Master of Ceremonies, Helen Ho with Lilian Soon backstage. Courtesy of Mark Langer.

A Man's Tale by Ivan Chua. (Temasek Polytechnic) Courtesy of the Singapore Animation Fiesta.

An island located a 100 miles north of the equator may seem like an unlikely place to hold an animation festival, but when I received an invitation to attend the Animation Fiesta in Singapore on June 15-16, I jumped at the chance. It had snowed in my hometown of Ottawa, Canada as late as May and a tropical escape seemed ideal. My ideas about Singapore were derived from novels set in Britain's colonial Far East by people like Somerset Maugham and Rudyard Kipling. Edward Said would undoubtedly disapprove, but I fantasized shooting tigers from my seat in Raffles' Long Bar, or consuming Singapore Slings in a seedy tavern with Burmese-based White Russian traders and Imperial Japanese agents working out an opium-for-arms deal behind beaded curtains. Next to us, a malarial British Vice-Consul in a rumpled white linen suit would be drinking himself to death while upstairs his wife would be committing adultery under mosquito netting with someone wearing a fez. Rain would fall endlessly on Chinese junks docking at the wharf outside. What surprises must lie in store for the traveller to the perfumed port city of Singapore, I thought.

After 36 hours of travel (including an unscheduled stop in Hong Kong due to a missed connection), jet-lagged but happy, I sat at Raffles' Long Bar amid dozens of other naive tourists. The biggest surprise was the $18.50 cost of a Singapore Sling. It has been a few years since someone shot a tiger in the Long Bar and the mosquito netting was taken down long ago. Singapore is a cosmopolitan city of 3 million where restaurants hawking "Clay Pot Live Frog" or "Pig's Organ Soup" stand cheek by jowl with McDonald's and Arby's fast food outlets. Traditional Peranakan architecture is vanishing beneath modern high rises. Standing on the corner of Ganges Road and Zion Street (near the confluence of Synagogue and Church Streets), listening to passersby speaking in Mandarin, Teochew, Malay, Hakka, Hainanese, Hokkien, Cantonese, Tamil, English and the local variant, Singlish, the vibrant multicultural atmosphere of the city impressed me. As one of the economic powerhouses of Asia and a crossroads of the world, with a small but growing animation scene, Singapore is an ideal location for an international animation festival.

A Fringe Event
The Animation Fiesta was a fringe event of the biennial Singapore Arts Festival. The impetus for this first animation festival in Singapore came from Dr. N. Varaprasad, Principal and CEO of Temasek Polytechnic. On learning that Temasek cultural studies lecturer Gigi Hu was planning to attend the 1994 Cardiff International Animation Festival, Varaprasad suggested that one be started locally. The event was organized by Hu and animation instructor Lilian Soon, supported by Temasek, the National Arts Council of Singapore and a variety of embassies, high commissions and private corporations. The challenge of coordinating such an event, and of educating the local public about the nature of animation was formidable, but was well met by the organizers. The result was a lively two day long event held in a charmingly restored Victorian-era theater within the Raffles Hotel complex. Guests of the festival were lodged at the nearby Penninsula Hotel in the colonial heart of the city near such architectural gems as Raffles, St. Andrew's Church, and the National Museum and Art Gallery, and conveniently close to picturesque areas of the city like Little India, Chinatown and Arab Street.