The next time you decide not to do your homework seriously, you might miss a chance to get major recognition for it. At least this was the experience of more than half of the 8 directors among the Finalists for the Singapore Short Film Competition.

A second screening of their work was held at Sinema Old School on Apr 24, the last day of the Singapore International Film Festival, of which the contest was a part.

There, the audience were treated to the re-run of the 7 finalists’ short films and got a chance to hear from 5 out of the 8 directors who were there to speak about their films.

The interesting thing is that many of these works had started off as school assignments.

Tanya Lai, director of Life With Ummu, produced the piece as part of her Documentary Production elective. The recent graduate of the School of Film & Media Studies in Ngee Ann Polytechnic only got to meet and feature Ummu Solehah, the main subject of her film because her producer was the cousin.

Life With Ummu is a documentary about Ummu, a severely autistic teenager who is unable to communicate with the world. It’s a hard-hitting film that shows the everyday struggles of Ummu’s family as they try to work with her condition. It won the Special Mention Award.

Her Film Sound & Video schoolmate Joshua Simon also saw his final-year project, The 25th of Laura, get shortlisted from more than 70 entries into the finals.

Another short film, an animation, began as a school project as well. Contained is about an isolated man who falls into despair after his obsessive care for a plant causes it to wither instead. It had started off as an assignment in which metamorphosis had to be expressed using clay.

“We ended up extending it to a year-long project because we wanted to understand ourselves through self-expression with this film,” explains Henry Zhuang, one half of the directorial team. The other is his brother, Harry.

They are both pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Digital Animation at the Nanyang Technological University with the aid of a scholarship from the Media Development Authority of Singapore. The brothers have won many awards before, the most recent being a gold award in the Safety@Work Creative Awards for A Story About My Dad. Contained marks their first independent film.

Que Sera Sera, from director Ghazi Alqudcy, is yet another film that started off as schoolwork before snowballing into an acclaimed short film.

The 8-minute film brings the audience back to the director’s younger self,15 years ago, and his challenges, insecurities and dreams then.

When questioned about the difficulties of filming, Alqudcy casually answered, “It was supposed to be a school project what, so everything was supposed to be done in a day, then I met my actor only 45 minutes before shooting began.”

Winners of Singapore Short Film Competition

  1. Best Film: Promises in December
  2. Best Director: Elgin Ho
  3. Best Performance: Li Xie
  4. Best Cinematography: Mu Dan
  5. Special Mention: Life With Ummu