Ending “the torch” - what light remains

For more than one and a half years “The Torch” has been engaged in an effort to promote a heightened awareness and a more profound understanding (and with it, hopefully, a better appreciation) of film aesthetics as per 21^st century requirements. In the course of so doing, it touched upon many deeply sensitive issues. By keeping a clear focus on current developments in exemplary Singapore its objective has always been twofold: to answer the specific and to extract and explain the general type.

Methodically, it has never attempted to profess any dogmatism, or to be exclusive. Rather, its pursuit has been from the outset to try and instigate an open and qualified debate about what it is that defines film as an art form and what it requires us, who are involved in some way or another in its making, to always bear in mind, to never lose sight of and to be uncompromising about. Although this column has run its course now, the case which it has been but a humble part of remains open and continues to be in need of further reviewing. As it is with every kind of legacy, however small, that it is those who come after who will determine its worth, so “The Torch” may very well be carried on in private or in public by someone else – as with hope, the passion lighting it will not cease to shine!

My heartfelt gratitude to a most perfect host-site, that brilliant and forever friendly link, Sinema.sg! The salute can be found: here.

(pic©mo)

on quotes

You speak in the words of another. You make your choices, select their sentences and choose to borrow foreign intelligence. The selection is neither rational nor arbitrary; it is emphatic, it is challenging, it can be a disguise. And it wants to reveal something: a mood, a tone, an insight or a probing question.

This is why you quote. The careful citation maybe a mask. And it is convenient, if unsettling. A motto or a thought – what is truth, other than a pleasant opinion? We hold dear that which we cannot easily understand but know to be true anyway. Somehow. Literally or virtually, there doesn’t seem to be much difference. What does it matter? The choice has always been mine!

Why blog if you don’t seek expression? Why blog if not for the experience of hiding behind a virtual mask? And 100 is a perfect number. Therefore, no more quotes. They have said it all. On my behalf.

quote of the week

“Socrates: 'Then, in short, all the stirrings and endurings of the soul, when wisdom leads, come to happiness in the end, but when senselessness leads, to the opposite?' - Menon: 'So it seems.'”
(Plato, Symposium/The Banquet (after 385 B.C.))

Another dent

Everybody wants to get something done, realize a vision, gain recognition, build a record and, eventually, leave a legacy behind. Only few succeed. That’s why we honour them; and that’s what we have awards for, the Main Prizes and colossal accolades for lifetime achievement and the like. Surely, where literature is concerned, no other recognition holds the immortalizing power that the Nobel Prize can bestow and it might be a blessing as much as a curse for some among the elect as henceforward we begin to somehow think them in marble. But, luckily, not all the laureates are dead; certainly alive when designated. Being humans (almost) like the rest of us, they are also fallible, even in their field.

Now, for a very long time I’ve been an avid reader of Günter Grass’s works. His style of writing, his historically based narratives, have inspired and influenced me greatly and in terms of developing my own literary understanding I owe him a lot. In short, he is one of my heroes, so to speak. Really goes without saying, then, that I just instantly bought his latest book when it was published last month. It is the second part of his autobiography in fiction and a follow-up to “Peeling the Onion” of 2006, called “Die Box”/”The Box”. As is the nature of such accounting, it is very personal for the most part. Only, it so much focuses on family matters – and decidedly less outer world factuality or atmosphere filtering in than was the case with the previous one – that one cannot avoid the question of asking just how relevant it is. For me, this doesn’t seem to be the biggest problem here, though. He has given copious and probing renditions of post-war German society in his great novels before, more eloquently so than any other German writer has done in his generation, and done it brilliantly; his sentences are profoundly worked-through in most memorable language, and every yarn or fable spun to lasting effect (for those who care to listen, or read). What saddens me so about “Die Box” is the fact that it is a mere shadow of his former narrative vigour and scope. It sounds, and is, repetitive, but without generating any additional insight in the process, I’m afraid.

For Grass enthusiasts it should still be worth reading and in no way can this late piece take away anything from his achievements. I simply like to hear his voice on paper again. Even so, this one is not a great work by a great literary master, whereas “Peeling the Onion” in my estimation ranks as a fine example in the rich history of European memo fiction and biographical writing, an important testimony of an important time. So, I’ll read on…

(pic©Florian K.)

“the torch” #43 – What about quality? - putting the Singapore instant into doubt

When I first noticed that little sticker on the DVD of 881 calling it a “true Singapore instant classic” I thought it was a joke, really. But no, they actually mean it!
What, then, lies behind that craze about efficiency, rapidity and the instantaneous in every moment, experience and every conceivable kind of product especially, that we witness in the ambitious island nation of Singapore today? How does the seemingly all-pervasive obsession with everything quick and easy affect the country’s blossoming movie industry, and young independent filmmakers in particular? Can quality truly be achieved – let alone maintained – in an environment that doesn’t seem to cherish the essence for which there can never be a short-cut, never a substitute, and that is time? Give it a moment to reflect on the topic, then join this controversial discussion right: here.

(pic©mo)

A disappointment

It has been a while, in fact, too long, since last I posted something on the topic of literature up here. There are many reasons for this holdup, all of them very complicated, unpardonable and nothing but excuses. So, no more on that; it’s a past. Earlier this month, I attended a reading of young Thai-American writer Rattawut Lacharoensap at our Internationales Literaturfestival Berlin. I had first encountered him and his work two years ago at exactly the same venue and had been quite intrigued by his refreshing debut collection of short stories, “Sightseeing” (review here). Naturally, I was excited to see what he’s up to next. And he was really courageous, I must say, for reading from a manuscript in the making, his long-awaited fist novel “End of Siam”, slated for publication around May of next year. That I found impressing.

But then, the reading as such, my first impression of the text, those opening passages that are meant to get us into the body of the entire thing – frankly, I couldn’t help but be disappointed by what I heard. Of course, the man himself was charming as ever, spirited, and he seemed at ease with his temporary hometown of Berlin. But as far as having a literary appointment with a new talent goes, my expectations weren’t met. Apparently, the book is about the male protagonist’s childhood years and adolescence followed over the course of some 20 years and it starts out in a Thai village setting and a fitting domestic account. There are some memorable scenes that tell of the boy’s intimate relationship with his (single) mother. I thought most of the descriptions well-done, but unrefined, without much resonance and stale. The pace was TV-ish and the narrator’s point of view omniscient, which doesn’t have to be consistently so (for that I would have to have read the whole novel, obviously), and the approach is not technically invalid per se. But there were some characterizations and internal commentary that are just too explicit, leaving no space for the reader to make up their own minds; to me, this is a typical shortcoming in many young story-tellers of whatever medium, and when there is too little artistic distance to the subject matter.

In any case, this can be nothing more but a first-first and no final judgment. I might still want to read the work in full when it comes out. All I can say at this point is that I’m – disappointed, a bit. And that may as well be my own mistake in part, for – as I said – those expectations? They were mine to begin with!

(pic©aaww.org)

quote of the week

“Rat stories, true and made up. World-relation attitude irruption: grain ships gnawed bare. Hollowed-out granaries. The Nothing acknowledged. Egypt's lean years. And when Paris was besieged. And when the rat sat in the tabernacle. And when thought forsook meta-physics. And when help was most needed. And when the rats left the ship. And when the rats came back. When they attacked even infants and old people riveted to their chairs. When they negated the new-born babe away from the young mother's breast. When they attacked the cats and nothing was left of the rat-terriers but bare teeth, which sparkle to this day, lined up in the museum.”
(Günter Grass, Dog Years (1963))

quote of the week

“I'm pursued myself like a hundred devils, and shall be overtaken before I can well change horses: – for heaven's sake, make haste – 'Tis for high treason, quoth a very little man, whispering as low as he could to a very tall man that stood next to him – Or else for murder; quoth the tall man – Well thrown size-ace! quoth I. No; quoth a third, the gentleman has been committing – –.”
(Lawrence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1767))

“the torch” #42 – In the crux: short films - what is the art in being short?

For some young filmmakers and aspiring directors a short film is but a showcasing vehicle to prove themselves to the outside world and possible investors. The format serves as a platform to perform a visual stunt or two, and all effort is directed at maximizing the self-promotion effect attesting to advanced professionalism, or so. For some, though, making short films is an art form and a vocation. The genre in itself can be fulfilling and there are numerous examples (some of them coming out of Singapore in recent years) that unless being taken seriously for what it is, a short film will be nothing but an exercise in vanity: hollow, and amounting to little more than an overlong trailer to a would-be movie at best. But there are rules to obey, the intrinsic markers of quality in this particular kind of motion pictures, and all the good genes they might carry have one prime information inscribed in them: be short! What this means in practical terms and how originality in a short is defined by the ability to meet the criterion – you can read it up: here.

(pic©mo)