SeaShorts Festival nurtures next generation of short film talent

Filmmaker Dain Said (left), director of SeaShorts Film Festival 2023, standing alongside members of this year's festival programming team (from left) Goh Lee Kwang, Alfonse Chiu and Elyna Shukri. Photo: SeaShorts

The SeaShorts Film Festival 2023 is set to take place at the new creative arts venue C-Space, Central Market in Kuala Lumpur from Oct 20-22.

Titled "Tanam Padi", meaning planting rice in Bahasa Malaysia, this seventh edition of the festival will examine how the short film ecosystem in the region has evolved since the festival was established in 2017.

The organising team - and volunteers - behind SeaShorts Film Festival 2023 also aims to assess its progress, and consider future directions as it engages with long-time supporters and newcomers to the event this weekend.

"There is no reason for a festival such as SeaShorts to exist, really – that you are reading this is already an act of sheer will made material by a team of volunteers united by a conviction, a fervour, for what media can do, and what we can do with it. A miracle, one may exclaim, but miracles are cheap substitutes for obsessions, which sound far less divine and a lot more unnerving," says Alfonse Chiu, programme director.

The festival – a free admission event, registration required – notes underline the importance of building a community of independent filmmakers, showcasing diverse short films and developing a sustainable platform for the long-term.

"Recognising the centrality of rice to South-East Asian cultures and communities, the act of seeding and growing regional filmmakers is akin to rice-planting: building communities of filmmakers, and feeding audiences with the future of cinema in South-East Asia," outlines a festival statement.

“It's important to redress, and respond in very real ways to the stories of the next few generations, and try to seriously bring up the format of the short film genre, that would significantly build and shape the film mediascapes as well as propel a younger generation to greater heights in their articulation of their dreams hopes and powerful voices and stories,” says Dain Said, director of SeaShorts Film Festival.

Among the programmes that will be featured in the three-day event are the SeaShorts Competitions – reflecting on the diverse yet shared concerns of South-East Asia as a region torn between forces of politics, capital, and the agency of the individual body through eight works that have previously been screened in the main competition of past festivals.

Another competition focuses on celebrating the local talents that have made, or will soon make their marks on the craft and industry of filmmaking in Malaysia, through eight works that have been selected.

"When Is Malaysia" features four works that explore how we navigate the complexities of Malaysian identity, while "Heatseeker" highlights works by active students and recent graduates in Malaysia. Part of a longer initiative to imagine a new history and ecology of the moving image in Malaysia, the formation of this new sidebar represents a turn towards the roots and soils of filmmaking.

SeaShorts Film Festival 2023 also includes several forums and talks including "Crowdfunding Pendatang".

Pendatang (2023), a Kuman Pictures production, is the only Malaysian feature film to be successfully financed entirely through crowdfunding, as nearly 600 people contributed a total of over RM400,000 to get it made.

It is an upcoming Malaysian thriller movie on the triumph of humanity over racial extremism in a dystopian future.

There is also the "Heatseeker Roundtable: Film Educators Forum", where film educators in Malaysia whose students’ films are featured in SeaShorts’ Heatseeker Student Film Showcase explore the stories that the film education scene in Malaysia nurtures, and the ever-evolving issues that comes with media education and film literacy.

"A Time for Self / A Time For Others: New Research On The Malay(si)an Moving Image And Beyond" discusses the politics of time and temporality in relation to representations of collective selves and otherness in South-East Asia.

It is a new interdisciplinary research series put together by graduates from the Art and Visual Culture Programme at Universiti Malaya.

"Preparing ‘Tanam Padi’ isn’t without its challenges and curveballs, and we should not forget that no such thing is an overnight success. I want to remember the work, commitment, and the process that takes us towards achieving this festival and our goals," concludes Elyna Shukri, society chairperson.