25 Nov 2016 – SGIFF On The Ground
Darren Aronofsky; a bunch of dirty films from Korea and Singapore; and a visually astounding you-had-to-have-been-there showcase of works by local experimental filmmaker Toh Hun Ping
If you were at all a cinephile, man, we have been spoilt this last weekend.
Friday the 25th saw many of us ditch our mundane work lives early afternoon to catch Mr. Aronofsky at the ArtScience Museum. Among the highlights from his Masterclass were the following gems:
1. He believes in a Triangle of Creativity, where the elements of Creativity, Money and Time are in a balancing act with each other.
2. He took acting classes to understand actors better, which was something he dreaded immensely. It took Aronofsky four to five months of classes to get himself to cry.
3. Screenwriting is a lot like sculpture, and a first draft does not work. On average before production starts he goes through 20 to 30 drafts. For Black Swan, there were >100 drafts.
4. He was convinced Mickey Rourke (his lead actor from The Wrestler) was going to kill him. But he had a producer who was “one of those guys who you were afraid to go down a dark alley with. So if you bring someone like Scott Franklin(ed: producer) with you, no one can mess with you.”
5. When the moderator Ken Kwek asked Darren “what he would say to an industry in a country that is basically incredibly risk-averse?” Darren’s reply was: “Art is all about being honest and truthful… you have to continue to pursue what you want to do. It may not work well in Singapore or it may work well in Cannes. It may put you in jail, but you can’t resist it. Your job is to keep telling the truths that you know.”
With that, he left to go sit on top of the ArtScience Museum.
That evening, I went to see Dirty Movie #1. It was great, and I can’t wait for the rest of the world to see Walking Street. The latest by self-proclaimed pervert director Lee Sang-woo (consider his last film’s titles Mother Is A Whore and his Singapore-banned feature Dirty Romance) had its World Premiere with SGIFF this year. Sang-Woo’s script sees brothers Tae-Sung and Tae-gi escape from Seoul to Pattaya in the hopes of escaping from a crime they had just committed. Once there, however, their run-in with a Korean prostitute threatens their tight bonds. Director Sang-woo really milks his good-looking stars to the T, with many a shirtless scene amongst all 3 actors and actresses. I was fortunate enough to be in the Festival Lounge earlier that day when one of Walking Street’s actors Baek Sung-hyun was posed by an interviewer: “You show your skin a lot in the movie” to which the actor cheekily replied “If Sang-woo wanted me to take off my clothes, I’ll take off my clothes.”
Its a tough act to follow after such a juicy movie but man, the Q&A session that followed really takes the cake. I don’t know if director Lee Sang-woo was high on something or just really drunk but I would definitely like whatever he was having that evening. With his good-looking (I really cannot understate this fact) cast, he poked fun of the actress and his actors, and they poked fun at him back in return. Director Sang-woo really loves Pattaya, but as he adamantly states: “but I go there for different reasons other than sex.” and how actress Lee Song-lee was insecure about her bosom size before the shoot. The actors and actresses also teased their director, calling out the preponderance of their on-screen white cotton briefs – “white underwear is his fetish” and the director remarking in response “their dicks are not so big so…” which garnered whoops of laughter from the audience.
I had to run immediately back to Objectifs after that for a really rare showcase of Toh Hun Ping’s experimental short films. The program appropriately titled Covets of an Outsider: Showcase of Works by Toh Hun Ping (2004-2009) featured a brain-melting slew of really intense short films which sees the artist create his works by using things like bleach and acrylic and mud or even physically scratching the film itself to create his images.
I spot our Estonian animation director guest Ülo Pikkov in the audience as well. I had just written a piece on Estonian animation for the Festival and was eager to ask him questions. I waded towards him and introduced myself, and soon we were deep in conversation – but not for long, as Ülo himself had plenty of questions for Hun Ping.
The evening ended with a sonically-mind-blowing live accompaniment with Jeremy Sharma and Dharma (the latter of ex-The Observatory fame) scoring to Athlete, a frenzied short film examining motion and raw physicality as the manifestation of darkness within humanity that translates, or even transcends chaos. Trying to describe Athlete in words however, is an exercise in futility. You had to be there to experience it. For the few of us there that night, it was a transcendental experience.
Unfortunately as the Toh Hun Ping showcase overran, I had to skip Dirty Movie #2 – Sam Loh’s latest provocation Siew Lup. I’ll have to leave it to my friends to let me know how it went.