Tiong Bahru Social Club

The ambition to be the happiest neighbourhood in the world is a perfect irony. Today, the United Nations measures happiness as the new GDP, happiness is researched seriously in Harvard and a happiness curriculum is rolled out nationally in India. But how does one quantify happiness to measure it? And once we can quantify it, do we need to be happier than others to be truly happy?

Inspired by comedy maestros such as Buster Keaton and Jacques Tati, Tiong Bahru Social Club is a satire that serves as a reflection of the absurdities of modern Singaporean society. To create this whimsical world, the locations, sets, props, costumes, hair and makeup are designed with precise colour coordination and uncanny symmetry, as if there’s an invisible hand shaping a bonsai.

I am influenced by the profound wisdom of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching. In the universe of Tiong Bahru Social Club, there is a coexistence of the yin and the yang. The film is structured into two halves. It opens with a question – To Be or Not to Be(e) and ends with the song, Choices by Charlie Lim. The first half is about filling the glass full and the second half is about emptying it. When the main character submits himself to the Taoist Philosophy of Non-action (wu wei), things come full circle. This also informs the music and aesthetics: cheerful lullabies with Kraftwerk-inspired robot pop, retro-futuristic visuals of the past imagining the future, stacked like an augmented reality landscape.

At the heart of the film, Tiong Bahru Social Club is a story that celebrates the courage of an Everyman to drop out of the rat race and see the world from the perspective of a cat, the ultimate Tao master.

As a filmmaker, I am concerned with what people remember and what they forget.