Singapore Chinese Film Festival: Event shines spotlight on diversity of Chinese cinema

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The seventh edition of the Singapore Chinese Film Festival has just wrapped up. Apart from the regular features, this year's event added two new segments - one focusing on veteran filmmaker Chang Yi and the other on non-Chinese language films. CGTN's Miro Lu has the details.

11 days, 60 Films, a diverse showcase of Chinese language cinema.

The Singapore Chinese Film Festival is back for its seventh edition in the city state. It flaunts a wide range of feature films, documentaries and short films made both by established filmmakers and newcomers looking to make their mark.

One of the organisers is Professor Foo Tee Tuan - the Director of the Centre for Chinese Studies at the Singapore University of Social Sciences. For Professor Foo, the festival is a means to raise awareness about Chinese language and culture.

PROFESSOR FOO TEE TUAN SINGAPORE UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES "It is a very excellent platform for us to showcase Chinese culture, language, and its diversity."

"The film festival will be able to show our audience actually when we talk about Chinese, it is not one homogenous group of people, actually it is quite diverse."

The festival opened with Hong Kong writer-director Oliver Chan's award winning debut feature film "Still Human".

While speaking to CGTN, Oliver spoke about the importance of film festivals in helping young filmmakers get recognition at an international stage.

OLIVER CHAN DIRECTOR, STILL HUMAN "I think for me the recognition is very important in the sense that it gives me a lot of confidence that they liked my film despite the cultural differences."

MIRO LU SINGAPORE "The highlight of the festival this year, is that it is featuring four non-Chinese language films created by established names from the Chinese film industry. Interestingly, these films are not in English but in lesser used languages like Kazakh or Burmese."

David Lee is the Vice Chairman of the Singapore Film Society and one of the curators at the festival. David highlighted that more and more Chinese filmmakers are looking outwards and exploring stories and languages beyond Chinese mainland.

DAVID LEE VICE CHAIRMAN, SINGAPORE FILM SOCIETY "We have been noticing the increasing trend of people working in the Chinese cinema industry whether they are from China or even in this part of Southeast Asia, Malaysia and Singapore. But the language of the film that they make might not be primarily in Mandarin or Cantonese."

PROFESSOR FOO TEE TUAN SINGAPORE UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES "It shows that Chinese filmmakers don't really have to stay within their comfort zone. They can actually venture out and try something different."

One such film that drew substantial attention was internationally recognised Director, Midi Z's Burmese documentary, 14 Apples.

TRACY STUDENT "I am actually from Myanmar, so I wanted to watch this."

ELLA RAIDEL PROFESSOR "I have seen several films already from Midi Z, and this one I had not seen, so I had to come."

In the era of personalised video streaming, naysayers often question the need for a film festival. However, the Singapore Chinese Film Festival continued to draw crowds because of the depth of culture and diversity in the kind of stories that were showcased. Miro Lu, CGTN, Singapore.