Preserved by the Asian Film Archive for heritage and cultural significance.
SEMENTARA
“It really left me with a perfect articulation of what seems to be an intense yearning for some great beyond.”
Preserved by the Asian Film Archive for heritage and cultural significance.Audience Choice Award winner at the 2020 Singapore International Film Festival.
Ranked by Time Out among the 40 best Singapore films of all time.Directed by Joant Úbeda and Chew Chia Shao Min, Sementara (“transient”) delves into the philosophies, daydreams, and crucial moments of strangers across different backgrounds, morals, and perspectives throughout Singapore during its 50th anniversary.
Using the themes captured through intimate interviews, the film follows threads that lead back to certain universal truths: trying to make ends meet, having or lacking an identity, believing or not believing in gods, gender and sexuality, love, sadness, and death.
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Q&A
Director's Statement
Sementara (“transient”) started off as a small project inspired by Chris Marker’s Le Joli Mai (The Lovely Month of May). It was supposed to be something around 20 minutes that would just immortalize itself online somewhere. But thanks to the guidance of a professor, and the unexpected lengthy conversations that we chanced upon in the making, this quickly morphed into something much more intimate.
One of the more surprising parts of the filmmaking process was the ease with which we were able to get the subjects to speak on camera. We’d approach them in their neighborhoods as they went about their daily routine, or while at work or at play, and frequently spent more than an hour talking to them. Sometimes, the camera wouldn’t even be set up yet, but we just rolled the conversation. Them knowing that their time is more important than us finding the perfect frame and lighting, was crucial in us finding their conversational truth.
Which led to them generously sharing the raw parts of their lives, the messy parts of their thoughts, and then even thanking us for the experience, when clearly we were the ones in the position to thank them. What we heard sometimes made us wonder, often made us laugh, and almost always moved us.
Our goal in making this documentary was to practice seeing, not scrutinizing or interrogating, but observing and understanding. Perhaps most people want to be accepted as whole people, scars and stories and all. This film attempts to put all these stories, goals, fears, and difficulties in one, hopefully, introspective journey that happens all at once.
Media
View Press Kit"If one wanted to present a portrait of all the layers of the multicultural country Singapore is in 104 minutes, one would find it really difficult to do a better job than Sementara"
"Directors Joant Úbeda and Chew Chia Shao Min have distilled the most beauty and diversity of human perspective into Sementara."
"This film breathes with so much life. Perhaps it is not just a snapshot in time, but a lingering and echo of what once was, and what still is in this little island."
