Wallflowers in the Parade
With the banning of the religion in 1972, male Jehovah's Witnesses are made to spend their National Service in the detention barracks for two and a half years or longer. This documentary follows the lives of three male Jehovahs Witnesses and their lives in Singapore as well as the first Witness who was imprisoned in 1972.
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Tan Jit JennDirector
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Tan Jit JennWriter
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Julia AzizProducer
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Syaza AgapeEditor
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Muzaffar MuharCinematographer
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Florent CorchiaAudio Mixer
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May ChongSound Recordist
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Project Type:Documentary
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Genres:Biopic, Historical
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Runtime:17 minutes 43 seconds
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Country of Origin:Singapore
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Film Color:Color
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First-time Filmmaker:No
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Student Project:No
Jit Jenn’s work often captures the familiar everyday of ordinary people, usually hidden in plain sight. He has found the visual language of minimalism and the observational to be useful as a tool for his visual language - each of his films consists of multiple storylines and protagonists, grouped around specific themes that are important to him. Jit Jenn takes a critical view of social, political and cultural issues in his home country Singapore, and chooses to focus on marginalized individuals that fall on the cracks of society. Though he has hardly suffered the level of turmoil that his subjects have, he feels a personal desire to create empathetic emotional attachment through storytelling.
His thesis film, Wallflowers in the Parade is a documentary that investigates the prosecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Singapore, where young Jehovah’s Witnesses are imprisoned for up to three years for conscientious objection upon mandatory military service. Through this film, he hopes it would raise questions about civil liberty in the Singapore context.
Jit Jenn has graduated from Puttnam School of Film and Animation in 2021.