me & my camera: May 2007

festival de cannes

The 2007 Cannes Film Festival

Monday May 28, 10:17 pm

Singapore film awarded Special Mention at
Cannes Film Festival

SINGAPORE : 23-year-old Singaporean director Anthony Chen has done Singapore proud.

His short film, 'Ah Ma', was awarded a Special Mention at the Cannes Film Festival award ceremony.

It was only one of two short films to be awarded this honour, out of 11 short films selected from more than 3,000 for the Official Competition.

The other film is Mark Albiston's 'Run' from New Zealand.

Anthony is the youngest director in the competition.

Meanwhile, the Palme d'Or for Short Film went to Elisa Miller's 'Ver Llover' from Mexico.

This is also the first time a Singapore film has been selected to compete in the Official Competition at the Cannes Film Festival.

The short film jury was headed by famed China director Jia Zhangke.

I'm so proud of you, ET!

veni, vidi, vici

this place never fails to make me feel calm & at peace
(yes, even with a super high energy bouncing ball of a human next to me - cl!)
she came, she saw, she conquered
(do not even get me started on her shopping frenzy)

i decided to take cl for the ultimate cheapo cultural experience:

1st up, free exhibitions at the NGV

"people playing with white lego" at the cubic structural evolution project 2004

the japanese golden screens exhibition

& finally
ooh-ed & aah-ed our way to the permanent international collection display

1 of many

too bad we had to miss sneakers: classics to customs

knowing what a shoe-shopper & shoe-crazy person cl is, i'm sure she would've appreciated it
but ah well... there were more important things to cover
like buff men in union jack undies
(more in later posts)

we, in true 'artsy fashion', decided to name this 'piece' the 5:aqua (taken at 5:00 pm)
fingers on a water trail
"damn emo lar!"

fireworks

view from our crib: club 604 ya'll
(for the fina world championships or moomba, i can't remember now)

a very very long post - a new record

apologies for the month long absence
thought i'd make it up by posting a really huge, long post with truckloads of photos
so here it is

rod laver arena - home of the australian open, fina world championships 2007 & many more.

The susie o'neill pool, in all its splendour
view from cheapest seat in the house (with fangilla) but with an amazing bird's eye view of the entire pool (best view to watch the race, i reckon)& starting/ finishing block
see below

take your mark

*beep*
all in less than 5 seconds
(men's 200m freestyle finals)

view from free front row seat tickets on the last day of the competition! (with ah saz)
close up but not so great view of the action (couldn't see who was leading by how much)
see below

slicing into the water in perfect form (men's 50m backstroke finals)

very nice 'curtain of water' with (you'll have to look closer on this) highlights of the days before beamed onto it at the start of the last day of the competition

HIGHLIGHTS:

1. the one & only michael phelps (a very short excerpt)

if you look close enough, he was actually swimming a whole body length in front of the red world record line & smashed his own WR by 0:02.04 (new WR 4:06.22) - this was the 400m individual medley finals

after he'd broken another WR - yeah, what's new

(men's 200m freestyle finals)
1st place: michael phelps (WR 1:43.73)
2nd place: pieter van den hoogenband of the netherlands
3rd place: park tae hwan of south korea

i guess he was in a hurry

2. aaron peirsol

yet another american who broke his personal WR (new WR 52.98 - men's 100m backstroke finals)

the way he did it was as if it was no big deal at all!
this was probably the only time he actually showed anything more than just a polite smile & wave

3. natalie coughlin

guess what
she's american
she broke her own WR (new WR 59.44)
go figure

women's 100m backstroke finals
1st place: natalie coughlin
2nd place: laure manaudou of france
3rd place: reiko nakamura of japan

the star-spangled banner was played so many times i think i know it by heart now

4. federica pellegrini

a surprise WR (1:56.47) by italian pellegrini in the women's 200m freestyle semis
insider's goss: a swimmer can get up to $15000 (if memory serves me right - just something i heard from a more senior colleague at the MSAC when i gushed about how we witnessed 4 WRs in 1 night) per WR

5. the usual aussies

australia's number 1 favourite liesel jones
seen here with tara kirk (usa) after the victory ceremony for the women's 100m breastsroke (new CR by liesel 1:05.72)

eamon sullivan & brenton rickard signing autographs after the victory ceremony for the final event of the competition: men's 4 x 100m medley relay for which australia won gold