New Word Order Showcase: The Drawing Room & Episodes from Art Studio by Liao Jiekai
2016 | 16 mm | approximately 20 minutes | Rating TBC

The Drawing Room is a filmic exploration of the text, characters and narratives from Yeng Pway Ngon’s novel, Art Studio. The film meditates on the practice of life drawing, and moves from the snug art studio to the wide corridors of the newly opened National Gallery Singapore. Chapters of Singapore Modern Art adorn the freshly painted walls of the gallery, and conjure stories of the passing generation portrayed in Yeng’s Art Studio.

The Drawing Room is the first programme to be presented under the revamped New Word Order. The session will feature a post-show discussion with the director Liao Jiekai, as well as two other short films by Liao, Silent Light and Before the Wedlock House.

Silent Light
2015 |16 mm | 11:45 mins | PG

Liao Jiekai experiments with the texture of expired film stock and ponders upon death and memories in Silent Light. Sequences of his grandmother’s funeral are accompanied by an elderly voice reminiscing on growing up in Singapore in the 1940s. The hypnotic rhythm is accentuated by the imperfection of the film stock, which contributed to the kaleidoscope of emotions evoked with the passing of time, as a mourner and lone moth anticipate the silent light of daybreak.

Before the Wedlock House
2012| High Def Video (4:3) |15 minutes | PG

In Before the Wedlock House, Liao Jiekai documented the last moments of his cousin in the room she grew up in on her wedding day. In the first short film made after his feature Red Dragonflies, Liao continues to explore what it means to come of age in Singapore through candid exchanges with the bride, revealing an incisive portrait of young people and their ideals.

About Liao Jiekai

Liao Jiekai is a filmmaker and artist based in Singapore. He is a founding member of the film collective 13 Little Pictures. Since 2005, he has directed several shorts, most notably Before the Wedlock House, which won the Best Documentary Short at the 2nd Salaya International Documentary Film Festival. His 2010 debut feature film, Red Dragonflies, won the Special Jury Prize at the Jeonju International Film Festival and was selected for competition at various film festivals such as Buenos Aires, Santiago, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Tokyo.

Jiekai was conferred the Young Artist Award for Film by the National Arts Council of Singapore in 2012. He won the Credit Suisse Artist Commissioning Award for his 16mm film installation, Brother’s Quarters, which was presented at the President’s Young Talent Exhibition at the Singapore Art Museum in 2013. In the same year, he was invited to participate in the Singapore Biennale with the video installation Bukit Orang Salah. His second feature film As You Were world premiere at the Asian Future section of the Tokyo International Film Festival, and was in competition at Torino Film Festival and Nantes 3 Continents Film Festival.