A Man like Me
A FILM BY Jiekai Liao
PRODUCTION GRANT - SPRING 2020
This documentary film is a portrait of writer Yeng Pway Ngon, as seen through his debut novel "A Man Like Me" (1987) and his last novel "The Colour of Sunset" (2019). Winner of the Cultural Medallion, the highest accolade awarded to Singaporean artists, Yeng is a giant in Singaporean Chinese literature. His novels have always been semi-autobiographical; from idealistic bookshop owners to struggling writers, Yeng’s protagonists are intimately drawn from his personal experiences as a writer and former bookshop owner.
In the Singaporean heartlands of Bishan, which is the primary setting of "The Colour of Sunset", Yeng goes about his mundane activity of daily walks, meetups with friends at coffee-shops and monthly check-ups at the hospital. These activities mirrored the life of Ming Wei the elderly writer in "The Colour of Sunset", who struggled with pains of old age and solitude of a widower. The disciplined routine repeats itself over the course of two more days as life becomes a rhythm, and through it we carefully observe the passing of time and the minute changes in the mind and body of the frail author who is suffering from terminal illness. With the addition of audio re-enactments of selected scenes from "The Colour of Sunset" and the protagonist of "A Man like Me" played by an actor, an intimate portrait of an ailing writer in the twilight of his life emerges between the worlds of fiction and reality.