I have not updated this blog for close to 9 months now. I was caught up in the whirlwind of promoting and screening my documentary about the Beijing Olympics.
Now it is time to get back to some blogging. BTW you can watch the film online. You are more than welcome to steal this movie.
For many years, I have attended the Singapore International Film Festival as a movie-goer. This year, for the first time, I will be attending the festival as a filmmaker.
My documentary about the Beijing Olympics, Boomtown Beijing, will be screening at in the Singapore Panorama section on Wed April 9th at 9:15pm and Sat April 12th at 2pm. Tickets can be purchased here.
Boomtown Beijing is only one of more than a dozen films in the Singapore Panorama showcase this year, which includes a broad range of works made by Singapore filmmakers..
Please support SIFF, one of the oldest film festivals in Asia and arguably, also one of the most rigorously curated.
Being at the Berlin Film Festival helps me appreciate the difference that a film-literate audience can make to the film making experience
Here is a city where people have attended the festival year after year and over time they have developed the ability to articulate their analyses and insights about film.
Even films from little known places have sold out screenings. The premiere of Invisible City, a Singapore documentary about history and memories, for instance, was packed to the overflowing, with some people sitting along the aisle. From what I hear, other Asian films at the festival are doing equally well.
I have had the pleasure of chatting with quite a few people who have travelled to the festival every year. I have also met individuals who have volunteered tirelessly at the festival for decades.
One of these chance encounters led to an interview about my Beijing Olympics documentary, Boomtown Beijing, on German radio. “35 mm” is regular film magazine show on Radio Dreyeckland in Freiburg, in the southwestern part of Germany.
Alexander Sancho-Rauschel, the radio journalist who interviewed me, also volunteers at the student cinema at the University of Freiburg. The Aka Film Club, or Academic Film Club, has been around for 50 years. It was started in an effort to enable students in post war Germany to watch more international films. Although the name of the club sounds very stern and seems almost archaic in this day and age, it has been retained out of reverence for tradition.
I wonder what the listeners of Radio Dreyeckland will think of the interview of my little documentary about the Beijing Olympics?
One thing, for sure, the passion for film seems to transcend cultural and linguistic boundaries here. So I cherish the hope being a little known film director making a small film in the Far East might actually be an advantage, fuelling curiosity about the project.
I will be attending the Berlin Film Festival 2008 (7th — 17th February 2008) There are two big reasons why I am going.
Invisible City, a film I worked on, is screening in the Forum section of the Berlinale.
I will also take the opportunity to market and promote my own film about the Beijing Olympics, Boomtown Beijing at the Festival and the European Film Market.
With thousands of journalists and film makers attending, I am sure Berlin will be a zoo. But hopefully, it’d also be a lot of fun.
Wish me luck!
I have never given an interview about a film on a business show before. Well, there is always a first time.
The China Business Show is a weekly show on WSR Radio that sheds cross-cultural insight on doing business in China. I am impressed by the range of issues that the show covers, from technology and business strategy to the media and corporate social responsibility.
My big thanks to Christine Lu, executive producer and host, for having me talk about my Beijing Olympics documentary on her show.
For those have you who missed the live show, you can go to the China Business Network site to listen to the interview.
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No matter how good my Mandarin is, I know that the Beijing-er can always tell that I am an outsider (外地人）from my accent.
I spent the best part of 2007, living out of a suitcase in Beijing, working on a documentary about the Beijing Olympics.
For someone from a small country like Singapore, Beijing is a sprawling city and I find that I spent a lot of time in a cab, trying to get from one end of the city to another.
Three minutes into my cab ride, The same question always comes up, “小姐，你是哪里人？” Miss, where are you from?” The subtext is of course, “You do not sound like one of us.”
In the process of making the film, I have come to a better appreciation of the Beijing accent and the Beijing dialect. While I was working on the sound-mix of my documentary, my Beijing born-and-bred sound engineers will cackle at phrases in my film while the nuances are completely lost on me.
It is great fun therefore to read this blog post, explaining what does the Beijing “R” sound mean?
Beijing Sounds – 北京的声儿 (link via Danwei)
My Beijing friends tell me that figuring out whether to end a word or phrase with the “R” sound, or “儿“声，is an art unto itself. I am sure an entire encyclopedia can be written on the “dos” and “don’ts”.
The outsider often betrays their very foreigness by trying too hard, ending each and every phrase with the “R” sound. As a result, they make a laughing stock of themselves.
What comes intuitively to the native Beijing-er may take a life-time of puzzling out for an outsider or 外地人like me.
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Keel over the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Move aside, the Twin Towers of Kuala Lumpur.
Here come the Twin Leaning Towers of Beijing. The new CCTV (China Central TV) building is one of the growing number of icons designed by international architects in the city of Beijing.
I passed by this building almost every day while I was filming my documentary about the Beijing Olympics. I always felt bemused by the seemingly impossible structure of the towers.
The building is clearly part of the city’s efforts to lay claim to its status as an international metropolis by building futuristic and foreign-looking landmarks.
Call it odd or a show-off piece, it is definitely identifiable. In fact I used it as backdrop to one of the scenes in my film.
This week, the news is that the twin towers finally join, with a walkway connecting the two parts.
As usual, a plethora of ironic observations have surfaced in the international media:
China’s impossible leaning towers join : December 2007 : Richard Spencer : Foreign : Telegraph Blogs
Orwellian architecture in China | The Ministry of Truth | Economist.com
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I recently presented my documentary about the Beijing Olympics at the Guangzhou International Documentary Festival.
Boomtown Beijing is my first independent film and making the festival poster for it was a big thrill. Mainly because of how last minute it all was. I got them printed the day I arrived in Guangzhou at a little print shop near the
A big thank you to Carrie Dee Cao Zhen Zhen, a graduate student at SYSU who helped me pull it together. She also coordinated and publicized my guest lectures at the university.
Talk about useful local knowledge!
Whenever I tell people I am making a documentary about the Olympics, one of the first questions they ask me is: “Are you featuring athletes?”
When I say that I am making a film about ordinary people and their Olympics dreams, the response I often get is one of surprise, even of incredulity.
But I can point to ample evidence of the extraordinary efforts some Chinese people have invested into dramatizing their passion for the Olympics.
Check out this story about a man who has modified his bike into the shape of the Olympics logo:
Sunday Photo: Olympics Logo Bike :: China Digital Times (CDT) 中国数字时代
Talk about grand gestures…
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I have worked in TV my entire career. But secretly, I enjoy radio more. By that, I mean really well-produced radio features that use sound to trigger the listener’s imagination.
I am into the final stages of post production for my documentary about the Beijing Olympics and I have been hunting obsessively for sound recordings of Beijing.
Here is a gem of a sound collage that I have found on the web:
Perhaps it is because I am a foreigner but to me, each environment in Beijing sounds a little different from the others. Urban vs Suburban. Old vs New. Downtown vs Outskirts.
Listen, for instance, to the sound recordings of the Dazhalan district in Beijing, an old area that is being demolished.
Like pictures, sounds give us important cues to urban transition and transformation.
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