RESFEST 10: Afterword

I arrived too early at Velvet Underground last night to find the near-equivalent of watching paint dry on the TV screens as contestants in the Icon Chef Design Competition tapped and clicked away on their laptops. Good thing there were drinks, courtesy of Smirnoff and Tiger, to lubricate the evening.

And so the winner of the first RESFEST Adobe Audience Choice Awards is … Momorobo for their video of Futon’s Strap It On. Maybe it’s just me, but I keep thinking of a Peach Robot every time I hear that name. But it’s not inappropriate given the strong Japanese influence in the video, even as Momorobo drew upon mythologies across different cultures to portray the various gods and deities.

The organisers also announced the winners of the Nokia Handheld Cinema competition, in which filmmakers had to use a video-equipped mobile phone to tell a story about “the unexplained, the inexplicable and the downright unbelievable.” SILNT’s Question Mark was a worthy winner. Questions, ranging from the mundane (Where’s my pencil?) to the metaphysical (What are we waiting for?) to the self-referential (Why are you here watching this?), flashed across the screen, framed by black and white images and a haunting soundtrack. It ended by questioning the idea that all questions had to have answers.
Second place went to Uncalled, an atmospheric piece about the suicide of a Filipino maid.
These pieces demonstrate that the technological barriers to filmmaking are lower than before. As long as you have an idea or a story, it is now much easier to bring it into fruition. What it does mean though is that good ideas will be more important than ever.

(For sinema.sg)