Found in translation: "881"

At times, a few words are more telling than so many pictures (or 24 frames per second for that matter). See for yourself, as Munich based company Sunfilm Entertainment in Germany has released a German version of Royston Tan’s third feature “881” – and they absolutely had to change the title. Now it’s become so revealing, it’s “Singapur Queens” actually!



To be nothing but fact oriented on the issue, I have to admit that it’s been released early January this year and selling not too bad; at least not as last time I checked on our local Berlin retailer and all copies were positively gone (i.e. sold apparently). Now forget about your lofty idealism for once and just revel in the sheer magnitude of the event, this is groundbreaking: the first ever German market hardcopy release of any Singaporean feature film and it is so much Heavenly Cheese, this is gorgeous, ha!
The distributor signed the deal after the Berlinale EFM (European Film Market) last year where “881” had three professional market screenings. And in keeping with their astonishingly good portfolio which includes a number of true gems of Asian cinema like my favourite “Dare mo shiranai/Nobody Knows” by Koreeda Hirokazu or “Tampopo” among others, Sunfilm packaged it nicely. Thus the region 2 PAL DVD comes with your standard German dubbing (horrible!), the English subtitled making-of (sic!), a new motto (“Born to Dance” – where did that come from?) and complete with the vol. 1 OST to enjoy! This is a must-have, definitely (and you can get it here).

And while you’re at it, enriching your collection, I shall point you to the upcoming DVD release of same director’s masterpiece “4:30” to go on sale March 16^th in the UK (pre-order here). Just look at the beautiful cover:



(pics©Sunfilm Entertainment | Pecadillo Pictures ltd)