We’re excited to announce that for this year’s Festival, we’re bringing back two iconic Singaporean classics: Eric Khoo’s Mee Pok Man and Yonfan’s Bugis Street Redux. Both films will lead the line-up for this year’s Classics programme section, a full 20 years after their premieres.
A Romeo and Juliet-type romance, but with a down to earth, gritty sensibility, Mee Pok Man became the first ever Singaporean feature-length entry to the Silver Screen Awards; it won 1995’s NETPAC/FIPRESCI Special Mention. The film then went on to be screened at a whopping 35 film festivals between 1995 and 1997, and has often been credited with putting Singapore cinema back in the world map after a brief lull in the 1980s.
The newly restored Bugis Street Redux, the veteran Hong Kong director Yonfan’s first foray into independent filmmaking, continues on a similar vein. It captures the heartbeat and colour of 1960’s Bugis Street through the story of transvestites and transsexuals living and working at a small hotel. The film was groundbreaking also because of its beginning of cross-cultural filmmaking within the region.
On why the films are iconic, our Executive Director Yuni Hadi said that: “Mee Pok Man and Bugis Street are two classics that not just tell a Singapore story, but also reflect a milestone of an era for our filmmaking industry. They have inspired bolder voices since their premieres in 1995 and are exemplary of the quality storytelling our filmmakers are capable of.”
It’s truly a privilege to screen these two gems once more, and we hope you will relive and rediscover them with us. Less than three months to go till the Festival starts!
Film stills courtesy of Zhao Wei Films and Far Sun Films.