This weekend there are lots of opportunities to get to know director Eric Khoo. Read Brynjar Bjerkems profile on one of South-East Asia’s foremost film directors, visit an exhibition, watch a panel debate and attend a free film screening.
The odds that Eric Khoo would grow up to be one of South-East Asia’s foremost film directors were not good. As the youngest son of Singapore’s richest man, Khoo Teck Paut, and one of the heirs to a large hotel chain, his future seemed destined for other things. Perhaps in spite of this, Khoo resolved to enter the film industry at the same time as he took necessary responsibility with the family business.
His seven short films and one feature film in the period 1990 to 1995 paint an image of a young director with the same playful relationship with the media that was also evident from Quentin Tarantino and Peter Jackson at that time. The short film Pain (1994), along with the feature film Mee Pok Man (1995), share a fascination for the macabre. The second of those films tells the story of a young street-kitchen owner who falls in love with one of the prostitute girls who take their breaks in his kitchen. The girl dreams of freeing herself from life on the street, but instead ends up being run over by a passing motorist. Seen in the light of developments in Khoo’s later career, this is a cult film that oozes potency and pure youthful adrenaline.
Breakthrough
With 12 Storeys (1997) Khoo got his breakthrough both with the general public and with international critics. The film is entirely set on the twelfth floor of one of Singapore’s government-owned apartment complexes and is a social commentary that is best appreciated by its home audience.
The story follows three households with an ironic and playful eye for details and language, but without losing sight of the seriousness of their scenarios. Death lurks on the horizon in the form of the ghost of a young man we see jump in the film’s first sequence. This is Khoo’s first “ambitious” film, but the director’s black humour and desire to shake people up are easily recognisable. The film premiered during Singapore International Film Festival in 1997 and was there seen by Pierre Rissient from Cannes Film Festival. He invited 12 Storeys to the Un Certain Regard programme in Cannes the same year. Khoo had thus made the European film agenda in a way no other directors from Singapore and few directors from Southeast Asia had managed before. Every feature from Khoo since then have been presented in the Cannes programme.
Supporting young talents
I had the pleasure of being at the Singaporean premier of 12 Storeys and I managed to ask a question about role models and inspiration. Khoo answered with just one director’s name: Roger Corman. Corman has, as both director and producer, created well-loved and memorable entertainment. This desire to make films for a wide audience is more and more important to Khoo’s films in the years following 12 Storeys.
As it happens, it took eight years before 12 Storeys got a follow-up. In the meantime Khoo made just one short film and one TV series episode. Instead Khoo used his time to produce and support new and young directors in Singapore’s film industry, which would, in the course of a few years, build on its broad and local commercial success. When Royston Tan established itself as a new, international, film brand from Singapore at the start of the next decade, it was with Eric Khoo as producer, for the feature films 15: The Movie (2003) and 4:30 (2006).
Vulnerable family relations
Khoo’s next feature Be With Me came in 2005. The film is best described as a love letter to his hometown, a quiet film about love, loss, family and the power of life. Central to the story is Theresa Chan, an ageing blind and deaf woman who plays herself, and is presented through sections from her autobiography. She is an important part of three parallel storylines based on recognising the value of life. In the postscript to the film Khoo dedicates it to the memory of his parents – his father died the year before the film premiered.
My Magic came three years later (2008) and was selected for the competition programme at Cannes. Again Khoo anchors the story in real life. He invited his friend Bosco Francis to play the lead role. Francis is of Tamil descent and one of Singapore’s few fakirs – or magicians. He plays an aged and alcoholic fakir who is also the sole provider for his ten year old son. As a result of self-loathing and a desire to make quick money for alcohol he embarks on a series of painful stunts – which are actually completed by Francis without stand-ins or special effects. But the film is mainly about the relationship between father and son, and shows both closeness and sincerity. Just as with Be With Me, we are again confronted by vulnerable family relationships. Khoo states in interviews that his own experience as a father inspired him to make a film about the relationship between father and child.
One step further
Through three sequential films Khoo, through different approaches, showed a side of Singapore angled around people living in hardship, a realistic Singapore removed from the image the authorities present internationally; one fronted by successful and controlling business interests. 12 Storeys, Be With Me and My Magic complete a kind of trilogy, dedicated to the everyday life of Singapore. But with his new film Khoo heads in a completely different direction.
This year’s film Tatsumi is an animé, based on the life and stories of the Japanese comic-book artist Yoshihiro Tatsumi. The biographical details are collected from Tatsumi’s autobiography A Drifting Life from 2009, the rest are short stories based on Tatsumi’s manga. Again we see Khoo’s desire to anchor stories in the real and biographical. This is Khoo’s first feature film set outside of Singapore and his first work in the animé genre. Tatsumi’s own memoars are placed into historical context and are well balanced with the fragments from Tatsumi’s drawn shorter stories. The film was made with a careful respect for Tatsumi’s own artwork so that the result is a tribute. Japan’s post-war history is covered, everything from the memories of Hiroshima, to the Westernisation of Japanese society under American occupation – and the circumstances of how Tatsumi and his characters were part of changing the status of manga comic-book series. Tatsumi is a powerful and engaging film, impressive not least because it stands out as authentic within the frame of the Japanese. The film is made with staff and animators mainly based in Singapore or Indonesia and on a moderate budget.
With Tatsumi Eric Khoo has gone one step further. It’s great to see him in Oslo at Film Fra Sør as his newest film is about to open on the world market. Showing in connection with his visit is also Be With Me and My Magic.
Meet Eric Khoo
Tomorrow you can meet the director at the opening of The Tatsumi Exhibition at Filmens hus at 18:00. On Saturday Khoo will attend a screening of Tatsumi under the direction of the Comic book collection at Deichmanske library in Grünerløkka and you can also meet him at Litteraturhuset at 21:00, in conversation with manga and anime expert Hans Ivar Stordal and Øyvind Holen.
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