Singaporean director Royston Tan is known for several signature touches in his films, two of which are his love for items from the past and his use of color and music. For Tan, these touches serve as tools that help to preserve snapshots of Singaporean history.

“In Singapore, we are changing too quickly,” Tan told The Korea Herald at the Busan International Film Festival, where his latest film “3688” made its international premiere.

“Every 20 years, there’s a big, major change in our society. Every four years there’s a renovation. All of Singapore gets renovated. What is going to happen to people who get left behind by the progress of the country? I felt a need to let them be heard.”

One of Tan’s best internationally known works is the 2003 film “15: The Movie,” which followed 15-year-olds living in Singapore’s dark underbelly and depicted the boys’ encounters with drugs, self-harm and suicide with shocking candidness. 

“3688” is Tan’s first feature film in seven years, and he says he made it at the urging of BIFF programmer Kim Ji-seok, a longtime friend who called him a “lazy boy” when they crossed paths in Japan. “He grabbed my hand, and told me it was time to make a film. So I surprised him. I made two,” he said, referring to “7 letters,” a collaborative omnibus film he produced that was also invited to this year’s festival.



In “3688,” Tan chooses as his protagonist a parking attendant played by singer-turned-actress Joi Chua. 

“I was always interested in telling ordinary Singaporean stories. Parking attendants -- obviously a career that will be replaced by machines very soon,” he said. The attendant, named Fei Fei, dreams of becoming a big star like her namesake, the late Taiwanese pop diva Feng Fei Fei, and it’s this dream that allows Tan to utilize music once again to portray the fast change and generational gap in Singaporean society. For Fei Fei, music is all she has to connect with her aging father.

“I grew up listening to (Feng Fei Fei’s) music,” he said. “Her music doesn’t belong to my era. It belongs to my parents’ era. I thought it was important to archive collective memories in this film.”

A part of those collective memories was in Dakota Crescent, one of Singapore’s oldest public housing estates which was the shooting location for the film.

“(Dakota Crescent) was first-generation public housing, and I think as we are talking, they are demolishing the place already. It won’t exist anymore. We filmed in November of last year,” he said. “It’s been there since 1965. So it’s important for me to quickly capture everything. Our memories get erased very easily.”

By Won Ho-jung (hjwon@heraldcorp.com)