Some Women

Some Women was a 2021 feature documentary produced by transwoman freelance film director, writer and producer Quen Wong.

Her first foray into the genre, the film traced her own trajectory from 'living in stealth' to finding pride, love and community. It touched with bracing honesty upon her journey as a transgender woman in Singapore - from her days as a teenage boy coming out to her uncommonly supportive family, to the present as a woman about to marry the love of her life. Locating herself within the local trangender community, the documentary also weaved in interviews with different generations of transwomen including Anita, a former legend of Bugis Street, a world-famous stomping ground for transwomen from the 1950s to the 1980s, and Lune Loh, a trans youth activist.

The movie was made with the support of the Tan Ean Kiam Foundation – SGIFF Southeast Asian Documentary Grant (SEADOC) scheme in 2019 and the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) project award at Docs by the Sea in 2020.

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It premiered on Saturday, 4 December 2021 during the 32nd Singapore International Film Festival which began in November 2021 and was screened at Carnival Cinemas Singapore located in Golden Mile Tower. The following photos of the premiere were shot by writer Ng Yi-Sheng:



The documentary won the Audience Choice Award at the film festival, which earned it an encore screening at Filmgarde Bugis+ at 6:30pm on 5 December 2021. Doubtless, the queer vote played a powerful part in clinching it and activists hoped to get movie into mainstream cinemas. Wong remarked: "We are here, and we have been here forever, and I hope this film can be a document of that."

Film and theatre director, producer and activist Glen Goei was a co-producer of the film which took four years to make. At the time, the queer and transgender communities in Singapore had been marginalised by a prevailingly conservative and paternalistic culture but it did not mean that they must stay silent or remain unseen.

The prime focus of the movie was on Wong who, on the verge of getting hitched at the age 46 years, decided to come out of her stealth mode. It encompassed not only her own transition, but also her fiance's cancer diagnosis and treatment, and their wedding. However, it also stretched out to connect with two other generations of transwomen - Sanisa, (known as Anita to her peers and clients) a former sex worker from Bugis Street typified the older, while transwoman activist Lune Loh, who was lesbian and had opted not to pursue medical interventions, exemplified the younger, feistier one. It touched on the activism surrounding transgender schoolgirl Ashlee in 2021 but some in the audience felt it a little strange and disconcerting that the film's last glimpse of Loh is of her being led into a police van because after the film was completed, Loh only received a 12-month conditional warning. Using a mix of new footage and archival material, Some Women unearthed some of the buried queer history of Singapore’s Bugis district during its heyday and the political consciousness of a frustrated Gen Z. The film showed how gender identities that did not conform with so-called norms had always existed, but remained erased. And by turning the camera on her hidden self, Wong laid claim to a lost sense of agency.

Middle-class and middle-aged Wong said she did not have an immediate need to rock the boat. “My story reflects the experience of many middle-class trans people coming of age during the 1980s who, like me, were quite happy to blend in with the crowd. We were focused on making our own lives better,” she elaborated. “For most trans folks, that means being able to get on with our lives and not be singled out. But, I realized there was a feeling of shame about revealing my whole journey as a trans person. Unlike many stories about trans people portrayed in the media, I have love, family and career. So why was I still in hiding?,” she asked.

“The stigma we face can be seen by our institutional erasure from mainstream media, school sex education programs and bureaucracies that will not recognise a person’s gender identity other than what they see marked on their paperwork,” Wong lamented. “A case of trans discrimination in school in this internet age forcibly reminds us that much of that erasure remains despite Singapore’s developed nation status. Many trans people in Asia are forced to choose to remain invisible for their own safety and mental wellbeing.”



Wong took her camera and her smartphone into the streets. “We made technical choices to achieve a cinematic feel, such as favoring prime lenses with shallower depths of field, achieving a poeticism of composition and keeping the camera still for locked-down shots as opposed to the feel of a handheld camera.,” she explained. The archive footage wa a mix of public historical records as well as some less cinematic iPhone-footage or personal diaries that gave access to Wong’s more private and contemplative moments. A prominent use of voice-over borrowed from the ‘confessional’ story-telling style, lending and gavee the film a more personal and intimate feel. Wong said she did not originally intend to be at the centre of the film, but decided on the strategy after asking herself if she “had the right to make this one if I didn’t have the courage to also appear in it.”

Goei, whose directing credits included Forever Fever and The Blue Mansion, had created a series of original, feature documentaries giving voice to marginalised communities in Southeast Asia. The first was I Dream of Singapore, an observational documentary about migrant workers who became casualties from workplace-related accidents. It premiered internationally and in competition at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2020. Some Women was the second in the series produced by his film company Tiger Tiger Pictures.

=See also=
 * Quen Wong
 * Singapore LGBT films
 * Transgender people in Singapore
 * Bugis Street: transgender aspects

=References=
 * https://variety.com/2021/film/asia/some-women-singapores-unseen-transgender-history-1235121811/
 * https://sg.style.yahoo.com/sgiff-premiere-women-focuses-singapore-000245147.html
 * https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10106083996224592&set=pcb.10106083996324392

=Acknowledgements=

This article was written by Roy Tan.