Describing himself as a Jack of all trades, Kew Lin has tinkered with various aspects of film-making. Indeed, his portfolio of work - as an ethnography filmmaker, translator, proofreader, and web magazine writer - reads more like the guest list of creatives that had gathered for a party than a list of roles he had performed. Even the genres he has covered across the functions couldn’t be more varied. He has been involved in visual effects work with the likes of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 and Star Trek Beyond. When you dive into his work as a writer/director, however, you get introspective pieces like Uncle Goose Waits For A Phone Call and his recent short film, Aunt Lotus and Her Dream Bicycle.
When asked about the driving force behind his choices, Kew muses that letting his experiences shape him serendipitously was a mentality he had always adopted. “The pragmatic ethos that Singapore possesses — granted, more so in the 90’s than now — has always cautioned me against the risk of not specialising and not setting a goal, but as long as I am ready to accept its consequences, I feel that it is a legitimate way of life.”
While Kew seems to eschew making any long-term choices, what he has been doing seems aligned with the notion that serendipity does not come by chance. Instead, according to thought leaders like Christian Busch, embracing open-mindedness, curiosity, perseverance, and adaptability enables one to seek out the unexpected and create new and exciting connections.
Whenever Kew reads any novel, he would also seek to understand the writers behind them. Likewise, he would make it a point to learn about the people behind the movies he watches. Uncovering the backstories of icons, he said, has had a massive influence on him. “Joseph Heller was an insurance agent, Whoopi Goldberg was a morgue beautician, Christopher Walken was a lion tamer, and Buddha was a prince. Therefore, counterintuitively for many filmmakers, someone who can squeeze fishballs with his own hands may make a better storyteller than one who claims to know everything about cinema.”
More on fishballs later.
When probed on the role he identifies with the most, he reflects, “While I try out different rides in the theme park of life, I think my favourite would still have to be the title of a narrative filmmaker. I sit very well with that identity.”
Elaborating further on how he evolves his style, he says, “Chen Kaige, whose body of work achieved a balance between commercial and thematic qualities, once said that every time a director begins a project, he must first decide if it is for himself or for the audience. In the UK, I found myself very experimental and personal in my filmmaking. In Singapore, I made films more with the audience in mind. You can see how immersing in different cultures encourages a different approach to filmmaking.”
He goes on to highlight that, in his latest short film which was produced in Singapore, he reverted to being experimental and personal just to see what it would be like. The result was Aunt Lotus & Her Dream Bicycle.
At the risk of sounding corny, Aunt Lotus, together with her dream bicycle, is going places. The film itself was recently selected to screen at Seoul Senior International Film Festival. We asked Kew about the inspirations behind the short.
“I have a fear of getting old. I want to age elegantly, be learned, and not become stereotypically slow and useless,” he shares candidly as he discusses how his films serve as his conduit to finding his answers to achieving peace of mind when he inevitably reaches old age.
“When I first returned to Singapore in 2019, I had the good fortune of being supported by CreativesAtWork’s Storeys initiative to make Uncle Goose Waits For A Phone Call, which tells the quirky story about an elderly man going to literal great lengths to keep his home telephone by his side.” Through this story, he concludes that Solution No. 1 is to let go.
Solution No 2 came to Kew in the form of Aunt Lotus & Her Dream Bicycle, another quirky story about a blind grandma who wants to ride a bicycle. The project was presented by Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre and supported by Infocomm Media Development Authority. For Kew, there were many memorable moments on the set of Aunt Lotus & Her Dream Bicycle but one particular scene left an impression.
“Aunt Lotus opens with a series of blind ladies coming into a film studio to audition for the role of ‘blind grandma’. They are actually visually impaired in real life and were recommended to us by the Singapore Association of Visually Handicapped. They were such good sport to come and perform for the film, even though they are not actors in real life. This has really given the film a different depth. It was a fun afternoon.”
As a result of this collaboration, the production team made a version of the film with English Audio Description, something that is rarely, if not never done before for a Singapore short film. In this version, an audience with visual impairment can listen to the soundscape of the film and a narrator expositing every single thing that happens visually and textually.
Therefore, Solution No.2 is to use the power of imagination.
“Besides Aunt Lotus, Uncle Goose was also selected to screen at Seoul Senior International Film Festival, a festival that offers fresh insights across old age and life and broadens understanding and empathy between generations. Given that both films carry the theme of aging, pairing my films with the festival feels so right. I am very honoured that both films have struck a chord with the Korean programmers and audience.”
Good things happen in threes or in a trilogy, if you will. For those who are wondering if there would be another film featuring an elderly character’s misadventures with an apparatus, Kew says he will indeed make another short film that will provide the third and last solution. Unfortunately, that is all he could disclose.
Those who have been keeping up with Kew would know that he has recently set up Screentone, an endeavour that represents his exploration together with his producer Angelina Marilyn Bok. He makes it a point to underscore that they set up Screentone without a concrete blueprint for branding and identity. “In Chinese, we call this 渾然天成. In time to come, through our work, I hope everyone can recognise Screentone to be a global, cerebral, and adventurous storyteller.”
Is there something he would like to try but hasn’t had the chance to do?
“I would like to make my own fishball noodles. My grandparents had a Teochew fishball noodle stall in Circuit Road and they used to sit at their void deck stirring fish paste and squeezing fishballs with a spoon, which made the fishballs more triangular than spherical. I wouldn’t even know where to even begin, and so fantasy it shall remain.” 🤔
As a creative entrepreneur, Kew discloses that he has to work through struggles such as his anxieties about self-worth. “It doesn’t help that my bed is a few steps away from my work desk,” he remarks. To overcome his doubts, he pushes himself to collaborate with people. “Filmmaking requires teamwork anyway, and I constantly have meet-ups and phone calls even for the smallest things, as a way to commit myself to progression, and not lie down in foetal position. I am grateful I have friends who can do this for me, and I will do the same for them too.”
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