At an Academy Awards ceremony many years ago, one of the award presenters told a customary tale before giving out the award: A caveman visited another's habitat and, while admiring the drawings on the cave's wall, made comments and suggestions on this and that sketches. The owner eventually got frustrated and confronted the friend: "If you were so good, why don't you draw your own?" The reply: "I can't. That is why I am a producer."
As I can't make films nor can I be a film producer. I decided to volunteer with the Singapore Film Society (SFS) as one of its programmer when, more than 10 years ago, I had wanted to immerse myself deeper into the art form (i.e. films, not wall sketches). My involvement with the Society's activities later expanded to include programming for some of the festivals that it organized. Among them was the annual Japanese Film Festival.
For the six years between 2003 and 2008, I, in the capacity of Programming Representative from SFS and along with the partners in the Embassy of Japan and Japan Foundation, helped programme for and put together the annual Japanese Film Festival.
Having been attending and volunteering at previous years' JFF, I was hoping to bring in some fresh ideas and new elements. More specifically, I wish to expand the role of programming to curating. i.e. rather than just picking from the film libraries of the Embassy and Foundation titles that were recent and perceived to be popular, I would like to give each festival a specific theme and focus. In so doing, I hoped the audience would gain a better appreciation of Japanese Cinema (as I did from preparing for the festivals).
Over the next few blog posts, I wish to recollect some the fond memories over the six years- from how a theme was picked for each year to researching, selecting and finally securing some of the titles.
A caveman that sketches and produces I am not. But by treating the wide spectrum of quality cinematic accomplishment in past and present Japanese Cinema as pallette (from works of the classical auteurs such as Imamura and Naruse and present masters such as Ichikawa and Kawase), I hope I had been able curate a line-up in each festival that in itself form a narrative. And by running the 10-day long virtual cinema once a year, I sincerely hope that I was able to sketch out an outline of various shapes and forms of Japanese Kinema which audience could take with them and, if they so wish, further explore the (gigantic) body of works.
