Tan Wei Keong “Brutally Honest: New Wave of Singapore Animation”
May 6, 2016@ Theater Image Forum [Terayama Shuji]
The Beginning
Singapore is a very young country that just turned 50 last year. As with any young country, art is not the first priority for development. So we are very far behind in development of the arts. Today for this presentation, I will be covering the brief history of Singapore animation as well as introducing some of the emerging and up-and-coming animation directors in Singapore.
The first usage of animation techniques in Singapore probably began during the 1940s to 1960s. Animation history in Singapore is not very well documented. Singapore gained independence as its own country in 1965. In 1983, the first animation studio was set up in Singapore. In 1996, the first school offering a diploma in animation was Nanyang Polytechnic. Since 2005, we have had a university in Singapore that offers a bachelor of fine arts in animation, Nanyang Technological University (NTU). I started studying animation in 2005 and was in the first graduating class from NTU.
Animators from NTU: Tan Wei Keong and Harry and Henry Zhuang
Let me introduce myself briefly. I like to mix media in terms of photography, drawings, and paintings. I don’t really focus on one technique in terms of animation, and I tend to like more experimental topics in my work. After graduating in 2009, I have been working on independent films.
From my school, I’d like to mention two other exciting film directors from Singapore, twin brothers Henry and Harry Zhuang. Their work is titled The Tiger of 142B, which was the third in the screening we just saw. They graduated from NTUin 2012. They received their scholarships and studied animation together, and now they direct animation together. As one of their close friends, I am amazed how they collaborate and I think their synergy as twins really comes through in their films.
After graduating, they eventually founded an animation studio in 2013 called Weaving Clouds in 2013..
Srinivas Bhakta and the Question on National Identity
One more artist that I wanted to introduce is Srinivas Bhakta. Bhakta probably has the most experience in terms of making short films. He has made more than 13 short films, and he is currently a senior lecturer at Nanyang Polytechnic.
Bhakta was actually born in India, which I mention because I will be talking later about the changes in the country of production as he became a permanent resident in Singapore.
As you know, Singapore is really a mix of cultures. We come from very different racial backgrounds. We are still finding what we mean by “Singaporean culture.” We are also still discovering what Singaporean animation is. Bhakta credited his films as Indian before he became a Singaporean permanent resident. Kapie Eipak (who is from Vietnam and learned animation at NTU) and I had a really interesting conversation last month when I asked him which country of production he wanted to list in the catalog and he had a very interesting answer. He said, “It doesn’t matter where the film is produced. To me it doesn’t matter because it doesn’t change the content of the film.”
Self-Portrait
Another theme that is very commonly explored, especially for young animators, is self-portraiture. When I was still studying in university, a very common exercise the lecturer would assign is to create your own self-portrait and I realized that this is a very important exercise. I think a lot of art films or animated short films, are actually explorations of the film director or the artist, which usually resonates a lot with the audience. The Cage is one of the first Singaporean animations that made it to the international stage. The director’s name is K. Subramaniam. He founded the first Singaporean animation company called Animata in 1983. Already in this film you can see the theme of self-portraiture.
The Industry and the Government
Singapore is a country with a lot of engineers and IT-related industry. It is natural therefore that the next industry to be developed is the new media, which includes film, games, and animation. Especially in the last 10 years, a lot of public funding has been put into the development of this new media industry. That includes schools and attracting foreign companies to set up branches in Singapore as well as many grants to help develop the local animation studios in Singapore.
This created a sort of supply and demand cycle. If the government is giving money to develop the arts, then there will be more schools created that want to receive this funding. But the thing is that this supply and demand kind of contradicts the creative process. As an artist you don’t really create work just to fit the agenda of the government.
There is this very interesting relationship between artists and the government, and it’s not a matter of whether it’s good or bad. It’s just a very natural process that happened over the last five to ten years in Singapore. I think it is a very normal approach for artists to explore nationalistic identity, but the challenge is how to be honest and clear in your reason for making the film — is it an artistic form or is it a tool for the government. If you watch the films that exhibit this Singaporean nationalism in their work, you will feel like you are in Singapore even if you haven’t visited Singapore.
Feature Film
Sadly, we don’t really have very prominent feature films in animation yet. But there is one feature film that I really want to point out: Tatsumi by Eric Khoo, which is very interesting. It’s an adaptation of Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s comic A Drifting Life. Eric Khoo is mostly a live action film director, but he made Tatsumi in 2011.
Struggles
As an animation filmmaker and artist in Singapore, the common struggle is how to balance your passion or your interest with paychecks or getting money to survive. (I think it’s an international struggle.) Studios pick up commercial work and advertisement projects. Some directors teach in schools to feed back the supply and demand that we talked about just now.
The second thing to consider is to find platforms to show your work. These include international film festivals and events that attract local interest. One of Singapore’s biggest events is the Singapore International Film Festival.
The last thing to note is probably the most basic struggle: your own creative debate internally. Singapore is still a very young country when compared to Japan, Korea, and China, which are already very developed in terms of independent animation.
In the next 5 years, I expect that we will see more exciting works from Singaporean animation directors.
Q1
In the screening program, I can see some tendency that all the films have some kind of resistance, not in a direct way, but more vaguely. For examples, a metaphor of tiger in The Tiger of 142B. Do you think this kind resistance told in the metaphorical way reflects the repressive situation of the country? Do you have any opinion about my comment?
Tan Wei Keong
I think it is a very natural process to use metaphors for the artist and directors to reflect when they are in the situation itself. Whatever work we did is a direct translation from our mental state of mind into the work so it is a very natural translation. I think in terms of using metaphors, the number one reason is probably more artistic. Number two is if you are talking about a struggle or a repression, you wouldn’t be talking about it in a very blunt or direct way so that the film can appeal to more international audience.
Kapie Eipak
To be honest, Singapore is known as one the most unhappy countries in the world. But we don’t really feel it when we live in the country. I think most people are taught not to be direct and not to be so expressive. So it’s natural for artists and Singaporeans to express their depression or whatever negative feeling by using more indirect way.
Q2
I find most of the filmmakers in the program use kind of mixed media like you. In Japan, it’s not like that. The artists keep their own style and their own technique. Do you think in Singapore they tend to use mix media when people who make animation?
Tan Wei Keong
I think it’s because we do not have a very long traditional animation history so that we don’t really see animation as one technique. I think because we are a very young country, a lot of the works that you are seeing right now is still an experimentation, so maybe in 5 or 10 years’ time you will see the techniques and style being more stabilized.
Kapie Eipak
I actually agree with you that mixed media is really common in Singapore. I myself was taught a lot about mixed media in school and a lot of my classmates like to use mixed media. I feel like in Singapore everything is very new and very contemporary and mixed media is a very powerful tool that allows you to tell a story without spending a lot of time.
Q3
Do you have any favorite animator?
Tan Wei Keong
Actually one of the biggest reasons why I did animation is because I saw a Japanese feature film Mind Game in 2008 in Singapore. This film pushed boundaries and expanded my creative thoughts.
Kapie Eipak
For myself, I don’t really have my favorite animators because I am still really new to the animation scene. When I applied to my school and I chose fine arts in my major, but my school didn’t offer fine arts, that’s why I registered my course as digital filmmaking. After studying for like half semester and I didn’t like it, so I switched to animation.
Q4
In your school, your teacher doesn’t show you some kind of classic animation films?
Tan Wei Keong
Disney? Yeah, but because I was from the first batch and the school was very new, they did not know what films they should show. So I didn’t really watch a lot of films. But I think it’s a very important thing to watch, different films, especially from different countries.
Kapie Eipak
I feel like the vision of the school has changed throughout the years. They started wanting the students to be more more academic research driven, more toward the fine art side and more toward the concept, the substance, but eventually the student portfolios produced didn’t match the standard of the industry. It’s a supply-demand thing. They are now moving towards the industrial side. They started teaching more about softwares like After Effects that can be used for commercial work. I think they are getting more and more toward visual effects side and short commercial works.
