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INTERVIEW: Crew behind Singapore Skinhead documentary

By on June 4, 2017

About a week ago we put up a post of this cool documentary about the Singapore skinhead scene and the post took off like wildfire! So we thought it’d be a good idea to approach the crew behind the documentary to share a little bit of the background of how all of this came together.

If you haven’t seen the initial post hit it up here:

https://uniteasia.org/super-rad-video-documentary-skinhead-scene-singapore/

Hey Aishah! You all did such an amazing job on this documentary! 
Hey! First off thank you so much for your interest in our film as well as putting it up on your site, words can’t even properly express how blown away and grateful my crew and I are.

Give us a little background to this project. We heard it was actually a school project which made putting this post up even more important to us!
Currently, my crew and I are pursuing a diploma in Digital Film and Television at Temasek Polytechnic in Singapore, and in our second year we were required to produce a documentary as one of the major projects. Students had to come up with ideas for documentaries and mine, fortunately enough, was chosen to be produced.

How did you decide on this particular topic? Singapore has a LOT of different subculture cliques – how did you settle on documenting the OI scene?
Some of my friends are Skinheads, and because of this I’ve always been intrigued by how, even in a conservative society like Singapore, there are pockets of individuals who go against the norm, and kinda just march to the beat of their own drum. I also just think it’s cool how there is so much history and meaning behind these subcultures, which is, unfortunately, often misconstrued by mainstream media. So naturally, when I wanted to do something on the underground scene here, I gravitated towards this particular subculture.

Were you apprehensive at all approaching anyone in the community to get the interviews done etc? I know how daunting it can be for students to approach bands etc?
Initially, it was a challenge for us because other than a few of my friends in the scene, we didn’t know who else to interview. While surfing the net, one of our crew members, Cherlyn, came across this article about a Skinbyrd in Singapore called Nameera, and we contacted her. Huge shout out to her because she really helped us a lot, from letting us interview her friends who are Skinheads to bringing us to a gig to get footage. And yes, being a student and all, I was definitely apprehensive approaching people for interviews but it was all good, everyone we interviewed was really nice and helpful!  I really don’t think we’d be anywhere if it wasn’t for the help and support of everyone featured in the film.

What’s next for you guys? What are you hoping to do next since clearly you killed it with this?
Haha we’re very thankful and humbled that you feel that way  we definitely were not expecting such a response since the video was published mainly for our interviewees. Currently we’re all working on our final year projects before we graduate, but maybe we’ll band together again and produce similar content in the near future!

UniteAsia.org is an underground Asian music news website created for the sole purpose of supporting our own world. We support all bands and genres HOWEVER we do not support nor have any sympathy for homophobic, racist, sexist rhetoric in lyrical content or band material. UNITE ASIA!
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