ABOUT THE NYFA YOUTH INSPIRATION AWARD
The National Youth Film Awards is a beacon for aspiring youth filmmakers since its inception in 2015. For the last six years, NYFA has provided our youths with recognition, validation, and industry network, in addition to being the key national platform to showcase their talents in film.
The NYFA Youth Inspiration Award was introduced in 2019 to recognise and honour young industry professionals who have made exemplary contributions towards the filmmaking industry in Singapore. Jeremy Chua is presented this award in recognition for his hard work and excellent portfolio. He is a deserved winner because he always had an eye for spotting and supporting talents from Singapore and around Asia. He should be a reference point to many younger Singapore filmmakers because he has successfully put himself and Singapore on the global film stage multiple times with his tireless work for cinema, especially towards spotlighting first time directors across our region.
Through his efforts, he has helped paved a way for Singapore filmmakers to work with international ambitions and overseas resources beyond our domestic market. This is the last year for him to be given a Youth Inspiration Award and the timing is perfect because of his recent Camera d’Or win and the impending releases of two highly anticipated local feature films which he has produced – one of which is by Singaporean director Nicole Midori Woodford (2019 Youth Inspiration Award recipient).
About The Award Recipient
Jeremy Chua is a Singaporean film producer and screenwriter. He started his career as a programme assistant at The Substation, a distribution assistant at Lowave Paris, and then an assistant producer at Akanga Film Asia. Since 2014, he founded Singapore-based independent film label Potocol as a creative house for distinctive Asian auteurs to produce films, videos, installations and artwork.
His work as producer include Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell by Pham Thien An (Cannes Camera d’Or 2023), Tomorrow is a Long Time by Jow Zhi Wei (Berlinale 2023), Last Shadow at First Light by Nicole Midori Woodford (San Sebastian 2023), Autobiography by Makbul Mubarak (FIPRESCI Venice 2022), Glorious Ashes by Bui Thac Chuyen (Nantes Golden Balloon 2022), Rehana Maryam Noor by Abdullah Mohammad Saad (Cannes UCR 2021), A Family Tour by Ying Liang (Opening Film International Competition Locarno 2018), A Yellow Bird by K. Rajagopal (Cannes Critics’ Week 2016) and A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery by Lav Diaz (Silver Bear Berlinale 2016). He is an alumnus of EAVE Ties That Bind 2013, Produire au sud 2015, Berlinale Talents 2017, SEAFIC 2017 and Torino Film Lab 2018. He is also a programmer at Pingyao International Film Festival under Jia Zhangke and Marco Mueller since 2017.
NYFA Youth Inspiration Award Recipient Message
Looking at a blank page while thinking of what to write in this note, all I recall is what Hermann Hesse wrote in Siddhartha (where Siddhartha and Govinda discuss nirvana), “Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish. And yet it also pleases me and seems right that what is of value and wisdom to one man seems nonsense to another.”
And somehow this process of writing a message to NYFA about inspiration has become a corporeal exploration of my humanity and philosophy, experienced on a lovely vacation in Lisboa, Portugal, as time passes through my entire body dealing with feelings in friction with thoughts and then words; since 11:30am in the morning when I turned on my laptop until now, 4:20am hours later. In between, I had been introduced to a city that wears time on its sleeve, where architecture, nature, flavour, divine pilgrimages, sloped tramways, and virtuosic guitar plucking are steeped in history (and most certainly, inspiration). As my taxi passed Pedro Costa’s penthouse near the majestic Castelo de São Jorge, I recall Le reste est ombre, his pitch black exhibition with sculptor Rui Chafes and photographer Paulo Nozolino I saw a few months ago at the Centre Pompidou. It was one of the last times I came into battle with inspiration, the whole episode of which is now impossible to describe, albeit also impossible to forget. I recognise that whatever inspiration I seem to be projecting is merely external, and at this stage of my life, my métier, this cannot by any measure be close to a pinnacle. I need time, maybe even a lifetime. There is still so much to mature, to master, and refine of my work.
I wonder, while snacking on midnight macadamias, if I have just accidentally stumbled into a deep, crippling existential crisis. Here I am, a tourist, a sponge, surrounded by an ancient chaotic magic in a bustling ville of modernity. Inspiration abounds. Yet behind a window decorated with azulejos on the second floor, slouched on my desk, the Tagus softly rages in the distance, and I’m simply unraveling. A revelation dawns, that the wiser I have become is only to how much I know about my growing dissatisfaction, and how little I know about anything else at all. The inspiration, and the torment, two sides of the proverbial coin that comprises any journey, creative, philosophical or otherwise.
I can’t explain, I don’t intend to try. I just know that I must be fearless of the torment, and everything is going to be okay. Lisboa was not built in a day. I think to myself that I must be a hero in a movie, and luckily, all I have is time.
Jeremy Chua
Recipient
NYFA Youth Inspiration Award 2023
