Shaun Neo

My Endless Numbered Days

Mitsue returns to Japan after the disillusionment of a work opportunity in Singapore. Resuming her past life, she treads between friendships with a former lover and a new co-worker, while finding her footing despite being constantly on the move. A sense of alienation follows her from city to city as the young urbanite looks for novelty and adventure, but struggles to find a place to call home. Through beautiful vignettes of Mitsue’s encounters with familiar faces as well as strangers, this gentle drama invites us to dwell on the stops one makes in a journey of self-discovery.

My Endless Numbered Days

Mitsue returns to Japan after the disillusionment of a work opportunity in Singapore. Resuming her past life, she treads between friendships with a former lover and a new co-worker, while finding her footing despite being constantly on the move. A sense of alienation follows her from city to city as the young urbanite looks for novelty and adventure, but struggles to find a place to call home. Through beautiful vignettes of Mitsue’s encounters with familiar faces as well as strangers, this gentle drama invites us to dwell on the stops one makes in a journey of self-discovery.

Time Pass, Years Past

By examining the Frontier Danceland’s 1998 archival dance piece under the lens of 2023, residency filmmaker Jiekai Liao explores the concept of time and metamorphosis. The present dancers rehearse and improvise motifs from the past work and put their senses through transformative processes. Inspired by the older generation, the spirit of the former piece is rejuvenated, while the young ones carry on their legacy. The dance film project is especially meaningful while the company just announced their transition out of full-time dance company operation by 31st March 2024, after 32 long years of artmaking in Singapore.

Perfect Share House

Perfect Share House

On Memory

Lost while visiting the graves of his ancestors, the protagonist finds his future self. Together, they embark on a journey of retracing the places their family would visit during the Qing Ming festival of tomb-sweeping. Inspired by the poetry and in memory of Yeng Pway Ngon (1947–2021).

Faraway My Shadow Wandered

When he was a child, Junya promised his maternal grandfather that as the eldest grandson, he would take over the family Shinto shrine. However, this did not come to pass as Junya did not share the same family name and he grew estranged from his family over time. To escape this tension, Junya ventured overseas to pursue other dreams and distanced himself from the hometown where he grew up. One day, while working in an izakaya, he meets a foreigner with the same birthday researching a new dance piece for a film. His fateful encounter leads him to confront a family history that he has left behind and gives the dancer inspiration for her work. Together in the midst of winter, they revisit Junya's hometown to reconnect with his childhood and let go of a promise he cannot fulfil.

A Dream I Did Not Dream

The dance of life is one we dance alone but with many silent and invisible partners. Meena celebrates the lives she lived and the people she loves in a film about the rejuvenating power of time.

Drive My Car

Drive My Car chronicles the story of Lay Hoon - a resilient single mother and self-employed individual as she endeavors to rebuild her life after serving time in prison. Working as a taxi driver to support her family, Lay Hoon confronts adversity when her taxi vocational license approaches its expiration, posing challenges to her newfound life.

Bagasi

In the middle of the night, a woman drags a huge heavy bag on the street. The content of her bag is a mystery.

As Quiet As A Cloud

A newspaper editor visits her former teacher, who now cares for his wife with dementia, in this gentle story about the passage of time.

T(h)ree Lives

Rosie Wong, a blind woman, shares a retrospective account about the three lives which shaped her life. Taking inspiration from ‘The Giving Tree’, her life is significantly changed by a kind stranger, Pak Cik Tubi Moh Salleh, who helped her get to work everyday for 5 years. Pak Cik Tubi continued this good deed for the next few years, tirelessly helping Madam Rosie.

Lián

Lián and her family are stowaways on a ship, hiding in one of the containers. One day, Lián heads out secretly and discovers that the vessel has docked ahead of schedule. She now has to overcome language barriers and deceit to save her family.

Sorezore, tamayura

One by one, everyone falls asleep forever.

Tenebrae

On the last day for the residents to vacate a high-rise apartment before its demolishment, a young girl, Iris, and her mother are moving out. On a tight deadline, her boyfriend and his friend are also present to help. Iris inevitably gets distracted exploring the vacant spaces of her neighbours, relishing the moment. As they pull away in the rental truck for the last time, Iris sits in the back with her boyfriend, surrounded by her furniture. She allows a small ray of light to penetrate the darkness of the truck. The images of the outside world appear on the interior of the truck; they watch the inverted building before it eventually disappears forever.

CA$H

Four cashier aunties lock themselves up inside the supermarket late at night to protest against their job losses as the chain transits into a cashless system.

Happily Ever After

Happily Ever After attempts to add layers of meaning to the ubiquity of wedding photography services. In so doing, the filmmakers adopted an ingenious methodology. Three wedding photography sessions are framed in long shots to provide viewers with unfettered access to the dynamics of a family. The unfurled dramas are further enriched by the sense of real time elicited from fixed camera positions, giving way to a story told beyond the narrative constraints normally associated with family dramas.

Happily Ever After

Happily Ever After attempts to add layers of meaning to the ubiquity of wedding photography services. In so doing, the filmmakers adopted an ingenious methodology. Three wedding photography sessions are framed in long shots to provide viewers with unfettered access to the dynamics of a family. The unfurled dramas are further enriched by the sense of real time elicited from fixed camera positions, giving way to a story told beyond the narrative constraints normally associated with family dramas.

Afar

Lee Wai Shing’s short film focuses on family in response to Huang Canran’s poem ‘So Close’, narrating a son’s journey to visit his mother in North Point

Remora

Dependency; Interdependency

Remora

Dependency; Interdependency

Body missing body

The intertidal zone where land and sea meet separates the island into two during low tide. The doll, unable to leave the island, recalls a distant memory of the violent separation from her owner and herself. A butoh dancer embodies a castaway doll and performs in a shifting landscape of disappearing bodies of water from intertidal phenomenons. Butoh, also known as the ‘dance of utter darkness’, is a post-war Japanese avant- garde art form. Like the elemental changes of states from water to vapour, she senses something present but unable to be seen. A more invisible performer takes precedence, the PD150, an attribute to forgotten and lost objects. Memory becomes the act of ‘vanishing’ and follows the sensation of ‘missing’ through a span of space and time with objects, locations and people.