Life abounds in DIY music. Random people produce random sounds. A quirky play on the universal rhythm and inherent musicality of our moods.

Cut is a humorous satire. At the supermarket, a movie-goer recognises the woman who sits on the Censorship Board, whereupon he launches into detailed tirade, a hilarious rant against authority.

One winter, a monkey in Japan lost his heart to a rabbit. Monkey Love is an exploration of the absurdities and emotional torture that come with falling in love.

Sons: who should be faulted when a son fails to love his father’father or son? A monologue told by an aging father who fails to kindle a connection with his son, Tan captures life’s melodramas in the regret of a father.

New York Girl is realist tract, summoning facets of the young yuppie Singaporean’hodgepodge of pretentious mimicry, ambition and cynicism; all reflected by one actress’s casting call.

Hock Hiap Leong: to pay homage to a local eatery soon to be demolished, a colourful musical of the ’60s is evoked.

A man in love must sing to profess his love, Patrick is told. But Patrick sings so modestly, he cannot be heard. Careless Whisperer is a humorous piece on a man whose love is so gentle- that if love were expressed through song, it won’t hurt to be loved.

Tan’s latest film 4:30, which departs in terms of style and controversy, is a quiet film of urban isolation; observing the mundane, lonely existence of 11-year-old Xiao Wu who becomes fascinated with his equally melancholic tenant, 31-year-old Jung. Their relationship is laced with deliberate ambiguity, fusing imagination, a father’son connection and homoerotic tension into one. ‘I try to portray a human side to Singapore,’ says Tan, ‘which is not all synthetic and unreal.

‘Everyday something old that is part of our heritage is destroyed in Singapore,’ Tan says; hence his drive to ‘immortalise’ these images. Indeed 4:30 is crammed with the authentic’each scene a carefully composed mise en sc‚àöÔøΩne of the old. From the collapsible garment wardrobe, the ubiquitous green Telecom phone in the ’70s to the ice cream motor cart, early Singapore is showcased with nostalgia.

Born in 1976, Royston is perhaps not a relic, but draws his acumen for the old from traditional Chinese Wayang (Street Opera). Watching theatre, what he fails to decipher inspires him, he said; and it might be argued that the unique style of MTV editing prominent in Tan’s works, in fact, pays homage to this vanishing street spectacle.

Tan professes colours excited him, ‘Every word translates into a visual for me.’ It was one sentence that triggered his first feature-length film 15. ‘It won’t hurt if you don’t think about it.’ This single sentence was translated by him into a gritty social documentary of Singapore’s problem youth; a film that received a total of 29 cuts from the Censorship Board and was subsequently banned nationally. This was followed closely by Cut, Tan’s token protest to censorship, which activated some 15-hundred artists from the around the country, contributing to a humorous satire of Singapore censorship laws.

‘The censors are paid so much that you have to torture them a littleÔøΩƒ∂’ says Tan. ‘It’s really funny when you see their censorship surveys’ÔøΩÔøΩDo you think the violence affects the community? Yes/No,’ ‘Do you think sex is bad? Yes/No.’ÔøΩÔøΩ

A man for whom the grey regions between black and white ‘have always been’, Tan had lived on the periphery of the lives of his young charges in 15, withholding his judgement as he befriended them. ‘If I ever had a secret agenda for the film, it would be to show them what they’ve experienced,’ Tan says.

For Tan, who believes that art mirrors life, the big screen is a cathartic reflection for the realist in him. ‘Maybe I am not a very happy person, that’s why I seek comfort in film-making’to portray harsh reality and then be able to sugar-coat itÔøΩƒ∂ It gives me a second chance at life.’

Being an icon of rebellion or a harbinger of artistic freedom are only temporal labels to Tan. The label of the ‘Asian Hero’, it seems, ultimately appeals less to him than his identity as a Singaporean. ‘My works are a reflection of the way I see Singapore and of the things I believe in,’ he says, ‘I won’t be tamed.’

Antonio’s desperation is matched in The Substitute, where a young female army clerk’s her freedom depends’by a cruel twist of fate’on her suicidal substitute.

The best spiel on desperation belongs to Cow Tipping. Caught in a bid to impress the girl and the respect of his brother Menke, Jan needs to best his brother. In a convincing portrayal of the rebellious desperation of children pushing the envelopes of adulthood, Cow Tipping lucks out on the hallmark of desperation’its fleeting and temporal nature.

LONLINESS. Booth Story, Supermarket Love Song and Home chronicle loneliness. In the first, a lonely car park attendant becomes obsessed with the hatching of an egg he finds. Then, a dignified pensioner reveals a penchant for his amorous past. Finally in Home, another old man returns home one day to find that everything has changed.

Home is a splendid story of a man who thinks his house is being robbed. The six-minute noir-style thriller ends with a sad surprise.

ABANDONMENT. Cotopaxi blurs the line between the real and the made-up. In shaky handheld cameras and a constant awareness of the camera’s form ala reality TV, this UK production sees Alistar return to the hippy commune in which he grew up to confront his deepest childhood fears of abandonment.

But abandonment is still told best by a child, and this child is Lucky’the plucky AIDS orphan who moves into the city in hopes of a better life. Lucky is composed of moments of loss and abandonment, but this little hero passes each trial with flying colours.