A particular screening of the acclaimed Singaporean movie “Tiong Bahru Social Club” happened within the Turkish capital as a part of the thirty third Ankara International Film Festival on Saturday with the in-person attendance of the film’s director Tan Bee Thiam.
Organized by Singapore’s Embassy in Ankara, a reception was held at Büyülü Fener Kızılay Cinema, which was adopted by the screening of the film.
“Tiong Bahru Social Club” is a outstanding Singaporean satirical black comedy artwork movie, subtly relating a number of real-life issues and phenomena in addition to the pursuit of happiness.
On his thirtieth birthday, Ah Bee, who nonetheless lives along with his mom, indicators as much as work as a Happiness Agent in Tiong Bahru Social Club – a pilot mission utilizing information to construct the happiest neighbourhood on the earth in an ageing Singaporean district. Upon arrival at Tiong Bahru, a neighborhood with distinctive, artwork deco white buildings, Ah Bee enters the group and is assigned to serve loopy cat woman Ms. Wee. Ah Bee strikes into one of many group homes quickly to comprehend that a synthetic intelligence algorithm, Bravo60, is positioned into the room. Bravo60 typically talks with Ah Bee as a good friend and routinely measures his rating of happiness. The membership and its members intention to make the outdated residents happier via a number of social actions together with swimming classes, cuddling classes and serving them of their every day duties and issues. After struggling initially to slot in to the society and the lack of Ms. Wee, Ah Bee inherits Ms. Wee’s cat, is matched with a girlfriend Geok and is promoted to the helm of the group Complaint Centre. Things appear to look brighter for Ah Bee however one thing feels off to him.
Futuristic dystopia
The futuristic dystopia with an enhanced position of know-how within the lives of people in addition to the objective to be glad and make others happier is cleverly displayed within the film. With laughing classes, fixed compelled smiles on the faces of the Happiness Agents and cuddling classes, the movie refers to the truth that though Singapore ranks prime in a number of areas corresponding to tutorial success, improvement and gross home product (GDP), Singaporeans are the least emotional and the world’s unhappiest workforce
“The film serves as a reflection of the absurdities of modern Singaporean society. The ambition to be the happiest neighborhood in the world is a perfect irony. Can happiness be quantified and do we need to be happier than others to be truly happy?” the director mentioned.
“I think we live in an age of emojis these days where we have to give an emoji to everything that is asked to us to convey how we feel.”
Tan mentioned that he’s a full-time trainer and a part-time filmmaker and one of many lectures he provides is on schooling and profession steerage, which offers with instructing college students how to achieve success of their careers.
“In Singapore, all college students must recite on faculty days the Singapore National Pledge that asks Singaporeans to pledge to attain happiness, prosperity and progress for the nation. But we don’t train them how you can be glad, solely how to achieve success. When you take a look at the successes of Singapore, we’re prime in loads of issues however one of many issues that we do very badly is that you simply discover in Gallup surveys that we have now the unhappiest employees. In Singapore, we also have a nationwide marketing campaign to encourage folks to smile extra. This is a movie to replicate on a number of the failures of Singapore however to have a good time these failures in as who we’re.”
“We are a very outcome-oriented country. There is what you hope to be and you engineer that kind of outcome. But happiness is different, you cannot engineer it. Happiness is a journey that you need to process and you need space and time to let things sink in and for you to be able to stand up again to walk, to fight and survive. We sometimes do not give our students the time to do so. Moving on, we need to celebrate failures not just successes, which is why the character is called Ah Bee – it is not about the A’s in lives it is about the Bs and Cs,” Tan instructed Daily Sabah in an unique interview, including that Ah Bee’s leaving his mom’s home and beginning his personal journey reveals the braveness wanted to pursuit happiness.
Speaking on the connection between know-how, an ever-more widespread reality of modern-day life, and happiness, Tan mentioned that he sensed a rising concern of know-how and AI and its impacts on jobs in his college students’ essays.
“It is not the technology that they are afraid of, it is people using technology, AI that they are afraid of. That has created a crisis among young people feeling that they are not good enough. A constant danger of losing jobs creates anxiety and stress in people. I do not think that is how technology should work. I am always amazed by what technology can do. In the film, I stripped all the technology away and I wanted them to focus just on the ring.”
“I am actually a computer engineer by training. That’s why my path to becoming a filmmaker is quite unorthodox I would say. I love technology because even in cinema I feel that every leap of cinema is because of technology. But in this film, what I want to explore and create is a film where the past is imagining the future.”
Indeed, no automobiles, telephones, laptops or something that will point out during which time frame the movie was happening, shouldn’t be seen all through the movie.
“I wanted to make it a timeless film.”
Being requested concerning the darkish shadowy figures which might be seen in some scenes of the movie, Tan mentioned that they signify the folks operating the social membership in addition to Bravo60, who can’t be seen.
“It is designed in such a way that you can hear it because it is all around us. You do not know where it is, you do not know where it is following you. There are two things in the film – the cat and Bravo60, which is a robot that tries to be a human. He talks to Ah Bee and tries to be a friend. These two characters are highly important in the film because it teaches Ah Bee and us how to be a human and what being a human really is.”
Another attention-grabbing level made by Tan was that the cat’s story within the movie was based mostly on a real-life incident of a cat referred to as Bob that was dwelling within the Tiong Bahru neighborhood in Singapore. Ten years in the past after a automotive accident, residents of the neighborhood got here collectively, and inside a day, raised SG$20,000 for Bob’s hospital prices, after which the cat recovered and began as soon as once more to walk the streets of Tiong Bahru.
“When I heard about this story, I believed, if we will care for everybody like how the Tiong Bahru residents did for Bob, we’d be in such a contented place.”
Released in 2020, the film got here out through the preliminary phases of the COVID-19 pandemic, which affected the cinema sector. Tan mentioned that after some consideration on whether or not to launch the movie throughout or after the pandemic, it was determined to launch it in 2020 and the Tiong Bahru Social Club was massively profitable. “We felt that it was a film that would encourage people, to provide them with a dose of some happiness and it did relatively well.”
The film was granted a number of awards together with Jonathan Rosenbaum’s Top 10 movies of 2021 for Sight and Sound Magazine, the Roger & Julie Corman Award for Intrepid Filmmaking on the nineteenth Fargo Fantastic Film Festival at ValleyCo, the Grand Jury Prize for Best Narrative Feature on the eleventh Guam International Film Festival Best Film (Newcomers Section) in addition to the nineteenth Asian Film Festival (Rome) Special Jury award (for world constructing) on the thirty seventh Los Angeles Asian Film Festival.
Diversity
The Ankara movie pageant is offering a platform for overseas movies to succeed in out to the Turkish public, Singapore’s Ambassador to Ankara Jonathan Tow instructed Daily Sabah.
Saying that typically Singaporean movies are ignored as a result of they don’t seem to be fairly well-known in Türkiye, Tow mentioned: “We particularly wanted to bring a director that could interact and by interacting, people would have a better understanding of why we make the films the way we make them. Hopefully, there will be a reflection of our society. That is the main reason we wanted to use the film festival to enlarge our reach and to make friends with the film and cultural community here.”
Being requested why the embassy selected Tiong Bahru Social Club, the ambassador elaborated that “One of the key reasons is that we wanted to have a film that is more current. It is timely. It is a bit quirky, it makes you think a little bit more, and it is a film that represents the languages of Singapore. Singapore is a society, is a country that is multilingual.”
Tow highlighted that each one Singaporean languages, together with even the Chinese dialects in addition to English, had been used within the movie.
“The main point is to feel Singapore’s diversity.”
First Secretary for Political Affairs Ashraf Yoonus who organised the particular screening for the Singapore Embassy, mentioned getting Tan to Türkiye in time for the occasion turned out to be a Herculean activity. As Tan is a full-time lecturer at Singapore Polytechnic, the Embassy needed to work round his hectic schedule to fly him over to Ankara. And even then, it turned out to be a nail-biting affair and it was not even certain Tan would arrive in time as he needed to grapple with a flight delay resulting in a missed connection, and ended up shedding his baggage within the course of.
However, the embassy’s efforts had been effectively value it given the wonderful reception from Turkish movie buffs who appreciated Tiong Bahru Social Club, lots of whom had been watching a Singapore movie for the primary time. Yoonus mentioned: “The special screening will always be remembered as a milestone in Turkish engagement of Singapore’s film culture. I also wish to express appreciation to the Ankara International Film Festival and the Singapore Film Commission for their support.”
