Ian On The Red Dot

I self-invited myself to an event organized by Ogilvy to showcase the latest short film commissioned by MCYS (i.e. Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports). Brian (who should never be hired as a door-bitch because he is just too welcoming) was gracious enough to let me attend the event.

I am glad I did.

We got to watch a selection from the body of work by director Yasmin Ahmad (who has a blog here) and I understand why she is an award-winning director.

Films aren’t just meant to saturate our senses with sights and sounds or impress us with special effects. Correction. Good and memorable films (which is different from blockbuster entertaining) don’t just saturate our senses with sights and sounds and impress us with special effects. Good and memorable films lead us on an emotional journey - they remind us what it means to be human and evoke strong emotions that help us cope, appreciate and understand our lives on earth.

I got all the good stuff from her work.

My favorite is this commercial ‘Tan Hon Ming in Love’.

I really like this kid - the innocent, authentic, unbridled expressions and responses were a joy to watch. It reminded me of what it was like to be young and untarnished by the expectations and ‘rules’ of society.

The final message was a powerful one phrased in a simple question.

The film that was commissioned is embedded below.

I really like this short film.

For one thing, it didn’t seem like the typical family campaign commercial. I haven’t seen all the commercials ever put out by my government but my impression has always been that the government likes to showcase only the idealized version of a family - 2 parents, 2.something siblings and 1 dog.

The film doesn’t have such a family. It just consists of a father and a daughter. The family seems incomplete and thus imperfect and the girl a little spoiled yet I think it captures the way we experience our family relations for most, if not all, of us.

For one thing, the way we experience our relationships with the members of our family isn’t a one-to-many thing. It is still very much a one-to-one thing. How I feel about my father is largely based on what happens between me and him and not how he has been an awesome husband to my mom or how he has also been a long-suffering dad to my sis (and me). When we talk about love in the family, it isn’t always a group-hug experience. In this film, the mother has been removed such that only one relationship is in focus and in this one relationship I am able to see a little of my relationship with my dad, a little of my relationship with my mom and ultimately the love that is in my family.

Yasmin Ahmad said that a lot of times when we like something, we find reasons to justify why we like it. That might be the case with this film however I feel that Yasmin choosing that flat to be the family’s home was an inspired choice which allowed us to easier frame our perspectives and hang our own emotions. I don’t think she chose the setting to target at any particular demographic or thug any particular heartstrings but I really like the flat chosen and I think my peers will too.

I don’t think it would be presumptuous to say that for most in my generation and our parents, that flat was very much the setting for our early family experience. We were the generation that grew into prosperity on the back of the efforts of those before us. It is my generation that are the ones who are now at the age of getting married and starting a family and I think this film has the potential to speak to a lot of us.

It did for me.

The film reminded me of the most poignant memory I have of my parents and their love for me.

The first major purchase my parents got when we moved to our first home was an encyclopedia set. I can still remember sitting on the sparse living room floor with the salesperson showing the World Book set of encyclopedias. We had nothing and out of the so many things my parents could have bought for themselves or to make the house nicer, they chose instead to buy a World Book encyclopedia set. We think nothing of buying an item that costs a few thousand dollars now but I can only imagine the sacrifice that was made to ensure they could buy that set of books in the hope that my future would be better.

At that time, our home had next to nothing. Yet in its emptiness, the hope that filled the flat was tangible. We believed life was good and could be better.

Things have changed for a lot of us in my generation. The focus has shifted. Looking at this film, I believe it can be a good starting point, if not a valuable addition, to the conversation each of us have within ourselves as we grapple with our, for some of us strained, relationships with our parents and find the direction for the rest of our lives.

The informal Q&A session was a hoot. Yasmin Ahmad is definitely the sort of person you want at any party.

Her advice to be a good film-maker - don’t try to control everything, produce a good script and have excellent casting.

She also can be counted as a member of the unofficial Vivian Balakrishnan fan club which my sis and mom are part of. Cute and cool are words that have been used to describe him.

I also managed to meet mintea, rinaz (the one with the cute avatar) and juzzywuzzy. I especially enjoyed the jokes juzzywuzzy shared with Brian and me. Which is the smelliest creature in the sea?

I stumbled onto this post which was just beautiful. After reading it, I couldn’t help but think about my own childhood and teenage-hood and the friends which were part of those periods of my life. I’ve long lost contact with my childhood friends - those rascals-in-crime who I played ‘Crocodile’ with on the table-tennis table, catching at the playground, ‘Pepsi Cola 123′ at the lift landing, ‘Hantam-Bola’ at the void deck, ‘Police-and-thief’ using the whole HDB as the area, sliding down the hill in our estate with cardboard boxes and the female neighbors who convinced us guys to destroy our groins by playing ‘Zero-Point’.

I’ll especially never forget the friends who got caught together with me playing soccer at the void deck just before the PSLE and got caned together with me by the Principle.

Good times.

We never did manage to really keep in touch after my family moved when I entered Secondary School. Most of us didn’t have our own phones in the room and it wasn’t part of our culture to call and talk with each other. Actually, it never occurred to me until I was in upper secondary school that the phone could be used by people other than the parents. We were the sort of friends who went to school together, played soccer and ‘One-Leg’ together during recess and hung out a bit after school. Our gathering point was the playgrounds scattered across the estate.

Although we lived close together, it was never in our habit to regularly visit each other’s homes (hmmm, though I did visit some of them out of the blue). Our parents talked whenever they met at the playground or in the market, but I don’t remember my parents ever inviting any of my friends’ parents over. The only people who did ever come to our house were family, my parents’ friends or the neighbors on our floor and one floor down.

When I moved away, keeping in touch was over. We only managed to meet when we went back to the primary school for Teacher’s day. I can remember only one other time we met and that was before O-Levels.  I envy the kids now - they have handphones, icq, email, msn and so many other ways to keep in touch. We had none of those things then and being in a different part of Singapore as opposed to the same estate didn’t help matters.

I could of course have arranged to go out with them. But at that time, it never occurred to me that I could do that. Going out after school was never part of my life. Not that I never hung out with my secondary school friends. We did, but only at places near school and they were rarely arranged before hand. It was mostly a matter of school is over, there is some free time, shall we go bowl or watch a movie and rarely in Orchard. In fact, I can’t even remember going to Orchard to ‘hang out’ on a school day during my secondary school days except once in Sec three - it was my first date.

I only learned the concept of ‘hanging out’ in town when I hit JC. I mean, I only learned there were groups of people called ‘Far East Kids’ and ‘Centerpoint Kids’ after Cineleisure became the new IT place.

When I read the post, I started trying to find reasons why I lost most of my friends from those periods of my life which were really the best ones until about two years ago. There is probably a myriad of factors which all contributed to the lost.

But then I reminded myself not to dwell on what’s lost but what I have - my best friend. The funny thing is we never really talked to each other during the first year of upper secondary school. We were in the same class so we must have interacted but he was a real ninja until I got to know him as a friend rather then just a classmate.

He would come to class just before the bell rings, put his bag, go for assembly, attend lessons, go off for ECA once the bell rings. That’s it. Ninja.

I still remember the point when we became friends. It was after a bunch of speeches made by prefect wannabees when we were exiting the hall.

He turned to me and asked, ‘Who’s Wisely?’

A man with a cold sense of humor. A man after my own heart.

Like what marta wrote in her post, that was the moment that sticks. And life then was indeed simpler. We would spend time waiting for teachers to come into class discussing about everything. My friend was such an optimist that he was a perfect foil to my cynicism about the world.

And through everything that has happened in our lives, he has always been my lighthouse - the constant that always warns, guides and encourages.