Singapore gay films
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Singapore gay films include films that address LGBT-related subject matter to some degree.
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[edit] Introduction
In contrast to the numerous local theatre productions dealing with LGBT subject matter which have burgeoned since the late 1980s (see Singapore gay theatre), there is to date not a single feature-length film entirely produced by Singaporeans in Singapore belonging to this genre. The probable reasons for this are the much larger and riskier investment outlay for movie production, and the lack of Government and perceived mainstream community support for such films.
The culmination of efforts to redress this deficiency were witnessed on 6 October 06, when Singapore's first private GLBT film festival, Short Circuit, was held at the Guiness Theatre at The Substation at 7:30 pm. It was organised by activist Alex Au and other local arts practitioners. It featured 12 short films that met the criterion of either being produced by GLBT individuals or having a GLBT theme (see programme).
[edit] LGBT-themed films
[edit] Bugis Street
A 1995 Hong Kong-Singapore co-production about the lives of Singaporean transvestites in a bygone era. It was a minor hit at the box office on account of its R(A) (Restricted (Artistic)) rating and its nostalgic evocation of a seedy but colourful aspect of Singaporean culture, prior to the redevelopment of Bugis Street into a modern shopping district and the eradication of transvestite activities in the area. [1]
16-year old Lien, winningly portrayed by Vietnamese actress Hiep Thi Le, is this Yonfan-directed, Jacky Tang-lensed and Fruit Chan and You Chan-co-scripted offering’s main protagonist. Despite her having worked for a time as a servant in a household whose "young master" adored her in her hometown of Malacca, West Malaysia, the young lass comes across as having led a surprisingly sheltered life. She journeys to Singapore to seek employment as a maid in the Sin Sin Hotel along Bugis Street.
She seems thoroughly content for a time to possess a naïve, romanticised view of the rambunctious goings-on at the hotel where she witnesses "the sad departure of an American gentleman" from the home-cum-workplace of "his Chinese girl". The guest is actually a presently-sober but angry American sailor who has belatedly discovered that the Singaporean Chinese prostitute he picked up in Bugis Street and spent a drunken night with happens to be a transwoman.
Before long, the newbie employee Lien finds out that many of the long-term lodgers of the budget establishment, whose room rental rate is S$3, whether it be for an hour or the entire day and night, are "women" who were born with male bodies. Although her first reaction to seeing someone with breasts and a penis is one of vomit-inducing revulsion which causes her to contemplate fleeing the neighbourhood, she ends up not giving in to her impulses.
Instead, she listens to, then heeds, the warm cajoling of Lola, the transvestite hotel resident who has treated her well from the start of her stint. She comes to be unperturbed by the unique, complex personalities of the unorthodox community, who in turn also begin to accept her.
As she learns to look beyond the surface, she is rewarded with the generous friendship of the cosmopolitan and sophisticated Drago, who has returned from Paris to minister to his/her dying but loving and tolerant mother.
While Lien learns the ways of the world via her encounters with Meng, the slimy, often underdressed boyfriend of Lola, as well as night-time escapades on the town with the Sin Sin Hotel’s other denizens, she begins to see beauty in unlikely places and to grow despite the presence of ugliness in an imperfect world.
[edit] Rice Rhapsody
Rice Rhapsody (alternative title Hainan Chicken Rice) (Chinese: 海南雞飯, literally meaning Hainanese chicken rice) was a 2004 Hong Kong production directed by Kenneth Bi. The cast included formerly popular Taiwanese actress Sylvia Chang and celebrity Chinese-American chef Martin Yan. The plot revolved around a contemporary Singaporean divorcée grappling with the homosexuality of her 2 eldest sons and dramatised her efforts to steer her third and youngest son's sexuality. [2]
It bombed at the box office and was panned especially by gay critics as being too artificial in its representation of Singapore life.
- Read reviews of the movie by Yawning Bread, Charles Tan and Ken Lee: [3]
- Watch a trailer of the movie: [4] and "the making of": [5]
[edit] Beautiful Boxer
A film biography of a transsexual Thai kickboxer directed by Singapore-based Ekachai Uekrongtham, along with the input of Singapore gay talent. [6]. Although Thai, this film was produced in Singapore for a Singaporean audience and for distribution to Thailand.
Based on the true story of Thailand's famed transgender kickboxer, Beautiful Boxer is a poignant action drama that punches straight into the heart and mind of a boy who fights like a man but feels like a woman.
Believing he is a girl trapped in a boy's body since childhood, Parinya Charoenphol (affectionately known as Nong Toom in Thailand) sets out to master the most masculine and lethal sport of Muay Thai (Thai boxing) to earn a living and to achieve his ultimate goal of total femininity. Touching, funny and packed with breathtaking Thai kickboxing sequences, Beautiful Boxer traces Nong Toom's childhood, teenage life as a travelling monk and gruelling days in boxing camps. Shot in 9 provinces across Thailand and in Tokyo, the film also features a series of explosive matches where Nong Toom knocks out most of his opponents in Thailand and Japan.
Directed and produced by Singapore-based, ethnic Thai director Ekachai Uekrongtham, the film stars Asanee Suwan, a real-life kickboxing champ as Nong Toom. The role earned him the 2004 Supannahongsa Award (Thailand's equivalent to the Oscar) for Best Actor. Beautiful Boxer also features compelling performances by Thailand's award-winning actor Sorapong Chatree in the role of Nong Toom's coach and former Miss Thailand Orn-Anong Panyawong as Nong Toom's mother.
Kyoko Inoue, one of Japan's top female wrestlers plays herself in the film. She has fought with Nong Toom in real life back in 1988. That historical match was reenacted for the film in a dramatic sequence shot at the Tokyo Dome. Nearly all of Nong Toom's opponents in the film are also professional kickboxers in real life.
[edit] Films with LGBT sub-plots
[edit] Saint Jack
A film made in 1979 by American director Peter Bogdanovich.
The story was set against Singapore as a US military-approved rest and relaxation (R&R) destination for US troops in Vietnam circa the early 1970s. The movie was banned locally because it portrayed Singapore in bad light, namely showing that (a) the sex trade was flourishing, (b) it was semi-officially sanctioned and (c) Singapore supported the losing side in the Vietnam War. [7]
Much of it was about how pimps like the protagonist, American Jack Flowers (played by actor Ben Gazzara) supplied girls to the GIs barracked at Shelford Road, a fact corroborated by university students at the Bukit Timah campus.
But a sub-plot featured a conservative US senator who preferred gay sex. A notable segment in the film showed the senator (played by one-time James Bond actor George Lazenby) picking up a late-teenager named Tony along Orchard Road and bringing him to his hotel room for sex. Male stripping and a shower scene were shown.
The film recorded for posterity that there were rentboys plying their trade along Orchard Road during those days. This could have been related to presence of Le Bistro along Scotts Road and Pebbles Bar at the Hotel Singapura Continental. The movie was allowed to be shown just once during a Singapore Film Festival and is still on the banned list. The Singaporean actor, Edward Tan, who played Tony the rentboy created a first in Singapore gay film history. However, according to Bogdanovich, all the Singaporeans who were given screen roles were not really 'actors' at all, but simply recruited from a casting call. (External link:[8])
[edit] Army Daze
Army Daze, Michael Chiang's stage-to-screen adaptation of the trials and tribulations of a motley bunch of army recruits featured an effeminate Eurasian man whose main aim in life was to become a housewife in Ang Mo Kio. However, his platoon mates were flabbergasted when he breezed through the obstacle course with more speed and sang-froid than any of them. [9]
[edit] Forever Fever
One of Singaporean director Glen Goei's early local productions which was distributed in America under another title. It also dealt with transgender themes, alongside the movie's main light-hearted romance, as Hock's elder brother reveals his desire for a sex-change operation to his unreceptive traditionalist Chinese family.
[edit] 15 (film)
The Singapore Government banned 27-year-old's Royston Tan's visually explosive and shocking 2003 film. Part social realism, part documentary and part cinematic adventurism, 15 follows a group of teenage outsiders grappling with violence, drug running, prostitution, piercings and thoughts of suicide. Quietly, amidst the madness, they find moments of tenderness in each other's arms. Tan looks to MTV and popular culture for his technique, mixing Chinese graphics with short colourful scenes, voiceovers and rewinds. Attention grabbing, over stimulating, this is not however strictly a gay film. Tan's weaving of tenderness and sexuality is homoerotic, providing a window onto the homosexual bonding that takes place in adolescence - the first needs and touches before sexuality becomes more fixed. The result is an astonishing if at times gut-wrenching experience. [10]
[edit] Be With Me
Acclaimed local director Eric Khoo's 2005 production was the first major homegrown motion picture to feature scenes of female coupling in the form of 2 stereotypical lesbians, touchy-feely teenage schoolgirls (played by waifish actresses Ezann Lee and Samantha Tan), who fall in love as quickly as they fall out of it. The softly pornographic film, which shows the two naked girls tenderly stroking each other's arm and face, cuddling under the sheets and in cinema halls, ended on a climax with the two naked girls sharing an intense 10-second French kiss, exchanging tongue-licks. Although Be With Me is rated M18 with no cuts, the authorities were not exactly throwing caution to the wind. The movie's original poster featuring both girls lying on some steps and locked in an embrace in a scene from the movie has been banned in Singapore and replaced with an image of a man necking with Samantha Tan. According to a spokesman of Warner Brothers, which distributed the movie locally, the Media Development Authority (MDA) stated that the original was 'not suitable as a PG poster' because the graphics 'implied content of a homosexual nature'. [11]
[edit] Singapore Ga-Ga
[edit] Films with cross-dressing actors
[edit] Liang Po Po: The Movie
Liang Po Po: The Movie is comedian Jack Neo's large screen production of his frequent television drag spoofs of a doddering, bumbling but lovable old lady and her exploits. [12]
