Song of the firebird.

• Main Authors: Tay, Hongcheng., Sing, Allysa Zhi Bing., Koh, Zhi Kai., Chen, Russell Jiarui., Marlisa Rosli.
• Other Authors: Vladimir Todorovic
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: DRNTU::Visual arts and music
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/52351
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Many times we face changes, we leave behind fragments: little trinkets and possessions that do not sail with the tide, little bits of ourselves that take the form of tangible possessions and clinging memories. But when change comes in a force so great, we throw away more than just fragments to save ourselves from these damages. At times we seal our skeletons in closets, lock them up and throw the key into the deepest of darkness. But we will return long after, and when we do, we search the darkness to find more than a key and forgotten memories. A conglomeration of fictional adaptations of personal experiences and influences of Magic Realism from novelist Haruki Murakami, Song of the Firebird explores the theme of “redemption” through the story about a soul dismembered by calamity and the return to this darkness unknowingly. Two of my personal experiences inspired me to write Song of the Firebird. The first of which is a significant and vivid dream that I had when I was fifteen. In the dream, my family members and I were trapped in a burning house. The lucidness and vivid imagery got locked into my head even several days after. I decided to record it and I started a habit of recording the subsequent dreams as much as I can remember them. The process of writing my dreams down gives me a biased but interesting interpretation of my dreams, of how memories and perception reflect and affect my reality. Two years later, my father passed away. This event started me questioning about existence; of the tangible and fleeting, and the intangible that holds and stays with us in the deepest of darkness. In such a time, there were moments, which felt like the line between reality and illusion became unclear. They merged into a single web that I was unable to escape from. As an aspiring filmmaker/writer, I attempted to express these experiences into my works. I tried to explore themes like the fragility of life and loss in my earlier works of writing before I discovered filmmaking. There after, my works began reflect a theme of estrangement from reality; touching on moments in time when one treads on the thin fence in between reality and dreams/illusions. This film is an attempt to recollect fragments of my experiences and express them in a character that I was rather unfamiliar with. This distance allows the film to be a medium of expression and exploration of the theme as opposed to an allusion to the depiction of autobiographical events. Song of the Firebird is my expression with abstract and poetic imageries, of the emotions and experiences as l attempt to return and face the skeletons I had locked away in my wardrobe during my period of uncertainties. The reason for the approach is because I feel that these cannot be fully expressed with the usual narrative of specific or concrete incidents. Song of the Firebird is also an expansion of a short film that I wrote and directed previously: Red Bears and the Last Dreaming (2010). In which I explored the concept of the fragility of reality as perceived by a man treading on the thin fence between reality and dreams.