Students organise screenings for Cineodeon 20082 min read

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This August, Cineodeon 2008 will be injected with fresh blood as more than 100 students take up the challenge of organising screenings of independent Singapore films. This initiative was started by the Asian Film Archive in 2007 which saw students organise 50 screenings of South-east Asian Films which reached a total viewership of 1,628 and raked in close to  S$2000 for filmmakers whose films have been showcased.

Continuing with its success, Cineodeon 2008 will feature a selection of culturally important Singapore films. With the focus being on Singapore films, the aim is to provide a valuable opportunity for younger audiences to learn more about the local cinematic achievements.

A total of 25 films have been selected and will stand in competition for the inaugural Young Jury Awards which will be appraised by student critics selected under the AFA’s Young Critics & Jury Programme. Cineodeon 2008 will end off with the Symposium on Singapore Cinema on 20 September 2008.

Some of these films include They Call Her… Cleopatra Wong by Bobby A. Suarez, Eating Air by Kelvin Tong and Jasmine Ng, 12 Storeys by Eric Khoo, Influence by Dzulkifi Sungit and Remi M. Sali, Trishaw by Bertrand Lee and Ah Ma by Anthony Chen.

“As an Archive, we collect films we believe to be culturally significant so that future generations can be inspired by and learn from such important historical and artistic works. Thus, an important aspect of our work is to make these films readily available to our young and empower them to voice their thoughts about our cultural identity by promoting active spectatorship,” said Mr Tan Bee Thiam, Executive Director of the Asian Film Archive.

Currently, students from pre-tertiary and tertiary schools such as the Hwa Chong Institution, Singapore Chinese Girls’ School, Nanyang Technological University and Singapore Polytechnic have signed up as programmers for the Cineodeon screenings.

But besides providing films locally, Cineodeon 2008 has a team from the NUS Overseas College in Silicon Valley taking part to screen Singapore films in California. Together with 18 key programmers, scholars and critics from the film community that form the mentorship panel to nurture the new audiences, Cineodeon 2008 is set to be an roaring event.