There Is Only One Season is the first feature film of Paris based, Singaporean director-writer Edwin Ho. The film is currently in the development stage and is a narrative coming-of-age drama set in contemporary Singapore. The film will be in both English and Mandarin language.
SHORT SYNOPSIS
In a highly socially-engineered city state of Singapore, where even owning a home requires you to be married, everyone is set forth on one singular life path to success. 19 years old Emileen is set on this predetermined path upon entering freshmen year of university, also gaining her new found freedom and sexuality at the same time. She derails from her destined path to steer and experiment in her own adventurous way as a young woman through family, friendship, love and sexuality to try to find herself and realise her place in this society. Will she succeed in fighting against the flow to find the freedom and love that she seeks or will she be forced to swerve back onto the caging path set forth for her?
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
The title There Is Only One Season describes Singapore's one season climate, always tropical. It is also a metaphor for my country's one singular path to success for all of us, like its homogenous climate.
Growing up in Singapore, I always felt a strong invisible force dictating me onto this singular life path - university, good traditional profession, finding your partner of the opposite sex, and getting your government housing to be set for adulthood and life. I've always questioned and judged myself for not fitting into this path, for wanting something different. Being queer made it even more difficult for me to see a future in this place. I couldn't be my full self at a time of growing up, a time when I needed to figure out myself. I left, and it will take another 15 years abroad to regrow and reset myself. I learned to accept that being a filmmaker is possible and that there is a future where I can build as a queer person, to be with someone of the same sex.
Today, I realise that ever since I was born, I was in a place where the system rejected me, and I have been holding that rejection and self-judgement for a long time in me. Today, I am married to a man and also am a filmmaker. I've met many other Singaporeans along the way who have established themselves abroad, and our commonality is that we love our country, but we had to run away to escape this predetermined path, to find ourselves. So, this is not just my story but the story of many others.
It is also important for me to tell the story from a woman's perspective because I've always felt that women are at a losing end in my society, in the battle between tradition and values of a modern country. It is very personal as I grew up in a household of strong matriarchal women - my grandmother and my mother. They brought me up and I've seen how this rhetoric of the "woman's place" passed down from one generation to another. The words from Emileen's mother are the same of those from my mother to my sister, and I felt helpless then. Therefore, this is also a story about my grandmother, mother, sisters, all other women who has been told the same rhetoric, myself, and many others who have questioned this path.
It has come full circle now, seeing my friends who walked down this path. I see that this culture is still relevant today, where the women are kept in their place, and the men have the power to fool around outside in the name of keeping marriage and family together for the sake of the partnership. The question remains: Are we just escaping from one cage to another so as to be independent adults in this society?
There Is Only One Season will be my first feature. It is an accumulation of my past work, and more so, the past 38 years of my life, my journey to self-acceptance, being who I am, and finding my place in this world. Thankfully, I found the freedom and love that I seek with a longer detour and just not in my birth country. Lastly, this is a universal story of others who have questioned their life path and redefined themselves
