Friday, June 15, 2007
We're GOING to Cambodia for the 11th Annual SEAPAVAA Conference!Days and even weeks have past since we sent our proposal for the 11th Annual South East Asia Pacific Audio Visual Archive Association (SEAPAVAA) Conference.
15th June 2007... as we opened our e-mail boxes, [Inbox (1)] was what struck us first, and when we saw the title, "FW: An Invitation to present at the 11th Annual SEAPAVAA Conference", we were overjoyed, thrilled & absolutely exhilarated!
We instantly knew our hard work had paid off, our proposal had been accepted, and we're indeed going to Cambodia for the Conference in August this year!
It was definitely a "Congratulations & Jubilations" moment for us, and as put simply by our expert mentor in his mail, "Congrats!"
Although the long moments of suspense & eager waiting are finally over, a new journey for us has just begun. We've reached a peak on a roller coaster ride, adrenaline rushing, but it is merely a beginning of a brand new adventure, high speed rush hour time.
Now, we've still got to further refine our Conference Paper for the final submission, that will be translated and distributed for all during the Conference.
For the avid countdown lovers, here's 4 for your fine pleasure:
15 more days to the deadline for the submission of our registration forms
(30th June)46 more days to the deadline for the submission of our final Conference Paper
(31st July)66 more days to the 11th Annual SEAPAVAA Conference
(20th - 25th August) 66 more days to our presentation at the 11th Annual SEAPAVAA Conference
(20th August)
project-ed @ 9:36 PM
11th Annual SEAPAVAA Conference Official Invitation
14 June 2007
Andrew Tan, Desmond Kan, Kwah Yi Hao, Ng Yu Hui, Tek Yong Jian
c/- Asian Film Archive
3 Changi South Street 2
Xilin Districentre Building, #02-00
SINGAPORE 486548
Dear Andrew, Desmond, Kwah Yi, Ng Yu and Tek Yong
Re: Presentation at SEAPAVAA’s 11th Conference in Phnom Penh
SEAPAVAA would be delighted to have you participate in our 11th Annual
Conference and present your paper “An Asian Film Archive Advocacy
Project: Our Great Grandchildren’s Views on Preserving Banned Films“.
We are looking forward to an engaging and informative few days in
Phnom Penh. The Conference will take place from the 20th to the 25th of
August and your paper is scheduled to be given at the Symposium on
Monday the 20th.
The Symposium will be followed by SEAPAVAA’s General Assembly and
visits to local cultural institutions as well as the World Heritage site
Angkor Wat. A more detailed schedule will be published shortly
I would be happy to provide you with any further information you may
need or you can check the website
www.seapavaa.org or
http://geocities.com/seapavaaWe look forward to seeing you in Cambodia.
Yours sincerely
Jamie Lean
Secretary General
SEAPAVAA
project-ed @ 9:30 PM
Monday, June 11, 2007
During the holidays, we went to the MDA main office at the URA building for an interview with Miss Chetra.
We asked about the classification process, such as who decides on the rating and who makes the final decision. From these questions, we have learnt that there are actually committees of people that are actually called to view films and give their comments to the MDA personnel-in-charge. The officers will then take into account of the comments before giving a rating.
Although the questions of the interview weren't directed towards a certain part of our project, at least this interview gave us a new contact for questions on the rating of films in Singapore.
project-ed @ 9:30 AM
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
It was again another discussion session. We sat down with our teacher mentor, discussing about the problems faced as well as the tasks we should do for this week.
One of the problems we faced was the method to go about classifying films. There were a total of 2,700 films on the film classification database and some of the films were very hard to find as they were in foreign language. This increased the difficulty of finding relevant information about such films. We decided to seek our external mentor's help on this issue.
Apart from that, we also discussed about the exhibition and presentation of our selected banned film in time to come.
project-ed @ 9:21 AM
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
For the past month our group was looking through a the lengthy list of banned films on the MDA, or Media Development Authority website, sieving through banned films which we felt had the potential to be unbanned.
To choose and shortlist our 10 films, we employed a 3 pronged approach:
1) How large an impact would this film have on society as perceived by us
2) How well this film will be received by society
3) The genre of the film, whether its content may be overly explicit in certain areas
After much discussion, our group came up with a list of 10 films, some which have a local context like Martyn See's "Zahiri's 17 Years", while others appealing to a more generic and global audience, like "Sadness: A monologue by William Yang" by Tony Ayres.
project-ed @ 8:56 AM
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
5th MeetingToday's meeting with teacher-mentor Ms Aruna Johnson, though brief, yielded much result.
Through the past week, we had been discussing various topics which we would base our project on. Also, the topics chosen during the week were targeted at youths in our society. Some topics we considered include "Youths of today lack respect to their seniors compared to youths of the past" and "Singaporean youths are less socially conscious as compared to the past".
After discussion however, these topics were seen as too superficial, and lacked meaning towards society at large. On that note, our group was told to search for issues or gaps which would be of interest to society, which the layman would lack knowledge of, and hold a higher cultural or social significance, rather than the cliche topics which we had come up with.
We were also told not to narrow our target audience down, rather, to come up with a gap which would hold universal appeal for the public.
Although another week of work has come to naught, we are confident that we will be able to bounce back from these mistakes to produce better work. For one thing is sure, from this, we've come up with better topics which even we find much more interesting and meaningful!
So, fasten your seat belts, for the show has just begun. More stuff coming your way soon...
project-ed @ 11:56 PM
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
4th MeetingThe meeting with teacher mentor Ms Aruna Johnson today took place with only two members of the project group, due to the others being away on duty for a school event.
We presented our group's definition on advocacy to Ms Johnson today, and allowed her to poke holes in our group's definition of advocacy. Our group's definition of advocacy is as follows:
"The act or process of purposefully promoting a tangible/intangible cause, using various mediums, in order to create greater awareness for it. In our case, it would be to highlight and help fill in certain gaps in the community – especially the local one, in terms of (controversial) social and/or political issues which may or may not be current; as well as to further promote it through meaningful local films which deal with the issue, in favour of our cause."We also realized that we misunderstood the project requirement, which was not simply to advocate a film, but rather, to make use of film to advocate a point of view. This was a completely different angle towards film advocacy from the one which we had previously thought. However, this provides a larger and wider platform for our group to work upon. The initially narrow option of choosing a theme based on a film, has been replaced by a more generic one, which allows us to choose movies to fit our chosen theme.
The amount of work which our group needs to catch up on has not escaped us. However, we are upbeat that we will be able to quickly catch up with the time which we have lost.
project-ed @ 12:39 AM
