C.W. Post Professor's Feature Film Gains Increasing International Accolades

A film written and directed by an assistant professor at the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University is racking up awards at prestigious international film festivals.

Dr. Yen Yen Woo, who teaches in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction in the C.W. Post School of Education, developed the idea for her film, "Singapore Dreaming," as she taught a course in Curriculum Development at the C.W. Post Campus. She wrote, directed and produced the film with her husband, Colin Goh. Singapore Dreaming is a poignant yet darkly humorous story about a typical Singaporean family coming to grips with their aspirations, which entertainment magazine Variety describes as, "a graceful satire on Western capitalism in the East."

To date, Woo and Goh have won the Montblanc New Screenwriters Award at the 54th Annual San Sebastian International Film Festival, one of Europe’s top festivals. This is the first time that a Singaporean has won such an award. "Singapore Dreaming” also garnered the Audience Award for Narrative Feature at the Asian-American International Film Festival in New York this summer. The San Francisco International Film Festival says Woo's film “recalls the early films of Ang Lee" and is "a quiet wonder that bodes well for another cinematic renaissance in the East".

Later this month, October 2007, Woo is set to take part in the prestigious Women Make Waves Film Festival in Taiwan, at which "Singapore Dreaming" will be the closing film. It will also be competing for the Best Asian/Middle Eastern Film Award at the Tokyo International Film Festival on October 23. Additionally, Woo's film will be featured as the Singapore representative in the Smithsonian Institution's New Films from Southeast Asia Series at the 2007 U.S. Asian Film Festival October 28 in Washington, D.C.

"Singapore Dreaming" also will become available to more than 28 million U.S. households on December 1, when satellite channel LinkTV broadcasts it as part of the CineMondo series hosted by Tribeca Film Festival Executive Director Peter Scarlet.

A native of Singapore, Woo joined the faculty of C.W. Post in 2004 following her graduation from Teachers College, Columbia University, with a doctorate in Curriculum Studies. Prior to that, she spent some time in Afghanistan as a curriculum consultant to the Afghan Ministry of Education, as part of a UNICEF mission to aid in its textbook re-writing efforts.

To find out more about the film, visit www.singaporedreaming.com.

Posted: October 17, 2007