By Woo Wei Ling
We die how we live—that is one of the subtexts of the new documentary Bukit Brown Voices. The film opens with shots of densely packed HDB blocks, and ends with footage of Mandai Columbarium, where a family cremates a relative’s exhumed remains; tiny cubicles for the living and the dead respectively are stacked in seemingly endless and sterile geometric constructions, mirroring each other. But between these filmic bookends, the star of the film is Bukit Brown, the 200-hectare, jungle-like Chinese cemetery located in the heart of Singapore’s urban cityscape.
Today marks the start of Qing Ming and the final tomb-sweeping festival before nearly 4000 graves are officially exhumed at the cemetery to make way for an 8-lane expressway, which will change the landscape of Singapore’s oldest Chinese cemetery—and the largest outside of China—forever. One year ago, filmmakers Brian McDairmant and Su-Mae Khoo sought to capture the last graveside tomb-sweeping rituals for some families who would be affected by the exhumation order, and the resultant footage became Bukit Brown Voices.
The film evokes a burial ground for the dead that is literally bursting with life. Ancient rain trees laden with ferns and vines stand watch like sentries over graves, roots encircle the necks of stone lions, spiders scuttle across their webs, and every surface bristles with ants. The film’s soundtrack is the voice of the woodland: the constant hum of birdsong and the whining throb of cicadas. Shot after shot demonstrates the filmmakers revelling in the sheer beauty of their surroundings, yet the slow-motion panning shots never feel tiresome. It is the ever-changing quality of the light that makes Bukit Brown such an evocative and highly atmosphere place, and McDairmant and Khoo capture it gorgeously. We see light rays shining through the early morning mist and foliage, the sunlight reflecting off wet vegetation after a rainstorm, light streaking through drifts of smoke. Although the graves are hauntingly still, it is evident that the landscape itself is in a state of constant regeneration. The undergrowth creeps back every year to reclaim the graves as part of the land, despite family members’ best efforts to keep the graves neat and tidy.
One of the documentary’s greatest strengths is its quiet observational mode of filming. Eschewing a more political slant, the filmmakers neither narrate nor appear onscreen. Instead, they allow the families of the buried to speak for themselves, voicing their deep sense of duty and connection to the burial ground, as well as their resignation over the impending exhumations. For those of who grew up visiting columbaria to pay occasional respects to grandparents, the interviews are eye-opening: informative about traditional rituals, and documenting a way of life that is quickly passing into history before our eyes.
The interviewed families appear candid, friendly and open onscreen, speaking with natural ease as they explain the significance of rituals such as laying squares of coloured paper on the grave mounds, or how to use red divining horns to see if an ancestor has finished eating the offerings. Apparently, during filming, some people switched to speaking English when they saw McDairmant, who is Scottish, behind the camera because they were anxious for a foreigner to understand why they were carrying out specific rituals.
Interviews were conducted spontaneously and in situ. According to Khoo, who is from Singapore and runs the production company Two Chiefs with McDairmant, she knew some families who would be visiting their ancestor’s graves during Qing Ming and had asked for permission to film them. But after being repeatedly turned down or not getting a response, the filmmakers switched tactics; they decided to wait each morning for families to arrive with their cleaning gear and offerings. “Su-Mae would approach them and sometimes we would run uphill with all our gear, to catch a family that we thought looked interesting,” says McDairmant, who worked as a cameraman for the BBC’s Natural History Unit for many years. They were turned down only once—interestingly, by a younger couple. “We found that most of the older people were not only happy to be filmed, but took pride in explaining the significance of their rites,” says Khoo.
Although the 45-minute film is well worth watching, you would be hard-pressed to find a screening. So far, the film has been shown only once to the public—premiering on 20 January as part of an all-day exhibition, panel and celebration of Bukit Brown. The filmmakers are planning to submit it to various film festivals over the course of this year and see if distributors express interest in picking up the film. By the time you wait to see Bukit Brown Voices, however, it might have transitioned from documentary to archive, the place it captures already a memory.
Qing Ming starts today, and if you visit Bukit Brown, you could well see some of the families and rituals that McDairmant and Khoo capture on film for yourself. This perhaps, is what the filmmakers most want audiences to keep in mind. “Lots of Singaporeans pay money to travel to Cambodia to visit Angkor Wat, for example—it’s beautiful and amazing,” says Khoo. “[But] we have our own little Angkor Wat here in Singapore and an 8-lane highway is going to be built through it. That’s pretty unbelievable, don’t you think?”
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Watch the trailer here: Trailer: Bukit Brown Voices from Two Chiefs on Vimeo.