A special screening of the acclaimed Singaporean film "Tiong Bahru Social Club" took place in the Turkish capital as part of the 33rd Ankara International Film Festival on Saturday with the in-person attendance of the movie’s director Tan Bee Thiam.

Organized by Singapore’s Embassy in Ankara, a reception was held at Büyülü Fener Kızılay Cinema, which was followed by the screening of the movie.

"Tiong Bahru Social Club" is a prominent Singaporean satirical black comedy art film, subtly touching on several real-life problems and phenomena as well as the pursuit of happiness.

On his 30th birthday, Ah Bee, who still lives with his mother, signs up to work as a Happiness Agent in Tiong Bahru Social Club – a pilot project using data to build the happiest neighbourhood in the world in an ageing Singaporean district. Upon arrival at Tiong Bahru, a neighborhood with unique, art deco white buildings, Ah Bee enters the community and is assigned to serve crazy cat lady Ms. Wee. Ah Bee moves into one of the community houses soon to realize that an artificial intelligence algorithm, Bravo60, is placed into the room. Bravo60 often talks with Ah Bee as a friend and routinely measures his score of happiness. The club and its members aim to make the old residents happier through several social activities including swimming sessions, cuddling sessions and serving them in their daily tasks and problems. After struggling initially to fit in to the society and the loss of Ms. Wee, Ah Bee inherits Ms. Wee’s cat, is matched with a girlfriend Geok and is promoted to the helm of the community Complaint Centre. Things seem to look brighter for Ah Bee but something feels off to him.

Futuristic dystopia

The futuristic dystopia with an enhanced role of technology in the lives of humans as well as the goal to be happy and make others happier is cleverly displayed in the movie. With laughing sessions, constant forced smiles on the faces of the Happiness Agents and cuddling sessions, the film refers to the fact that although Singapore ranks top in several areas such as academic success, development and gross domestic product (GDP), Singaporeans are the least emotional and the world's unhappiest workforce

"The film serves as a reflection of the absurdities of modern Singaporean society. The ambition to be the happiest neighborhood in the world is a perfect irony. Can happiness be quantified and do we need to be happier than others to be truly happy?" the director said.

"I think we live in an age of emojis these days where we have to give an emoji to everything that is asked to us to convey how we feel."

Tan said that he is a full-time teacher and a part-time filmmaker and one of the lectures he gives is on education and career guidance, which deals with teaching students how to be successful in their careers.

"In Singapore, all students have to recite on school days the Singapore National Pledge that asks Singaporeans to pledge to achieve happiness, prosperity and progress for the nation. But we do not teach them how to be happy, only how to be successful. When you look at the successes of Singapore, we are top in a lot of things but one of the things that we do very badly is that you find in Gallup surveys that we have the unhappiest workers. In Singapore, we even have a national campaign to encourage people to smile more. This is a film to reflect on some of the failures of Singapore but to celebrate these failures in as who we are."

"We are a very outcome-oriented country. There is what you hope to be and you engineer that kind of outcome. But happiness is different, you cannot engineer it. Happiness is a journey that you need to process and you need space and time to let things sink in and for you to be able to stand up again to walk, to fight and survive. We sometimes do not give our students the time to do so. Moving on, we need to celebrate failures not just successes, which is why the character is called Ah Bee – it is not about the A’s in lives it is about the Bs and Cs," Tan told Daily Sabah in an exclusive interview, adding that Ah Bee’s leaving his mother’s house and starting his own journey shows the courage needed to pursuit happiness.

Speaking on the connection between technology, an ever-more widespread fact of modern-day life, and happiness, Tan said that he sensed a growing fear of technology and AI and its impacts on jobs in his students’ essays.

"It is not the technology that they are afraid of, it is people using technology, AI that they are afraid of. That has created a crisis among young people feeling that they are not good enough. A constant danger of losing jobs creates anxiety and stress in people. I do not think that is how technology should work. I am always amazed by what technology can do. In the film, I stripped all the technology away and I wanted them to focus just on the ring."

"I am actually a computer engineer by training. That’s why my path to becoming a filmmaker is quite unorthodox I would say. I love technology because even in cinema I feel that every leap of cinema is because of technology. But in this film, what I want to explore and create is a film where the past is imagining the future."

Indeed, no cars, phones, laptops or anything that would indicate in which period of time the film was taking place, is not seen throughout the film.

"I wanted to make it a timeless film."

Being asked about the dark shadowy figures that are seen in some scenes of the film, Tan said that they represent the people running the social club as well as Bravo60, who cannot be seen.

"It is designed in such a way that you can hear it because it is all around us. You do not know where it is, you do not know where it is following you. There are two things in the film – the cat and Bravo60, which is a robot that tries to be a human. He talks to Ah Bee and tries to be a friend. These two characters are highly important in the film because it teaches Ah Bee and us how to be a human and what being a human really is."

Another interesting point made by Tan was that the cat's story in the film was based on a real-life incident of a cat called Bob that was living in the Tiong Bahru neighborhood in Singapore. Ten years ago after a car accident, residents of the neighborhood came together, and within a day, raised SG$20,000 for Bob's hospital costs, after which the cat recovered and started once again to stroll the streets of Tiong Bahru.

"When I heard about this story, I thought, if we can care for everyone like how the Tiong Bahru residents did for Bob, we would be in such a happy place."

Released in 2020, the movie came out during the initial phases of the COVID-19 pandemic, which affected the cinema sector. Tan said that after some consideration on whether to release the film during or after the pandemic, it was decided to release it in 2020 and the Tiong Bahru Social Club was hugely successful. "We felt that it was a film that would encourage people, to provide them with a dose of some happiness and it did relatively well."

The movie was granted several awards including Jonathan Rosenbaum's Top 10 films of 2021 for Sight and Sound Magazine, the Roger & Julie Corman Award for Intrepid Filmmaking at the 19th Fargo Fantastic Film Festival at ValleyCo, the Grand Jury Prize for Best Narrative Feature at the 11th Guam International Film Festival Best Film (Newcomers Section) as well as the 19th Asian Film Festival (Rome) Special Jury award (for world building) at the 37th Los Angeles Asian Film Festival.

Diversity

The Ankara film festival is providing a platform for foreign films to reach out to the Turkish public, Singapore’s Ambassador to Ankara Jonathan Tow told Daily Sabah.

Saying that sometimes Singaporean films are overlooked because they are not quite well-known in Türkiye, Tow said: "We particularly wanted to bring a director that could interact and by interacting, people would have a better understanding of why we make the films the way we make them. Hopefully, there will be a reflection of our society. That is the main reason we wanted to use the film festival to enlarge our reach and to make friends with the film and cultural community here."

Being asked why the embassy chose Tiong Bahru Social Club, the ambassador elaborated that "One of the key reasons is that we wanted to have a film that is more current. It is timely. It is a bit quirky, it makes you think a little bit more, and it is a film that represents the languages of Singapore. Singapore is a society, is a country that is multilingual."

Tow highlighted that all Singaporean languages, including even the Chinese dialects as well as English, were used in the film.

First Secretary for Political Affairs Ashraf Yoonus who organised the special screening for the Singapore Embassy, said getting Tan to Türkiye in time for the event turned out to be a Herculean task. As Tan is a full-time lecturer at Singapore Polytechnic, the Embassy had to work around his hectic schedule to fly him over to Ankara. And even then, it turned out to be a nail-biting affair and it was not even sure Tan would arrive in time as he had to grapple with a flight delay leading to a missed connection, and ended up losing his luggage in the process.

However, the embassy’s efforts were well worth it given the amazing reception from Turkish film buffs who appreciated Tiong Bahru Social Club, many of whom were watching a Singapore film for the first time. Yoonus said: "The special screening will always be remembered as a milestone in Turkish engagement of Singapore’s film culture. I also wish to express appreciation to the Ankara International Film Festival and the Singapore Film Commission for their support."