Ok so Yixin and I only went to 2 theatres, and one was at night. So it’s not exactly as the title says… but close enough.

Second Link

Caught Second Link, a W!ld Rice play as part of the Singapore Theatre Festival this afternoon at the NLB.

What the play is, is essentially taking selections of Singapore texts and having Malaysian actors perform them. Then do it with Malaysian texts and Singapore actors. Which basically split the play into 2 parts: Riding the Nice Bus and Tikam-Tikam: Malaysian Roulette.

Without being critical, it is in my opinion that Malaysia has good writers, and Singapore has good actors. From that you should be able to conclude which half I enjoyed more.

It was thus unfortunate that we weren’t able to catch all the Malaysian literary works cos as the name goes, the audience had to “tikam-tikam” the order of the performance, knowing full well that the actors only had one hour to perform as much as they can.

The texts though diverse, from the hilarious, either by nature or the portrayal, to the emotional and artistic, were great. Makes me wonder why I never came across most of them.

But then again, I never did look. Maybe someday I’ll get down to getting the full text.

Passabe

Passabe by James Leong & Lynn Lee

Had complementary tickets for the local documentary Passabe at the National Museum, as part of the launch of Cine.sg

Complementary tickets. Thanks to Shu Chiang!

The museum was so quiet that we thought we could be at the wrong place. Turned out that we were the only two present for the screening!

Thought it was really depressing for the organisers and wanted to chat with them after the show but couldn’t find them. Brought to mind a similar incident with a friend’s film festival some time back.

But heard from Juz that last nights response was rather good so we concluded that we’re probably the only idiots who aren’t so much concerned with what the PM has to say at the Nat Day Rally. Well at least not live.

Show was good. Got a little draggy in the middle but was otherwise a good documentary.

Here’s a quote from Lynn:

“When Passabe became a full-blown film. It was sometime in March 2004. We were sitting in our room at our guest house in Dili, wondering if we should just pack up and go home, or stay in Timor, keep filming and exhaust all our savings. We’d been shooting for a two months and knew we’d found an incredible story. But no one - not a single broadcaster we approached in Singapore - was interested in funding us. We were down to our last 500 dollars. We could go home and find decent jobs or slog on, trust our instincts, and face the prospect of going broke. It was a tough call. But we chose to stay. And that was when we realized that we didn’t have to conform to any broadcaster’s standards. We didn’t have to make a “traditional” documentary. We didn’t have a commissioning editor to answer to; no deadlines to meet. We could let the story tell itself, allow things to play out.”

Well that’s how docus should be. The rawness of the shots, the conversations and stories… Someone was nearly moved to tears… Makes it more true to life yah.

Currently inspired to shoot a docu too. Shoot only hor. Someone else can go edit it. Haha.