Thousands of women travel to Bali each year in search of paradise. And many find it in the arms of  the Kuta Cowboys. Masters at peddling the holiday-romance concoction, these bronzed beach ambassadors have made Bali one of the world’s leading destinations for female sex tourists.

Cowboys in Paradise is an independent feature documentary by Amit Virmani, that gets between the sheets of Bali’s male sex trade to reveal its most intimate secrets.

Amit’s film already picked up three nominations at the Asian Film of First Films, including Best Documentary and Best Director (Documentary).

Cowboys in Paradise will be screening locally this spring. Join the Facebook page for updates.

The Karma of the Tree Sentinel who Awakes/Mind Roots MV is an experimental short film and music video inspired by Mind Roots from The Observatory’s latest album, Dark Folke.  The film is produced by local film collective birdmandog, and based on a short poem written by the band’s songwriter Leslie Low for the album:

“They have no voice for their mouths are covered. They cannot move for their bodies are stiff. But their minds are free. Their eyes are no longer prisons. When the hour of the owl comes, they will enter the tree through a triangle. The triangle is a doorway. The tree is a cave. The tree echoes their every thought, breath and step. And while there is no light, they remain hidden but not forgotten …. Dark Folke, 1 July.”

Director Yuan Ler about the video: “Using a combination of stop motion photography, hi-definition video and 3D animation, Karma tracks the journey of Sentinel 5, who awakes from a deep slumber in limbo to begin a journey that will take her to The Triangle – a monolith of unknown origins. Karma is an experimental film that explores themes of existentialism, regret, and life beyond death.”

Serene Teh is a Graphic Design student at the Raffles Design Institute, who enjoys illustrating. “Animation is new to me, and the featured work, titled the Parkour Paper Trail, is my first video,” Serene explains. “It is one of my school assignments. I illustrated frame by frame, and constructed it on cartridge papers. The video was shot and edited by Noel Lee.”

Yeo Wee Han has a passion for nature and travel photography, and places that have been untouched by globalization are his choice locations. “I am also the President of Nature Photographic Society (Singapore), where like-minded nature photographers come together to aid conversation and the awareness of nature through photography,” he adds.

“Timelapse photography was something I had always had some interest in and I was constantly shooting them using video cameras but I wanted to push the limits more and after some research and some experimenting, I found that still cameras were the ticket. I used Canon DSLRs for timelapse photography as the images are much lower in noise and way better in quality than compact cameras. The tough thing doing timelapse photography was the equipment involved as I normally work with at least three setups (a camera, a lens and a solid tripod) and they do get hefty after some walking. Final Cut Studio was used for the editing and the huge videos files pushed the system to its limit and rendering took up lots of time. Minimal cropping was done to the shots and each shot in the video is as true to the scene as possible.”

One of the screenings at the recent First Take event was Samantha Wee’s short titled Good Morning. The story is about Peter Pang who just turned 60, and all he can see is doom ahead. Birthday woes get turned around however when a surprise encounter with Bhangra injects Peter with a newfound zest for life. Through the magic of this Indian dance, Peter attempts to get his life back on track and to rekindle lost sparks with his wife.

Samantha Wee completed her degree in Film Studies at the University of Auckland (New Zealand) and returned to Singapore last year to work in the local industry. She has been involved in various productions ranging from corporate videos to TV dramas to info-tainment material. On top of this, she wrote, directed, produced and edited her first Singapore-made short film. She is currently developing another short film script which will be shot later this year.

On the way to the airport, a mother frets over her daughter who is leaving home for the first time. Suddenly, she finds herself on a curious detour that plumbs muddy memories, only to surface with a dazzling lesson in both life and swimming.

This is the synopsis for “Swimming Lessons”, an SIFF-winning short film by SIFF Best Director, Kat Goh.

Kat about her movie: “Most Singaporeans have the luxury of growing up living under the protection of their parents. However, we often hear complaints from our young generation about over-protective parents. Are their parents really so unreasonable or do they just love their children too much? Maybe the best thing to do is to just let go.”

A veteran of television production, Kat is one of the few female filmmakers to emerge from Singapore. Cutting her teeth on epic TV productions during an eight-year stint at both MCS and Channel U, Kat’s work on the small screen includes the highly-rated comedy series Durian King (2004).

Click to watch the trailer.

On June 20 and 27, our friends at The Arts House will be having an intimate film screening, this time as part of National Family Celebrations ’09. The event is called Celebrating the Family, and will mark the world premiere of CASHLESS (2009), screened with the short film documentary, In Our Own Words (2008).

CASHLESS, a movie produced by Derek Tan and Melinda Tan, revolves around a man’s reckless pursuit of his misplaced cash after he mistakenly transfers an important sum of money meant for his mother into the wrong ATM account. When time and money are at stake, how far must he go before he finally finds himself? Starring Danny Jow, and featuring music by local bands The Lilac Saints and RustyNailz.

From the directors: “For a story revolving around money, cash in its cold hard form is conspicuously absent in the film. When we embarked on the production of CASHLESS at the start of 2008, we envisioned it to be a film exploring how ordinary people grappled with communicating, connecting and sustaining meaningful relationships with each other in a hi?tech cashless society. Little did we expect that just months later, the economic crisis would sweep the world, with the idea of cashless?ness now taking on a more poignant spin in this current landscape of financial loss.”

If all of this sounds as enthralling to you as it does to us, we suggest grabbing your tickets now. The screening will be followed by a discussion with the filmmakers.

June 20 and 27 at 4pm and 8pm. Click here for more details.

Click the image to watch the trailer on facebook.

Love Laws is a Thesis final year project for Lasalle’s Puttnam School of Film (BA) Honors course 2009, made by Lydia Cheriyan, along with six other students. The movie transpires the hypocrisy of the Indian tradition and explores the meaning of forbidden love.

Lydia about her movie: “When I was at the script stage, I knew I wanted to create a film that dealt with trying to overcome long governed culture and traditions. However I was not really sure which culture I wanted to delve into. I remember a friend telling me, “Why not embrace your Indian roots?” Being half Malay and half Indian, I was really weary of touching base with my Indian side of the family since I’ve not met any of them, including my father, for the past five years. Then I remembered my experience as a production manager for Eric Khoo’s My Magic. It was an Indian film where -just like in our case- none of the crew members could speak Tamil. I’ve always wanted to be a producer. But somehow there was a driving force that I wanted to direct this film.”

“The film has very specific locations that I did not want to resemble Singapore in any way,” Lydia continues. “No HDB housing. No CBD areas. Instead, I wanted Love Laws to be filmed in very rural looking parts of Singapore – Bollywood Veggies was a brilliant location, Mandai Lake was another and of course Kampung Buangkok. With only six of us in class we were able to rope in our juniors to fill in the various departments, and working together was an amazing experience.”

Love Laws is written and directed by Lydia Cheriyan and produced by Chia Jia Hui and Tan Pei Jun Alvin. You can watch the movie together with four other Diploma films at the Lasalle HD Screening Room. 1pm daily till 31 May.