List of Singaporean submissions for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
Singapore has submitted films for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film on a fairly regular basis since 2005. Singapore also submitted a single film while a British colony in 1959. The Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film is handed out annually by the United States Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to a feature-length motion picture produced outside the United States that contains primarily non-English dialogue.[1]
As of 2015, a total of nine films have been submitted for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, but none has yet received an Oscar nomination.
Submissions
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has invited the film industries of various countries to submit their best film for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film since 1956.[2] The Foreign Language Film Award Committee oversees the process and reviews all the submitted films. Following this, they vote via secret ballot to determine the five nominees for the award.[1] Below is a list of the films that have been submitted by Singapore for review by the Academy for the award by year and the respective Academy Awards ceremony.
Year (Ceremony) |
Film title used in nomination |
Language(s) | Director | Result |
---|---|---|---|---|
1959 (32nd) |
The Kingdom and the Beauty | Mandarin Chinese | Li Han-hsiang | Not Nominated |
2005 (78th) |
Be With Me [3] | English, Cantonese, Mandarin and Hokkien [4] |
Eric Khoo | Disqualified |
2007 (80th) |
881 | Mandarin, Hokkien and English |
Royston Tan | Not Nominated |
2008 (81st) |
My Magic | Tamil | Eric Khoo | Not Nominated |
2011 (84th) |
Tatsumi[5] | Japanese | Eric Khoo | Not Nominated |
2012 (85th) |
Already Famous[6] | Chinese | Michelle Chong | Not Nominated |
2013 (86th) |
Ilo Ilo[7] | Chinese | Anthony Chen | Not Nominated |
2014 (87th) |
My Beloved Dearest[8] Sayang Disayang[9][10][11] | Malay, Bahasa Indonesia | Sanif Olek | Not Nominated |
2015 (88th) |
7 Letters[12] | Malay, Hokkien, Mandarin, Malayalam, English |
Junfeng Boo, Eric Khoo, Jack Neo, K Rajagopal, Pin Pin Tan, Royston Tan, Kelvin Tong |
Not Nominated |
Three of the submissions - Be With Me, My Magic, and Tatsumi were directed by Eric Khoo. Both films were among the first Singaporean films featured at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival. Be With Me features four interconnected stories, with virtually no spoken dialogue. The majority of the story is told in English subtitles reflecting the thoughts of the deaf and blind lead actress, Theresa Chan. It was accepted by AMPAS as the official entry from Singapore but subsequently disqualified for being more than 50% in English and not in a Foreign Language.[13] My Magic tells the story of the relationship between an alcoholic Indo-Singaporean magician and his young son.
Two other submissions were large-scale musicals. In 1959, Colonial Singapore sent musical-drama The Kingdom and the Beauty, set in Imperial China. Directed by a Hong Kong based-Mainland Chinese director and produced by the famed Hong Kong Shaw Brothers film studio, there was minimal Singaporean input in the film-making. Nearly fifty years later, independent Singapore sent 881, a candy-colored musical-comedy-drama about a pair of Singaporean sisters who aspire to become champions at traditional Singaporean getai. This "uniquely Singaporean" film became the highest grossing Singaporean film of 2007 [14] and was released commercially in Japan but it won few awards overseas.
See also
- List of Academy Award winners and nominees for Best Foreign Language Film
- List of Academy Award-winning foreign language films
- Cinema of Singapore
References
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- ↑ Disqualified after its official Oscar screening for containing more than 50% English dialogue
- ↑ Film is mostly dialogue-less
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- ↑ http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/oscars-singapore-selects-sayang-disayang-736277
- ↑ http://variety.com/2014/film/news/singapore-oscar-contender-sayang-disayang-1201315047/
- ↑ http://raymonddeasislo.blogspot.sg/2014/10/oscars-2015-sayang-disayang.html
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Source: Singapore Film Commission