BISFF Correspondence 通信计划
为了跨越种种障碍,开辟更多交流空间,我们设置了“BISFF Correspondence 通信计划”,对部分国际单元的参展作者进行系列访谈,这些访谈将在作品放映后发布在联展各个媒体平台。
A Spider, Fever and Other Disappearing Islands|蜘蛛、发烧和其他消失的岛屿
Natalie Khoo
Singapore|English, Chinese Dialect|0:20:43|2021
Q&A
Director导演:Natalie Khoo
Interviewer&translator采访、翻译:苏丽珂 Suliko、娄白杨 Lou Baiyang
Q:How did you get started on this film?
你是在怎样的契机下开始这部影片的创作的?
A:On Tomb-sweeping Day in 2015, I went to Indonesia with my grandmother, who immigrated from Indonesia and settled in Singapore. I was in college at the time and shot some video footage with my iPhone. And then in 2020, because of COVID-19, we can only stay at home and cannot go out, so I spent a lot of time with my grandmother every day. During that time, not knowing what to do, my grandmother decided to write a memoir to record her past experiences and childhood events. She didn't know how to use a computer, so I helped her type it into the computer.
2015年清明节,我跟着我的外婆去了印尼,她是从印度尼西亚移民来到新加坡定居的。那个时候我在上大学,当时用iPhone拍了一些视频素材。再之后是2020年,因为新冠肺炎,我们只能待在家里,不能出门,我每天都有很多的时间跟我外婆待在一起。那个时候因为不知道要做点什么,我外婆就决定要写一本书,来记载自己的回忆,包括她过去的经历和小时候的事情。我的外婆不会用电脑,所以我就帮她输入到电脑里。
Q:There's a scene in which your grandmother is dictating and the girl across from grandmother is typing, so that's a real scene from your life, right?
短片里有一处外婆在口述、对面的女孩在帮忙打字的片段,所以这是你生活中的真实场景对吗?
A:Yes. So the film might be a little bit like a documentary, but it's not a total documentary, it's half documentary, half unreal, and I thought I'd like to combine them.
Then in 2021, there was an exhibition in Singapore in 2021 called Objectifs, which was about female, and it had a open call for relevant works. Therefore, I took the original idea for my grandmother's documentary and got my other friends who were also in Southeast Asia to make a short film together. But because of COVID-19, we didn't met in person, only communicated online.
是的。所以这部影片也许会有一点像纪录片,但它不全是纪录片,一半是纪录的,一半是虚幻的,当时我觉得我要把它们结合起来。
然后2021年在新加坡有一个展览叫做Objectifs,主题是关于女性的,当时有一个open call,征集一些作品。我就用我外婆的纪录片的最初想法,然后找到我其他也在东南亚的朋友,一起做一部短片。但是因为新冠肺炎,我跟合作伙伴们都没有在实际中见面,只是在网上沟通。
Q:Is your grandmother the one who plays herself in the movie?
片中饰演外婆的就是你外婆本人是吗?
A:Yeah.
对。
Q:How did you communicate with her about the film? Did the shooting create new emotional connection between you two?
你怎么跟她沟通影片工作的呢?这次拍摄有没有在你们之间建立新的情感连接?
A:When I was in high school in 2013, I made a short film about my grandmother, so I've been filming her a lot since then, and she knows what I'm doing, so she doesn't think it's weird. We just went very smoothly and don't need extra communication. At that time, I told my grandmother that you used to tell me a story about the spider spirit. When we went to Indonesia, she would tell me that this is the place where God lives, in our hometown. I told her I was going to make a film about our hometown, about the spider spirit, and she said OK, so we got started. Because my grandmother was also an artist, she is a painter, so she was used to these things.
2013年的我上高中的时候做了一部短片,就是关于我外婆的,所以从那个时候开始我就经常会拍她了,她也知道我在做什么,所以她不觉得有什么奇怪。我们进行得就很顺畅,不需要特别额外的沟通。当时我跟外婆说,你以前告诉我一个故事,跟蜘蛛精有关,那时候我们去印尼,她会告诉我,这是神住的地方,就在我们的老家。我跟她说,我要做一个跟我们的老家、跟蜘蛛精有关的电影,她说OK啊,我们就开始了。因为我的外婆也是一个艺术家,她画画,所以她对这些东西习以为常。
Q:Did your grandmother tell you a lot of myths and legends or local stories when you were a child? Did these stories spark your interest in tracing your family history?
小时候外婆会跟你讲很多神话传说或者当地的故事吗?是这些故事唤起了你去追溯家族历史的兴趣吗?
A:Because I was an only child so it was just me and my grandmother (and parents though) spending my childhood together, then I grew up hearing these stories. My grandmother came to Singapore at a very young age, many things she encountered were not much of happiness, there were traumatic experiences instead. In this short film, I also try to discuss female trauma during the immigration history. A legend is mentioned later in the film, its original version was a story written by my grandmother, which described a man who got drunk and then were killed by his uncle, I switched it to the female version, which shows a woman in bed getting drunk by her uncle.
I also read an article in college at the time, an anthropological ethnography by Rupert Stasch called Singapore, Big Village of the Dead: Cities as Figures of Desire, Domination, and Rupture among Korowai of Indonesian Papua. This article is about a lot of people who live in Indonesia and have a strange imagination that after you die, you will go to Singapore. I think this legend amazing, because I always feel as if Singapore is a very modern place in the eyes of many people.
我从小就听到这些故事,因为我是独生女,只有我自己跟我外婆一起(当然还有父母)。我外婆来到新加坡的时候年纪很小,她遇到的很多故事其实不是很快乐的,而是一些创伤性的经历。在这个短片当中我也试图讨论一些在移民历史当中出现的女性创伤(female trauma)。影片后面提到了一个传说,它源自于我外婆写作的一个故事,说一个男人被灌醉、又被叔叔杀害。我换成女性的版本,是一个女人在床上,被她的叔叔灌醉。
我当时在大学也读到一篇文章,是鲁珀特·斯塔施(Rupert Stasch)所写作的人类学民族志《新加坡,往生之人的大村庄:城市在印尼巴布亚科罗威人当中作为欲望、统治和分裂的形象》(Singapore, Big Village of the Dead: Cities as Figures of Desire, Domination, and Rupture among Korowai of Indonesian Papua)。这篇文章讲的是很多住在印尼的人,他们有一种奇怪的想象,就是在你死之后,你会去往新加坡。他们有这样的传说,我觉得很神奇。因为我总觉得,好像新加坡在很多人的眼里是一个非常现代的地方。
Q:A metropolis.
一个大都会。
A:Yeah, there's a lot of new stuff. But in fact, Singapore has a lot of history and legends, which are not very joyful, but with traumas. Many ghost stories are related to the history. So in the film, I represent Singapore as a city of people after death, and it discusses the ideas related to death in local legends.
Now there are many countries in Southeast Asia, such as Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, but it was not like this when my grandmother was young. At that time, Malaysia and Singapore were part of the same state, and if you wanted to go from Singapore to Indonesia, you didn't need a passport. The concept of nation came very late in Southeast Asia, and they didn't have the concept of their own nation until 1965, and I feel this concept very abstract. So I combined my grandmother's stories with this discussion of the concept of nation in the short film.
对,有很多新的东西。但是其实新加坡有很多的历史和传说,它不是非常喜悦的,而是带有创伤的,有很多与鬼魂相关的故事都跟历史有所关联。所以在电影当中,我把新加坡讲述成一个死后之人的城市,它讨论了当地传说中与死亡有关的观念。
现在的东南亚有很多国家,有印尼、新加坡、马来西亚等等,但是我外婆年轻的时候情况不是这样。那个时候马来西亚和新加坡属于同一个国家(联邦),而且你要从新加坡去印尼的话,不需要护照,划船一个小时就到了。所以有关国家的概念在东南亚出现得很晚,到1965年他们才有各自的“国家”的概念,而我感觉这个概念是非常抽象的。所以我在短片当中让我外婆的故事与这样对国家概念的讨论结合在一起。
Q:You mentioned that Singapore is not such a happy metropolis as imagined, but rather traumatic, and that there are many ghost-related stories linked to history. Can you elaborate on that?
你提到新加坡并不是想象中那么快乐的大都市,而是充满了创伤,还有很多鬼魂有关的故事都与历史相关联。你能详细讲述一下吗?
A:Singapore is a country with a layered sense of the gothic, much of which is buried under the surface. This sense of death pervades the urban space. For example in the film, a few scenes feature an ancient looking cave, which is actually part of a theme park on the island of Sentosa, famous as a tourist beach destination.
However, the original name of Sentosa was Pulau Blakang Mati. The Malay name for this island is literally translated as "dead back" or "behind the dead"; in this island, there are many stories about Bugis pirates plundering, looting and killing the inhabitants of the island and Japanese soldiers slaughtering locals on its beaches during the Japanese occupation from 1942-1945 surround the origins of the name. Yet now it is a casino theme park of the super rich with golden sandy beaches, resort accommodations, world renowned golf courses, a deepwater yachting marina and luxurious residences.
新加坡是一个具有错综纷复的哥特感的国家,这种感觉很多都隐藏在表象之下,死亡的气息弥漫在城市空间中。例如在电影中,有几个场景展示了一个古老的洞穴,它实际上是圣淘沙岛上一个主题公园的一部分,圣淘沙岛是著名的海滩旅游胜地。
然而,圣淘沙最初的名字是Pulau blakang mati,这个岛的马来语名字直译为“死去”或“死后”;在这个岛上,有许多关于武吉士海盗掠夺、抢劫和杀害岛上居民的故事,以及1942年至1945年日本占领期间日本士兵在海滩上屠杀当地人的故事,这些故事与岛屿名字的起源紧密相联。而现在,它成了一座属于超级富豪的赌场主题公园,拥有金色的沙滩、度假酒店、世界知名的高尔夫球场、深水游艇码头和豪华住宅。
Q:As Rupert Stasch mentioned in his anthropological ethnography, an important theme in the anthropology of space is that specific spatial forms often work for people as mediations of historical consciousness. So how does the space of Indonesia and Singapore feature in your themes, texts and images? How does spider become the intermediary of such historical perception?
鲁珀特·斯塔施在他的人类学民族志中谈到:空间人类学的一个重要主题是,特定的空间形式常常构成了人们历史意识的中介。那么印度尼西亚和新加坡的空间在你的主题、文本和图像中是如何体现的呢?蜘蛛又是如何成为这种历史认知的中介的呢?
A:My Background is in archaeology and anthropology so in a way the film is an archaeological exercise into excavating the strange and familiar, and the sometimes uncanny experience of growing up in Singapore.
My grandmother emigrated to Singapore from Indonesia in 1949 just after the war and brought with her stories and also spirits. I think before the rise of nation states in the modern era, the sense of movement between islands in the straits was a lot more porous, so I think part of the understanding of space was also to express this archipelagic sense.
In 2015, I returned with my grandma to her hometown of Tanjung Batu - for the Cheng Meng tomb sweeping festival. You have to take two ferries from Singapore and then you reach in a couple of hours. When we reached her hometown, I saw a small altar there and she told me about a spider spirit who spun its web in the house when the occupants had emigrated to Singapore. I was trying to use the figure of the spider spirit as an intermediary between Singapore and Indonesia.
我的背景是考古学和人类学,所以在某种意义上,这部电影是一种考古实践,让我去发掘既陌生又熟悉、有时候又神秘离奇的新加坡成长经历。
1949年,战争刚结束,我的祖母从印度尼西亚移民到新加坡,带来了她的故事和(蜘蛛)精灵。我认为在现代民族国家兴起之前,海峡间岛屿间的流动感是非常松散、疏通的,所以我认为表达这种群岛感也是对空间的理解的一部分。
2015年,我和奶奶一起回到她的家乡丹绒峇都参加清明扫墓。你必须从新加坡乘两艘渡轮,然后几小时内到达。当我们到达她的家乡时,我看到一个小祭坛,她告诉我,当居住者移民到新加坡时,有一个蜘蛛精在房子里织网。我试图用蜘蛛精的形象作为新加坡和印度尼西亚之间的中介。
Q:How does your anthropological background influence your work?
人类学的背景是如何影响你的影像创作的呢?
A:I learned layered sense of history from anthropology, and I think film is made in the same way, different layers combined together. So sometimes we do not pursue a complete whole. I made the film with my friends just like having fun. This short film has a little bit of horror style, but it's not completely horror, it just has some horror elements.
This "layered sense of history" means that personal experience and family stories interwave like a spider's web to create the thing we called "history". So I don't think there is really a "one story", but many people's experiences and stories are intertwined. My short film tells the story of my grandmother, but it's not just about my grandmother, so I don't like to tell my animator what I want, but I let her interpret what she sees.
我从人类学的学习当中认识到一种“历史的层次感”(layered sense of history),我觉得电影也是这样的东西,一层一层,不同的东西结合在一起的。所以有时候我们不追求一个完整的整体。我跟我的朋友们一起做电影,就好像在玩,就像我们这个短片有一点恐怖片的东西,可是不完全是恐怖片,它只是有一部分恐怖片的元素。
这个“历史的层次感”意味着,在一段历史当中,其实有个人的历史、家族的历史,我们在里面相互交织,就像一个蜘蛛网。所以我觉得其实不存在“整个故事”(one story),而是很多人的经历和故事交织在一起。我的短片讲述了我外婆的故事,但它又不仅仅在讲我外婆,所以我不喜欢告诉我的动画师我想要什么东西,而是我会让她自己去诠释她看到的。
Q:So ultimately it's going to be, the animator's story, and your grandmother's story, all mixed together.
所以最后它会是,动画师的故事、以及你外婆的故事,它们混合在一起。
A:That's right.
是这样。
Q:You mentioned that you try to discuss female trauma during the immigration history in this short film, how did you represent this theme in the film?
你前面提到,你试图在本片中讨论一些在移民历史当中出现的女性创伤,你是如何在影片中表现这个主题的?
A:It's mainly baked into the story of the spider spirit who transmutes from a character of a woman, who is hinted to be my grandmothers sister. This part is semifictional - it's an colonial period urban myth of this woman who gets murdered by her uncle and her body is stuffed under the Elgin bridge. We represented her transmutation into a spider via an animation sequence done by Yanren Wang, an animator from China. Trauma is always somewhat connected to my work, and healing is never linear. I think that's what the film is about.
它主要是融入了蜘蛛精的故事,蜘蛛精从一个女性角色转化而来,这个女人被暗示成是我祖母的妹妹。这部分是半虚构的——这是一个殖民时期的都市神话,这个女人被她的叔叔谋杀了,尸体被塞在埃尔金桥下。我们通过王彦人 (一位来自中国的动画师) 制作的动画序列来呈现她变成蜘蛛的过程。创伤总是和我的作品联系在一起,治愈从来都不是线性的,我想这就是这部电影的意涵所在。
Q:You adopted a "soft horror" style in this film. Why do you choose this style? The narrator of this film is indeterminate, sometimes the narrator is grandma, sometimes "me", sometimes a present spirit. For example, there's a scene where the grandmother tells the story of her grandfather's fever before he died, and here you use an overlapping audio track, as if a spirit or a ghost were speaking. How do you consider and organize these multiple perspectives?
你在这部影片当中采用了一种“软恐怖”(soft horror)的风格,你为什么选择这个风格呢?这部电影的叙述者是飘忽不定的,有时是奶奶,有时是“我”,有时是显现的鬼魂。比如片中有一个片段,外婆讲述她的祖父去世之前发烧的故事,在这里你用了一段重叠音轨,好像神灵或者鬼魂在说话。你是如何考虑和组织这些多重视角的?
A:I was influenced by my favorite movies, bands and music videos. The normal process of making a film might be shoot and then cut it, but we didn't make it like this. We were shooting and cutting as we went along, so we didn't really think much about making a horror film, it was more likely because all of us were watching something related to it, computer games, music, and my editor was playing a computer game called Genshin Impact at the time. So it's not a particular thing that sparked our thoughts, it evolved quite organically and naturally. We never had a script and just improvised and shot week by week and edited in between, so these ideas were experimental, not with a definite plan, just trying to do it. I think there will be a sense of mutability about the characters that came together only in editing.
我喜欢的电影、乐队以及音乐视频(music video)都影响了我。一般电影的制作流程可能是先拍、再去剪,但我们当时不是的,我们当时是一边拍一边剪,所以那个时候我们其实对做成一个恐怖片风格没有想很多,更可能是因为我们所有人当时都在看一些相关的东西,电脑游戏、音乐之类的,那时我的剪辑师还正在玩一个电脑游戏,叫原神(Genshin Impact)。所以并不是某个特定的东西激发了我们的想法,它是自然而然地、有机地发展起来的。我们从来没有剧本。我们只是即兴发挥,一周接一周地拍摄,中间再“剪辑”一下,所以这些想法也都是实验性的,不是带着一种明确的计划,只是尝试去做。我认为只有在编辑的过程中,角色才会有一种可变性。
Q:Your team seems to be very interested in horror film, video game, cartoons and other popular cultures. So we are curious that who are you and your team partners' favorite directors?
你的团队似乎对恐怖电影、电子游戏、卡通以及其他流行文化很感兴趣。所以我们很好奇你和你的团队伙伴最喜欢的导演是谁?
A:To be honest I hardly watch horror films. But I was inspired by a few people for this project. Even though aesthetically it is entirely different but I am always inspired by the works of Payal Kapadia for its intimate quality. We also enjoyed the MV of Czech experimental music group BCAA system called No~one Is an Island.
In terms of directors - my dp enjoys the works of Kaori Oda, my editor TJ likes Summer Palace by Lou Ye and video games, my editor/sound Vivien enjoys 3 Women by Robert Altman and Kate bush, for me I enjoy lately the films of Hong sang soo. It's totally different from the style of this film we made.
老实说,我几乎不看恐怖片,但是这个项目的一些人给了我灵感。尽管美学上完全不同,但我总是受到帕拉尔·卡帕迪亚作品的启发,它们隐秘而亲密。我们还欣赏了捷克实验音乐组合BCAA system 的MV《No~one Is an Island》。
在导演方面,我的摄影指导喜欢小田香的作品,我的剪辑师TJ喜欢娄烨的《夏园》和电子游戏,我的剪辑/声音维维安喜欢罗伯特·奥特曼和凯特·布什的《三女性》,我最近喜欢洪常秀的电影。这和我们拍的这部电影的风格完全不同。
Q:Why did you choose the split-screen format? There is a scene in the film where in the car, the right side of the screen is normal and the left side keeps flickering, how was this scene conceived?
为什么会选择分屏的形式?片中有一场戏,在车里,右侧画面正常,左侧画面一直在闪烁,这场戏是怎么构思的呢?
A:Because when my grandmother was telling me stories, I found that the stories she telling were different from the versions in her book. For example, I asked her, this story is about the spider, can you tell me about it? Then it seemed that she was a little bit confused about which version was real, which was just in her dream, and she had no idea which story was her creation and which was history. So at that time I wanted to express this in the film, the dream and the reality (co-exist).
The scene in the car was actually an accident, and it grew out of the online collaboration I had with my two editors, one in Singapore and one in the Philippines, who didn't meet each other in person and had to communicate online. Sometimes the network was not stable, and they had this kind of accident while transmitting data. But when we saw this scene, we just thought it was interesting, like being connected with a ghost or something. Sometimes the editor Vivien was also very scared because it felt like a supernatural event (laughs), she did not know why the clip was flashing, and we did not know whether she was joking or talking about the real things.
因为我外婆在给我讲故事的时候,我发现她讲的故事跟她书里写的不一样。比如我问她,这个故事跟蜘蛛精有关,你可以跟我讲一讲吗?然后她好像有一点不知道哪个版本是真的、哪个是她梦中的,哪个故事是她创作的、哪个是历史。所以当时我就想在电影当中表达出这一点,梦和现实(并存)。
车里那场戏其实是一个意外,它源自我跟我的两位剪辑师的线上协作,两位剪辑师一个在新加坡,一个在菲律宾,他们没有见面,只能通过网络沟通。但是有时候网络并不稳定,他们在传输数据的时候发生了这种意外。但是我们看到这个镜头之后觉得很有意思,好像跟鬼魂之类的东西发生了关系一样。有时候剪辑师Vivien也会很怕,感觉好像灵异事件(笑),她也不知道为什么会画面闪烁,也不知道她是开玩笑还是真的。
Q:There's some hand-drawn material, and also some folk art and animation. Did your grandmother create that? Was she involved?
片中有一些手绘素材,也有一些民俗画和动画,是你的外婆画的吗?外婆参与了吗?
A:No, some of the drawings were made by my grandmother's sister. We had five friends working on the animation, and we didn't use Grandma's. In the last five minutes of the film, there is a picture painted by my grandmother's sister. One day she painted a picture of two women rowing a boat, and we guessd if she wanted to go back home in Indonesia, and three hours later she died.
不是,有一些绘画是我外婆的姐姐画的。我们的动画有5个朋友参与,没有用到外婆的。在电影的最后五分钟里,有一幅画是我外婆的姐姐画的。她有一天画了一幅画,是两个女人在划船,那个时候我们在想,她会不会是想回印尼老家了,三个小时之后她就去世了。
Q:Why did you choose to present the spider spirit in a way that was a bit like a stage show?
为什么会选择一种有点像舞台剧扮演的方式来呈现影片里的蜘蛛精呢?
A:I didn't really think something deepgoing about it, the spider spirit was played by me, and it's just because I wanted to be a spider spirit at that time (laughs). I have an artist friend and she made her own costumes. I asked her how can I present "I'm the Spider Spirit" and she took me to a troupe. They were having a lot of things on sale and we went to pick them up. There you could take a bag and buy a lot of things to fill it up, maybe just cost $1. We took a fancy to a big fluffy fabric, and my friend said we could use it to make costumes with my grandmother. That's what this movie is. It's full of surprises.
其实没有想很深刻的东西,那个蜘蛛精是我演的,因为我那时候想当蜘蛛精(笑)。当时我有一个艺术家朋友,她平时就会做自己的戏服,我问她我怎么去呈现“我是蜘蛛精”,她带我去一个剧团,他们正在甩卖很多东西,我们就过去捡,你带一个袋子过去就可以买到很多东西,可能只要1新元。我们当时看中了一个很大的、很多毛毛的布料,我朋友就说可以用这个跟我外婆一起做演出服。这部电影就是这样,充满了意外。
Q:We learned that in addition to being shown on the screen of BISFF , your short film was also exhibited as an artistic installation, can you tell me about that?
我们了解到你的这部短片除了在BISFF的银幕上进行放映,还曾经以艺术装置的方式进行展览,你能介绍一下当时的情况吗?
A:It was at a film festival in Germany, the film was presented as a video installation, using two screens, and the exhibition room was very small, only about 5 square meters. The audience had to go into the room to watch it, which was very different from watching it in a movie theater. Because it allowed the audience to be very close to my work and has a very intimate feeling, and the sound of the film will surround you, so you will feel like you are in a cave. The cave was "fluffy," and the walls of the room were all hairy, warm and soft.
当时是在德国的一个电影节,以视频装置(video installation)的方式进行了展览,用了两个屏幕,而且展览的那个房间很小,大概只有5平方米,观众要进这个房间里去看,这个跟电影院里去看是很不同的。因为这个方式可以让观众离我的作品很近,会有种很亲切的感觉,而且电影的声音会环绕你,所以你会觉得在一个洞穴里面。而且这个洞穴是“毛毛的”,房间的墙壁上全都是毛,很温暖、柔软。
Q:Like a womb?
像个子宫一样?
A:Yeah, it's like a spider's home, and it's like you're inside the spider's body. I like this approach, because this is the original vision for the video.
对,像一个蜘蛛的家,也好像你在蜘蛛的身体里面。我喜欢这个方式,因为这是我对这个短片原本的设想。
Q:Your grandmother is a descendant of the Chiuchow people and immigrated to Singapore from Indonesia. You were born into such an immigrant family and then you went to study in a Western country, it seems that the environment and culture you grew up in was very mixed up. Do you feel the collision between them?
你的外婆是潮州人的后裔,又从印尼移民到新加坡,你在这样一个移民家庭出生,后来又去到西方国家留学,感觉你从小成长的环境文化背景是很杂糅的,你会感觉到它们之间的碰撞吗?
A:Not really. I think my relationship with my grandmother is very natural. But I came to BISFF this time to see a lot of Chinese movies are talking about the problem of generation, as if there's a big difference in thinking between a child's age and their parents' age. But I don't think my family is like that.
其实没有诶。我觉得我跟我外婆的相处是很自然的。不过我这次来到BISFF看到很多中国电影都在讲代际的问题,好像孩子的年代跟爸爸妈妈的年代之间的想法相差很远。可是我觉得我的家没有这样。
Q:Don't you have a generation gap?
你们没有代沟吗?
A:I think it's very different. We have a generation gap, but it is not the same problem as China.
我觉得很不一样。我们有代沟,但是跟中国面临的是不一样的问题。
Q:In this film, you practiced a pan-Asian approach to filmmaking. In terms of content, you connect the geography and history between countries and islands of Southeast Asia. And your team is made up of members from various countries, from Singapore to the Philippines. Where did this idea come from?
在这部电影中,你实践了一种泛亚洲的电影制作方法。在内容上,你将东南亚国家以及岛屿之间的地理、历史联系起来。你的团队成员也来自不同的国家,从新加坡到菲律宾。这个想法从何而来?
A:I met my editor TJ at the short film lab of Objectifs. He’s Filipino American who grew up in Chicago and studied in London and Pennsylvania, and had moved to Manila. And I had moved back from the Uk to Singapore right before the pandemic. So we were thinking of questions of pan-Asian connections and historical links between these islands. We were also watching Tsai Ming Liang's What Time Is It There and thinking about making our own linkages across fine and space - about shared weather patterns, even religious syncretic beliefs as we both grew up in catholic families that also practiced some folk religion.
我在Objectifs的短片实验室遇到了我的剪辑师TJ。他是菲律宾裔美国人,在芝加哥长大,在伦敦和宾夕法尼亚州上学,后来搬到了马尼拉。在疫情爆发前,我从英国搬回了新加坡。因此,我们确实有在考虑泛亚洲联系的问题以及这些岛屿之间的历史联系。我们那时候也在看蔡明亮的电影《你那边几点》,思考如何建立我们自己的跨时空的联系——包括共同的天气模式、甚至是融合的宗教信仰,因为我们都生长在天主教家庭,同时也信奉一些民间宗教。
Q:Will you continue to practice with a pan-Asian perspective in your future filmmaking?
在未来的电影制作中,你会继续以泛亚洲的视角进行实践吗?
A:Yes, I intend to shoot something with a pan-Asian perspective for my next project in fact, shooting in Malaysia.
是的,事实上我打算为我的下一个项目拍摄一些泛亚洲视角的东西,在马来西亚拍摄。
Q:What is your next plan?
接下来有什么计划呢?
A:I'm working on a new play. It is a group of people creating together. And I have a friend studying drama in New York, whom we have started friendship since 12 years old. Now we work together sometimes. The next film is about the young between 28 to 35 years old and is concerned with their love issue, not the historical topic like this.
我现在在写一个剧本,我们是一群人一起在创作的。我有一个在纽约读戏剧的朋友,我们12岁就认识,现在我们一起做一些事情。接下来的电影是关于28到35岁之间的年轻人的爱情问题,不是这种有关历史题材的了。