Purin Pictures Unveils Grants, Warns of Coronavirus Disruption to Asia Film Production

By Patrick Frater

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Two feature film projects and three documentaries are to receive grant funding from the Bangkok-based Purin Pictures fund. Unusually, the fund made no post-production disbursements.

Receiving $15,000 each, the three features are: Indonesian director Mouly Surya’s “This City Is A Battlefield”; and The Maw Naing’s “The Women,” a Myanmar-set drama about a female protest movement.

Collecting $15,000 each, the documentaries are Singapore director Chan Sze Wai’s “I Am Walking”; Miko Revereza’s experimental documentary “Nowhere Near,” about a film director returning to his native Philippines; and “A Man Like Me,” a portrait of writer Yeng Pway Ngon, directed by Singapore’s Jiekai Liao.

“If there was a common theme we saw across many of the applications, it was the struggle of the marginalized against the mainstream and the exploited against the powerful. It’s interesting how the effects of widening inequality in many Southeast Asian countries is finding its way into our films,” said Purin co-director Aditya Assarat.

In the current funding round, the number of applications for post-production finance dropped, reflecting how the coronavirus outbreak has disrupted film production. Purin therefore decided to make no post- awards and increase to five the number of feature-length works it supports.

The non-profit organization said that it expects the virus outbreak to weigh on the rest of the year. Projects that it has previously supported have been postponed. So too has Purin’s Southeast Asia film conference, Roundtable, due to have taken place in Bangkok in early July.