The Violin
-Animation
Director: Ervin Han
Length: 16min 34secs
Language: -
Subtitle: -
Completed date: 2015
Circa late 1930s, Boat Quay, Singapore. A young boy receives an old violin as a gift out of kindness from a foreign trader. It becomes a treasured possession as he teaches himself to play the instrument over several years, until it was lost during the Japanese Occupation of Singapore. After the war, the violin was found by a man working for the British Military Administration and given to his young daughter. The girl learns to play it and becomes a renowned violinist over the decades. She eventually passes the instrument on to her grandson, an accomplished violinist himself, who restores it and performs in a concert by the Singapore River, where the violin started its unexpected journey nearly 80 years ago. Over the 16-minute film, the violin graces different stages of Singapore - both figuratively and literally – as we see a young country's landscape change from the bustling 1930s to the dark days of the Japanese Occupation, followed by the sweeping political changes in the 60s that led to its independence and finally, present day.
Director: Ervin Han
Writer: Ervin Han
Producer: Ervin Han, Bernard Toh
Editor: Ervin Han
Film Festival Awards:
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17th Digicon6 Asia (Singapore) - Gold Award
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2016 Apollo Awards - Best 2D Animation
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2016 Apollo Awards - Best Musical Composition (Full length)
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2016 World International Film Festival - Official Selection
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2016 Bali International Film Festival - Official Selection
Film Festivals Appearances:
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DigiCon6 (Tokyo Broadcasting System);
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Rewind/Remind Film Festival (Singapore Memory Project)
About the filmmaker
Ervin Han has always loved animation and watched a ton of Looney Tunes, Hanna-Barbera, 80s boys action toons and the Disney classics growing up. But it was during his time in university when he discovered the films of Studio Ghibli that got me really interested in animated storytelling.
Ervin Han thinks every person who sees the film would derive his or her own meaning from it. The story and its presentation might evoke both different and communal feelings about a variety of things, whether it’s Singapore as a country or home, our forefathers, our relationship with the country’s ever-changing urban landscape, and so on. In the end, it’s really a love letter to Singapore, albeit one without words.
