Cinema of Singapore

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After independence, in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, Singapore had no film industry, being more concerned with the bread-and-butter issues of economic nation-building. However, there were a few films featuring Singaporean actors and set in Singapore, including Saint Jack and They Call Her Cleopatra Wong. However, most of these did not get released in Singapore and are unable to be labelled as truly Singaporean productions. The first truly Singaporean film came in 1991's Medium Rare, based on a true-life local cult killer who was hanged in 1988 for murder. Although costing over S$2 million in production, it performed dismally at the box office, taking in merely S$130,000 locally but broke the ice for the next movie, Bugis Street, which was released in 1995, a gaudy film about the famous sleazy district where transvestites and transsexuals can be found. 1995 also saw the release of Mee Pok Man, made by Eric Khoo on a tight budget of S$100,000 and being the first local film to break even for profits. Concerning a lonely noodle seller who falls for a prostitute, Mee Pok Man earned much critical accolade worldwide and encouraged more experimental, independent filmmaking within the nation.

Army Daze initially starred Kai Wong as Malcolm Png, who dropped out of the project and moved to the United States. This films takes a humorous look into Singapore national service, was made in 1996 and continued the trend of turning high profits at the box office. The most recent theatrical adaptation of Army Daze (2006) stars Hossan Leong.

Next came another Eric Khoo film, 12 Storeys (1997), a highly acclaimed local production which was the first Singaporean film to be shown at Cannes. Interweaving 3 stories about life in the HDB high-rise flats, it is seen as a breakthrough for local films, combining a coherent plot with Singaporean production crew and actors, such as Jack Neo and Koh Boon Pin. Glenn Goei's Forever Fever (1998) was also picked up by Miramax for S$4.5 million and re-released in the U.S. as That’s the Way I Like It. These two years saw the releases of a number of films, such as A Road Less Travelled (1997), God or Dog (1997), Tiger's Whip (1998) and Teenage Textbook Movie (1998), to varying degrees of success.

But it was the phenomenal success of Money No Enough (1998) which eventually catapulted the nation's drive toward movie-making. Using a local crew of actors drawn from television comedies, this heartland comedy written by Jack Neo uses a smattering of Singlish and Hokkien to make a realistic, easily identifiable drama about everybody's quest to earn more quick bucks. Made for less than S$1 million, it raked in S$5,800,000, making it the most commercially successful local film to date. It also demonstrated the potential of the Singapore film industry, and the next year would be a boom year for local films. Eight Singaporean films were made in that year alone, the most notable being Liang Po Po: The Movie (starring Jack Neo in a reprisal of his television cross-gender role), That One No Enough, the first directorial effect of Jack Neo, and Eating Air, made by film critic Kelvin Tong and film editor Jasmine Ng on a budget of S$800,000. Eating Air did not break even; That One No Enough barely did and only Liang Po Po: The Movie continued the vein of commercial success of Money No Enough, collecting S$3.03 million.

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However, the year also marked a watershed for Singapore films. Raintree Pictures, the filmmaking subsidiary of MediaCorp Productions, was started, investing in two regional co-productions, Liang Po Po and The Truth About Jane and Sam, which merged Singaporean television lead actress Fann Wong with Taiwanese singer Peter Ho and Hong Kong director Derek Yee. Raintree Pictures would finance a number of local and Hong Kong productions in years to come, most notably the films of Jack Neo. Subsequent productions, such as 2000 AD (2000) and The Tree (2001) also draws on Hong Kong star power; the company invested in critically acclaimed regional films such as The Eye (2002) and Infernal Affairs II (2003). It produced two more English-language local productions, Chicken Rice War (2000) and One Leg Kicking (2001).

With the financing of a local production company and the setting of organizations such as the Singapore Film Commission (SFC), set up in 1998, budding filmmakers, especially independent ones, are finding it easier to make movies on subsidies and loaned fundings. The advent of digital video also meant that some novice filmmakers can experiment with cheaper alternatives. Features like Stories about Love (2000) and Return to Pontianak (2001) are both shot on digital videos, but they have not been commercial success.

But the success story since the turn of the century must be from local comedian-turned-director Jack Neo. Financed by Raintree Pictures, he has made a number of hits dealing with the heartland problems of Singapore in an engaging and deceptively light-hearted fashion. I Not Stupid (2002) is a peek into the ultra-competitive academic lifestyle as seen through three local students who do poorly in grades; its acerbic social commentary marks another height for Singaporean films. Homerun (2003) is a remake of the Iranian Children of Heaven in a local, pre-independence context; it won for its young lead Megan Zheng the first Golden Horse Award for Best Newcomer. The Best Bet (2004) takes a humorous dig at the heartlanders' obssessions with lotteries. Neo is averaging a film per year and his productions feature local (usually television) artistes in filmic roles. They have been successes locally as well as abroad, especially those places with a Chinese-language market, such as Hong Kong. He has started his own artiste management company, J-Team Productions.

Royston Tan, a young Singapore TV commercial director who has been making award-winning shorts for years, released 15: The Movie, his first feature, in 2003. An expanded version of an earlier short film he made, this 90-min movie on the fringe and drug-abusing delinquents uses bold subject-matter, some graphic scenes with non-professional actors. When the film censorship board passed it with cuts, it prompted a backlash from the director in the form of Cuts, an all-singing musical satire a la Tsai Ming-liang lampooning the system. Interestingly, this short film was passed uncensored by the board and was seen during the Singapore International Film Festival, but there were open discussions about it during local parliamentary sessions prompting remarks that the government was "not amused" by the thinly veiled attack on Singapore censorship.

2005 can be seen as another mini-boom year for Singapore cinema, with commercially successful fare like Kelvin Tong's horror flick The Maid and two Jack-Neo co-directed movies, I Do I Do and One More Chance; and less mainstream offerings like Eric Khoo's critically acclaimed Cannes opener Be With Me and Djinn's dark take on Scorsese's Taxi Driver, Perth.