Composing TIONG BAHRU
Kavin Hoo composed the music for TIONG BAHRU.
Born in Malaysia in 1975, Kavin began his musical training at the early age of 5 and studied at the prestigious Berklee College of Music. Kavin now lives in Los Angeles, where he runs a music production company, Earthtones Studio, producing and arranging for artists such as Tanya Chua, and co-producing with Corrinne May all of her records.
Listen to Kavin’s music, accompanying the production images of Samantha Tio and Alecia Neo, below
Recounts Kavin:
When Joe & Christine first approached me to work on their new film TIONG BAHRU, I had already seen some of their previous Civic Life works and I knew I would be in for a visual treat. I was not disappointed to say the least. TIONG BAHRU is an incredible film, with sweeping unhurried shots of people adjusting to life and changes in one of Singapore’s earliest community center.
Working on the film has been a very enriching and rewarding experience to me as Joe and Christine are both so talented and precise with the vision that they want to put forth. While the initial spotting session was done in Singapore with Christine, most of the bulk of our communication on the project was via Skype with Joe, due to the fact that they were in UK and I was back in Los Angeles.
I think such a collaboration would have not been possible 10 years ago if not for the technologies we have now, what with video teleconferencing and the ability to send and transfer huige critical music files online.
Originally, the idea I was floating around was to do a more intimate type of score, but Joe & Christine had the idea to go the other way instead. They were looking for a more traditional orchestral score that is lush and big. One thing that stuck with me about what Christine said was to think of the music, the audio aspect, in equal footing with the visuals, and not to be afraid to be more dramatic and bold with the score.
Because the film is short, with 3 major characters and their stories to be told, we thought that rather than to have separate themes for all of them, we would have a theme that binds all of them together. I introduced the “kantele“, a traditional plucked string instrument to bring some intrigue in the beginning of the film, and to re-use that element for the story within the story about the baby found in the woods. I think it creates an instant mysterious and otherworldly sound that creates so much intrigue and drama.
Throughout the whole process, Joe and I would hold daily Skype conference to review our progress, him at the end of his work day and me during my late mornings owing to the time difference.
What amazes me is that Joe & Christine are both very musical people, and their comments to me have always been very on point and easy to grasp.
The music for TIONG BAHRU is truly a collaboration between us as they bring as much to the table as I did. While we accomplished a lot in terms of fine tuning each scene musically, it was also the banter and the rapport that I will cherish just as much.
You can find out more about Kavin’s work, here.
Read more about our production photographers Samantha Tio and Alecia Neo, here.
TIONG BAHRU is off to Paris!
TIONG BAHRU recently played at the prestigious LES RENCONTRES INTERNATIONALES, taking place in Paris from 18th to 26th November.
Held at the Centre Pompidou and the Gaîté lyrique, the festival aims to create during 9 days a space of discovery and reflection between new cinema and contemporary art.
In the presence of artists and filmmakers from all over the world, this rare event will offer an international programme of film, video, multimedia. It includes 25 screenings, an out of town day with the visit of several exhibitions through the Ile-de-France Region, a cycle of debates and panel discussions.
Details of the TIONG BAHRU screening can be found, here.
This year’s programme has been selected from 5500 submissions as well as by invitations made to some artists and filmmakers. It is the result of an elaborate international search for works: 150 works from Germany, France, Spain and 40 other countries, gathering internationally-known artists and filmmakers with young artists and filmmakers presented for the first time.
Full details of the program can be found here.
TIONG BAHRU also played recently (11th/12th November) in Perth as part of the inaugural Singapore Short Film Festival, and in Cairns and Townsville in Queensland as part of the Travelling Sydney Film Festival, while six more screenings around Australia in early 2012 have just been confirmed.
To quote the film, “All things start small”. 
TIONG BAHRU in Poland!
TIONG BAHRU was selected for the prestigious Regiofun Film Festival, which took place in Katowice, Poland from 19th to the 23rd October.
The film played as part of a program looking at representations of the city in film, City Film Film City, which also inclues Walter Ruttmann’s Berlin: Symphony of a Great City, Wim Wender’s Wings of Desire and Woody Allen’s recent Vicky Cristina Barcelona, as well as films by leading Polish directors such as Jozef Robakowsk and Jan Lenica.
The confirmation of the screening in Poland means that, in the course of one week in October, the film screened in five separate locations in four different countries:
Singapore, Katowice, Dublin, Toowoomba (Queensland, Australia) and Charters Towers (also Queensland).
Details of the Regiofun program can be found, here.
To quote the film, “All things start small”.
TIONG BAHRU at Singapore Writers Festival!
TIONG BAHRU came home for a special one-off screening at the National Museum of Singapore as part of the Singapore Writers Festival…and director Joe Lawlor was in town to present the film!
At the screening, moderated by playwright and poet Ng Yi-Sheng, Joe was joined by Books Actually co-founder Kenny Leck, whose much loved shop relocated to the estate earlier this year.
In a lively discussion , the panel talked about how the estate had inspired them, how place can be a source of inspiration for artists and why they have all found in the Tiong Bahru a sense of homecoming. The audience also shared their views on the film and their memories of, and feelings towards the estate.
Thanks to TIONG BAHRU production photographer Samantha Tio for the images of the event, and to all who came along to the event.
You can read Yi-Sheng’s essay on Singaporeans search for belonging in an everchanging landscape, here, while you can listen to an interview with Kenny on ABC’s Artworks radio programme, here.
If you have still to see the film, contact your nearest branch of the NLB, who should have copies for loan.
See the film’s production images by Samantha Tio and Alecia Neo, and accompanied by the beautiful soundtrack of Kavin Hoo, below.
See a report on the making of TIONG BAHRU, here.
Throughout the Civic Life project in Singapore, leading writers have shared their thoughts with us on ideas of identity, belonging and community.
You can read three pieces, which feature in the booklet accompanying the TIONG BAHRU DVD, below.
Ng Yi-Sheng on the ever-changing landscape of Singapore.
Alvin Pang on a geography of Singapore mapped through personal reminiscences.
Tan Shzr Ee on the rich linguistic identity of Singapore and Singaporeans.
More on Writing & Singapore
There have been a number of fascinating features, looking at Singapore’s arts and cultural scene, broadcast on Australia’s ABC Radio National across 2011. They feature interviews with many leading figures from Singapore, including Alvin Pang, Pooja Nansi and Cyril Wong. Find out more, below:
Listen to a two part Poetica special, exploring Singaporean poetry, here.
Listen to an Artworks programme, exploring Singapore’s performing arts scene, here.
Listen to an Artworks programme, exploring Singapore’s visual arts scene, here.
Writing The City
You can watch all of the episodes of WRITNG THE CITY, an online creative writing programme, written and presented by Singapore Literature Prize Suchen Christine Lim and UK novelist Jeremy Sheldon and inspired by TIONG BAHRU, below.
Watch The Writer’s Eye, here.
Watch Characters, here.
Watch Encounters, here.
Watch The Magical, here.
Watch The Individual And The City, here.
Watch Looking Forward, featuring top tips for writers, here.
Reading Singapore with BooksActually on ABC Radio National
In any society, what you can and can’t write, what you can and can’t publish, what you can and can’t read, tells you a fair bit about the place: about its political system and its social values. So, what would you expect to find in a bookshop in Singapore?
In this special report for Australia’s ABC Radio National, Debra McCoy finds out, with her first stop being at BooksActually in the Tiong Bahru Estate, where she meets co-founder Kenny Leck and poet Alvin Pang. Debra also speaks to writer and political candidate Teo Soh Lung about her memoir, Beyond the Blue Gate.
Listen to the programme, here.
More about Singapore on ABC Radio National
Listen to a previous edition of the Artworks programme, exploring Singapore’s performing arts scene, here.
Listen to a further edition of the Artworks programme, exploring Singapore’s visual arts scene, here.
Listen to a two part Poetica special, exploring Singaporean poetry, here.
More on Writing
Throughout the Civic Life project in Singapore, leading writers have shared their thoughts with us on ideas of identity, belonging and community.
You can read three pieces, which feature in the booklet accompanying the TIONG BAHRU DVD, below.
Ng Yi-Sheng on the ever-changing landscape of Singapore.
Alvin Pang on a geography of Singapore mapped through personal reminiscences.
Tan Shzr Ee on the rich linguistic identity of Singapore and Singaporeans.
Writing The City
You can watch all of the episodes of WRITNG THE CITY, an online creative writing programme inspired by TIONG BAHRU and written and presented by Singapore Literature Prize Suchen Christine Lim and UK novelist Jeremy Sheldon, below.
Watch The Writer’s Eye, here.
Watch Characters, here.
Watch Encounters, here.
Watch The Magical, here.
Watch The Individual And The City, here.
Watch Looking Forward, featuring top tips for writers, here.
Looking to the Future: Top Tips for New Writers
As a P.S. to the WRITING THE CITY series, Singapore Literature Prize Winner Suchen Christine Lim and UK author Jeremy Sheldon offer some excellent tips and encouragement for new writers.
As Jeremy and Suchen note, rounding off the series: Don’t give up! The world doesn’t owe you a novel. But if you perservere and put in the hours, you will be surprised at what you can achieve.
More on Writing
Throughout the Civic Life project in Singapore, leading writers have shared their thoughts with us on ideas of identity, belonging and community.
You can read three pieces, which feature in the booklet accompanying the TIONG BAHRU DVD, below.
Ng Yi-Sheng on the ever-changing landscape of Singapore.
Alvin Pang on a geography of Singapore mapped through personal reminiscences.
Tan Shzr Ee on the rich linguistic identity of Singapore and Singaporeans.
More on Writing The City
You can see the other films in the series by clicking on the links below.
Watch The Writer’s Eye, here.
Watch Characters, here.
Watch Encounters, here.
Watch The Magical, here.
Watch The Individual And The City, here.
The Channel 9 Tower in Sydney
While Joe Lawlor was in Australia for the Sydney Film Festival to present TIONG BAHRU at this year’s festival, he ran a number of filmmaking workshops around the idea of film, place and architecture.
At the end of each of the workshops, Joe challenged the filmmakers to make a 90 second film, in the spirit of the TIONG BAHRU film project’s 90 second film competition Where The Heart Is, exploring a particular place that had meaning for the filmmakers.
Jim Poe has come back with a striking and slightly unsettling portrait of the Channel 9 Tower in Sydney, built in 1965, which is soon to be torn down to make way for an apartment block.
Jim’s work makes an interesting companion piece to Stephane Laserre’s Where The Heart Was, an entry for the Where The Heart Is competition, which received special mention for its exploration of the condominiums of Singapore’s architectural past, doomed to fall victim to the developer’s wrecking ball as a result of the en-bloc phenomenon.
Check out more films from the competition at the Where The Heart Is vimeo channel, here.
TIONG BAHRU is now on tour as part of the Travelling Sydney Film Festival and places across September and October as part of Dublin Contemporary, Ireland’s leading visual arts exhibition.
A walk in the park turns sinister…
It is a sunny afternoon in an enchanted corner of England.
Strains of elegiac classical music fade up on the soundtrack, as a camera begins to gently move along a riverbank gradually revealing an elaborate tableau.
Burnt sunbathers, beer-drinking kids, an abandoned baby, a rabbit in a boat, a bicycle accident – in WHO KILLED BROWN OWL, the perfect English arcadia gives way to varying kinds of misfortune, disruption and violence.
With more than a passing reference to the ‘narrative’ paintings by masters such as Bruegel, this spectacular single take 9-minute short is about a lazy Sunday afternoon that goes horribly wrong. Filmed over the course of one afternoon in 2003, WHO KILLED BROWN OWL features a volunteer cast of almost 100 residents of the London Borough of Enfield and is the the first in the CIVIC LIFE series of films.
WHO KILLED BROWN OWL won the Best British Short Film Award at the 58th Edinburgh International Film Festival.
Since July 2003 Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor have worked on a unique and richly cinematic series of films made in negotiation with local residents and community groups. At the centre of the work is the relationship these communities have to the environments in which they live and work. All of the CIVIC LIFE films are shot on 35mm cinemascope making extensive use of the long take and involving largely non-professional casts made up of volunteers from the local communities.
Their most recent film, TIONG BAHRU, is currently on tour around the world. Details, here.
The Individual & The City
THE INDIVIDUAL & THE CITY is the sixth and final episode in WRITING THE CITY, an online creative writing programme written and presented by Singapore Literature Prize Winner Suchen Christine Lim and UK author Jeremy Sheldon.
Directed by Singaporean filmmaker Victric Thng, the series concludes with a look at how the writer’s experiences and identity can provide inspirations for their writing. It includes an extract from acclaimed playwright Alfian Sa’at’s forthcoming collection of short stories, Malay Sketches.
The final episode also examines how writers can draw support from each other and provides encouragement to new writers to make that first step into the world of creation. As Suchen notes, rounding off the series,
“Think of salmon swimming up stream against the current, heading towards home. This is you, the individual existing within the crowd. This is you: the writer. Swim, swim and swim again. Or, to put it another way, write, write and write again. Even if the world ignores you or obstructs you … even if no one cares whether you can write or not, just write because you want to. There is no better reason.”
More on Writing
Throughout the Civic Life project in Singapore, leading writers have shared their thoughts with us on ideas of identity, belonging and community.
You can read three pieces, which feature in the booklet accompanying the TIONG BAHRU DVD, below.
Ng Yi-Sheng on the ever-changing landscape of Singapore.
Alvin Pang on a geography of Singapore mapped through personal reminiscences.
Tan Shzr Ee on the rich linguistic identity of Singapore and Singaporeans.
More on Writing The City
You can see the other films in the series by clicking on the links below.
Watch Episode 1 of the series, The Writer’s Eye, here.
Watch Episode 2 of the series, Characters, here.
Watch Episode 3 of the series, Encounters, here.
Watch Episode 5 of the series, The Magical, here.
Watch a P.S. to the series, Looking Forward, here.
ALFIAN SA’AT
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John Gollings on Architecture and Photography
In this report from ABC Radio National’s Artworks, the relationship between architecture and photography is explored.
While many of us are familiar with the look of many cities and their buildings around the world, for the most part this familiarity is the result of glossy imagery, rather than personal experience. And often, the photographic images that we recognise are hyper-real productions, created for the designers by architectural photographers.
So have we become too dependent on these carefully managed photos? Is there a disconnection between the images we consume in magazines and books and what’s really on the ground? And is photography operating too much in the service of elevating a designer’s (and a building’s) profile, for us to maintain any critical judgment of our built environments?
Australian John Gollings is one of the most experienced and recognised architectural photographers in the world, and he joins Professor Philip Goad in conversation with Michael Shirrefs. They discuss the role of the photograph and whether the photographer has any wriggle room to critique architecture with the camera.
Listen to the discussion by clicking on the image below.
More on John Gollings, here.
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Listen to a further edition of the Artworks programme, exploring Singapore’s visual arts scene, here.
Listen to a two part Poetica special, exploring Singaporean poetry, here.
A Singaporean’s Longings For Home Cooking
I’ll always remember an incident that happened on my first business trip to Australia. The strictness of the Australian customs is legendary but I thought I didn’t have anything to worry about simply because I wasn’t carrying any food. I thought I was cleared until I came to another checkpoint and another officer asked me the same questions and when I replied in the negative, he continued to ask quite seriously, “Are you sure? No tea? Coffee? Milo? Nasi Lemak?”
“Nasi Lemak?! No.” I said tersely with a look of disdain and he waved me through. Why on earth anyone want to smuggle Nasi Lemak all the way from Singapore to Adelaide? On looking back, I had perhaps underestimated the Singaporean obsession with food. Much has been said about food and how it defines the Singaporean identity. It is undeniable that food is the one thing which can really unite very different Singaporeans.
I spent last year living as a student in London. It is not my first time living here; I spent 9 months in London on a working holiday five years ago. The only difference between my experiences , is how much more I missed Singaporean food! Perhaps, it was because this time, I had a small community of about ten friends from Singapore in the UK with me.The ten of us were all involved in the arts in one way or another so when we met, the conversation inevitably comes to the arts and food.
We might have had very different views about arts and almost everything under the sun but when it came to Singaporean food, we all agreed on the same thing. We love it, we missed it and it’s the best food in the world!
We all had become some sort of expert of sorts at cooking even though we hadn’t cooked much back home. We’d share tips on where to find the best Singaporean/ Malaysian eating places in London and where to get the cheapest Asian produce in London. If Singaporeans are foodies, then imagine the obsession of food-deprived overseas Singaporeans!
We craved something not because we actually wanted it, but because we wanted the memory of how that particular food made us feel. We wanted it because it reminded us of our friends, family and home. We once had someone import Ngoh Hiang skin because we wanted to make our own ngoh hiang since it just is not sold here.
One of the first parties we had as a group was themed as a Comfort Food Party where we each had to prepare our favourite comfort food from home. The menu included Vegetarian Bee Hoon, Chicken Curry, Laksa, Prawn Keropok, Sambal Goreng , Sambal Kangkong, Petai & Ikan Bilis Sambal and Bak kwa! We were quite satiated even if the tempeh in the sambal goreng was from Belgium and wrapped in plastic instead of leaves and the laksa had no hum (cockles) and made with Prima instant mix.
After that first party, we kept in touch…sharing our culinary adventures, trying out new recipes and posting the photos of the results on Facebook, commenting on each other’s photos and often congratulating ourselves even though we did not quite replicate the authentic taste of the food from home.After all, you can cook the food yourself but it can never beat the experience of ‘going to buy the wanton mee from downstairs cos mum didn’t cook tonight’.
Which brings me back to the issue of food smuggling.
I now know who’d smuggle nasi lemak to Adelaide; my guess would be a homesick nasi-lemak deprived Singaporean…just like one of my friends who got his boyfriend to smuggle Wanton Mee from the ‘downstairs coffeeshop’ all the way to London. Don’t ask me how he did it.
To this day, I still do not understand the nitty gritty of the smuggling operation. I’d have to say that I couldn’t really identify with the extreme of importing hawker food…but then again, I was lucky that my only craving was limited to more manageable foodstuff like crispy nyonya prawn rolls and pineapple tarts from Tiong Bahru, which are allowed.
But I guess if those weren’t allowed in, I might have resorted to smuggling them as well. I now feel guilty for scoffing at a friend who had asked for epok-epok to be delivered to her in Italy a few years ago. I guess that customs officer in Australia had seen his fair share of such cases.
Just recently, I found out that another friend has managed to smuggle screwpine leaves (that’s pandan leaves to us!) into Spain and was happily looking forward to cooking Nasi Lemak. He seemed very proud of his accomplishment and so I didn’t have the heart to tell him that another friend in Aberdeen had two tubs of home-cooked Nasi Lemak delivered to her the month before.
I’m so glad to be home. But if I go back to the UK, and if ever a customs officer asks me if I have Nasi Lemak in my bag, I might just smile, say no and hope he takes my word for it.
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I’ve never really been a big eater of Singaporean hawker food. I enjoy eating but I don’t consciously have to have Singaporean dishes. I found out that my Singaporean friends in the UK feel the same way too. So I’ve always wondered why we actually crave Singaporean food. Did we take Singaporean hawker food for granted because they are ubiquitous? Do we really don’t know what we have until we don’t have them anymore? Do we really crave food from home because we miss the food itself or because we miss all of the things associated with the food?
RYDWAN ANWAR
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Rydwan Anwar is currently a programming officer at Like us on Facebook
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