 Storeys was seen as a breakthrough for Singaporean films, combining a coherent plot with Singaporean production crew and actors, such as Jack Neo and Koh Boon Pin. The rest of the decade was encouraging for the growing film industry. Glen Goei's Forever Fever (1998) was picked up by Miramax for S$4.5 million and re-released in the U.S. as That's the Way I Like It. These two years saw the releases of a number of other films, such as A Road Less Travelled (1997), God or Dog (1997), Tiger's Whip (1998) and The Teenage Textbook Movie (1998).
Late 1990s successes
However, it was the phenomenal success of
1999 also marked a watershed for Singapore films.
With the financing of a local production company and the setting up of organisations such as the Singapore Film Commission (SFC, set up in 1998), budding filmmakers, especially independent ones, found it easier to make movies on subsidies and loaned funding. The advent of digital video also meant that some novice filmmakers could experiment with cheaper alternatives. Features like Stories about Love (2000) and Return to Pontianak (2001) were both shot on digital videos, even though they were not commercial successes.
Early 2000s
The success story since the turn of the 21st century must be from local comedian-turned-director Jack Neo. Financed by Raintree Pictures, he made a number of hits dealing with Singapore's heartland problems in an engaging and deceptively light-hearted fashion.
Royston Tan, a young Singapore TV commercial director who has been making award-winning shorts for years, released 15: The Movie, his first feature, in 2003. An expanded version of an earlier short film he made, this 90-min movie on the fringe and drug-abusing delinquents used bold subject-matter and featured some graphic scenes with non-professional actors. When the film censorship board passed it with cuts, it prompted a backlash from the director in the form of Cut, an all-singing musical satire à la Tsai Ming-liang lampooning the system. This short film was passed uncensored by the board and was seen during the Singapore International Film Festival, but there were open discussions about it during local parliamentary sessions, prompting remarks that the government was "not amused" by it. Royston Tan has since made three more features, 4:30 (2005), 881 (2007) and 12 Lotus (2008).
2005 to 2009
2005 could be seen as another mini-boom year for Singaporean cinema, with commercially successful fares like Kelvin Tong's horror flick The Maid, two Jack-Neo co-directed movies, I Do I Do and One More Chance, and less mainstream offerings like Eric Khoo's critically acclaimed Cannes opener Be with Me, and Perth, Djinn's dark take on Scorsese's Taxi Driver.
In 2006, the independent feature Becoming Royston paid homage to the above-mentioned filmmaker. It was made under new Originasian Pictures. The film went on its festival run in Europe and South Asia and was released in 2007. 2006 also saw the premiere of Singapore Dreaming by Woo Yen Yen and Colin Goh, who won the Montblanc New Screenwriters Award at the San Sebastian International Film Festival, the first Singaporeans to do so. The film was also screened at numerous festivals worldwide and, in 2007, became the first Singaporean feature to win the Audience Award for Narrative Feature at the Asian American International Film Festival in New York.
In 2007, Jack Neo released another film known as Just Follow Law (我们在政府部门的日子) which took a dig at bureaucracy in the civil service, as well as the lengthy procedures one had to go through in Singapore to get a permit for various things. This film garnered generally positive reviews and was moderately successful at the box office. However, the success story of the year was Royston Tan's 881, which brought Singapore's seventh month getai culture to the big screens. While it was intended to be a niche film, it exceeded expectations and became one of the highest grossing local films of all time. Critics generally gave it positive reviews, and many believe that it was because of the film giving younger Singaporean Chinese more insight into their traditional culture that made it a success.[citation needed] In addition, the use of Hokkien songs, which had been suppressed by the government as part of the Speak Mandarin Campaign, may have contributed to its popularity.
In 2008, Eric Khoo's Tamil language social drama My Magic became Singapore's first film to compete for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
2010 and beyond
A wave of young filmmakers, considered the Singaporean new wave, who are educated in local and overseas film schools, begin to dominate the film scene.
See also
- Cinema of the world
- Asian cinema
- Censorship in Singapore
- Southeast Asian cinema
- East Asian cinema
- Cinema of Malaysia
- World cinema
- List of Singaporean films
- List of films set in Singapore
- List of cinemas in Singapore
- List of highest-grossing films in Singapore
- The Substation
References
- ^ a b "Table 8: Cinema Infrastructure - Capacity". UNESCO Institute for Statistics. Retrieved 5 November 2013.
- ^ "Table 1: Feature Film Production - Genre/Method of Shooting". UNESCO Institute for Statistics. Archived from the original on 24 December 2018. Retrieved 5 November 2013.
- ^ "Cinema - Admissions per capita". Screen Australia. Archived from the original on 9 November 2013. Retrieved 9 November 2013.
- ^ a b "Table 11: Exhibition - Admissions & Gross Box Office (GBO)". UNESCO Institute for Statistics. Archived from the original on 24 December 2018. Retrieved 5 November 2013.
- ^ Singapore Film Market[dead link]
- ^ Amir Muhammad (2011). "P. Ramlee Superstar". In Garcia, Roger (ed.). Asia Laughs! A Survey of Asian Comedy Films. Centro Espressioni Cinematografiche.
- Straits Times. Apr 17, 2005.[page needed]
- ^ Dalton, Stephen (5 May 2013). "Ilo Ilo: Cannes Review". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 22 June 2013.
- ^ Loh, Genevieve (27 May 2013). "Ilo Ilo is first S'pore film to win at Cannes". Today. Archived from the original on 27 May 2013. Retrieved 22 June 2013.
- ^ "'Ilo Ilo' earns 6 nominations for the Golden Horse Awards". Yahoo! News. 1 October 2013.
- ^ "'Ilo Ilo' earns 6 nominations for the Golden Horse Awards". Channel News Asia. 24 November 2013. Archived from the original on 1 February 2014.
- ^ "Ilo Ilo (2013) - IMDb". IMDb.
Further reading
- Ciecko, Anne Tereska (2006) Contemporary Asian Cinema. New York: Berg. ISBN 1-84520-237-6
- Millet, Raphaël (2006) Singapore Cinema. Singapore: Editions Didier Millet ISBN 981-4155-42-X
- Ramani, Vinita (January 26, 2006). "Speech Acts- Censorship and Documentary Filmmaking in Singapore". Criticine.
- Slater, Ben (2006) Kinda Hot: The Making of Saint Jack in Singapore. Singapore: Marshall Cavendish. ISBN 981-261-069-3
- Tan, Kenneth Paul (2008) Cinema and Television in Singapore: Resistance in One Dimension. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-16643-1; ISSN 1567-2794. see website
- Uhde, Jan and Uhde, Yvonne (2000) Latent Images: Film in Singapore. Singapore: Oxford University Press ISBN 0-19-588714-X
- Uhde, Jan and Uhde, Yvonne (2009) Latent Images: Film in Singapore. Second updated and revised edition. Singapore: National University of Singapore Press ISBN 978-9971-69-456-2
External links
- Singapore Film Commission
- Singapore International Film Festival
- Southeast Asian Cinematheque (formerly Singapore Cinematheque) Archived 2006-04-30 at the Wayback Machine
- Asian Film Archive
- Singapore Film Society
- OhGenki Movies Singapore
- InCinemas.sg
- Criticine Singapore Archived 2009-02-14 at the Wayback Machine – Singapore page of Southeast Asian Cinema journal Criticine
- Singapore movie discussion forum
- Sinema.sg
- SINdie
- Famegate Studios
- Filmhouse Rental