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Singapore's 1st indie feature film by a disabled team!! (Guest Blog)

Introduction

Hey guys! I’m Reena Deen, a disabled filmmaker with CPTSD & Dyslexia from Singapore. I would love to share the story of how I gathered cast and crew with disabilities to make my country’s 1st indie feature film by a disabled team. Our film features lead actresses who are hard of hearing and/or has partial blindness and features supporting cast and worked with crew who has cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, ADHD, ADD, Charcot-Marie Tooth and autism. We couldn’t even get a grant because there is none for disability filmmaking in Singapore, so I used 4,436GBP of my savings for the film. I am happy to announce that after two years and numerous obstacles, The Damned Ones, a 1hr 42 min, psychological mystery in the vein of Gone Girl and Babadook, is ready to hit film festivals!

Let me give you some background of how life for the disabled is like in Singapore before describing our filmmaking journey.

Stigma surrounding disability in Singapore

Singapore is a rich, tiny, tropical island city in Southeast Asia which is multi-cultural & multi-religious. Unfortunately, despite our country’s tolerance and acceptance of different races & religions, we are not very accepting of disability. We are mostly Asians here (Chinese, Malays, Indians, Eurasians e.t.c) and Asian culture stigmatizes disability. It is often viewed as a karmic punishment or God’s will.

This is why despite the amazing physical accommodations for the disabled here (lifts & ramps in almost all public places, braille lettering in lifts, wheelchair berths in most public buses etc), the social acceptance is still lacking. Many in the disabled community, despite being graduates, cannot find work. Sadly, there is little the government can do because this idea that disability is bad, burdensome and/or a sin is deeply ingrained in our culture.

If prospects in the general work industry are miserable for us disabled folks in Singapore, you can imagine how much worse it will be in the film industry. There are so many talented disabled cast and crew who can’t even get one gig.

Why I made the film.

And this is why I decided that instead of waiting for someone to give me a chance to write a script or to direct a film or to even act, I rather create my own opportunity and create a chance for other disabled people like me.

I wanted to make a film with people with disabilities playing disabled characters for an honest and authentic portrayal. I also didn't want the story to center around their disabilities. In this film, the characters are just regular folks. Their disability isn't a superpower or a gift that can magically save the day. And their whole life and personality is not about being disabled. This doesn’t mean their disability and struggles are erased in the film, but it is not central to the story.

How the team came together.

I used a community filmmaking group called Kino Red Dot, which is where I learned filmmaking from, to gather my cast and crew. Some of the members in this group have disabilities and they jumped at the opportunity. Soon, news spread and others who were not in Kino Red Dot reached out to me. By the way, feel free to watch the 3min short film link below which shows how we came together to make the film!

The cast and crew volunteered their time because they believed in the project. This is why I am currently working hard to prepare the film for film festival submissions. My hope is to get into some prestigious festivals where a distributor will buy the film. This way, all of us can get paid!

Challenges and how we overcame them.

We started filming in June 2023 and the past two years have been wrought with challenges. Since, I was using only my savings, there was always the stress and fear that the money will run out and filming will be canceled. Though I didn’t have to pay the cast/crew for their time, their two-way cabs, meals had to be taken care off. Furthermore, props, clothes etc also cost money. The main filming was from June 2023 to August 2023. By the end of July, I had run out of my savings and was using my salary to cover costs. By a miracle, the main filming was completed without much hiccups by end August 2023. However, we did continue filming some minor sequences from 2023 till this year. I did this because as I started editing, whenever I felt like additional shots or scenes were needed, I filmed them.

The second biggest challenge was the lack of accessible shooting locations. In the beginning, I approached a few locations. These were organizations which had both indoor spaces as well as outdoors like gardens, mini parks etc. These were perfect because I could shoot both my indoor and outdoor scenes here. The garden/mini parks could resemble a forest with some clever and cheap set design. The originations were enthusiastic to support the film until they learned that my cast/crew had disabilities. Then, they backed out citing risk management.

It was a huge blow to me initially. It made me paranoid that if anyone caught us filming outdoors, they might chase us away citing risk management. To overcome these issues, I rewrote the script so that most scenes took place indoors.

For the outdoor scenes, I scouted for weeks before finding locations which had accessible toilets open to public. During these outdoor shoots, I was always worried that we would be chased away. To be fair, it was legal to film in these places but we did not have an official permit so staff could chase us away if they wanted to.

The weather was also unpredictable. Singapore is tropical, so the sunny weather can suddenly turn into thunderstorms. We had to cancel film shoots and occasionally shoot in the rain because of this. There was also no way to be certain of the weather which meant that we often had to play it by the ear when it came to filming locations.

Although dealing with all this unpredictability was in a way a good form of exposure therapy for my CPTSD, it also made it flare up. It was a good thing I had my therapist as well as my homeopathic doctor to help me through this phase. My team was also incredibly supportive which helped me though this tough time.

There’s also loads of good news that happened over the two years as well. After the filming for the feature was done, I did two mini-documentary dramas that detailed our feature filmmaking journey. These won awards and landed us a 3,000 GBP sponsorship that helped to cover postproduction costs.

We also gained a lot of publicity with many local newspapers writing about us. This brought our project to light, and many people stepped forward to help. That’s how we met our editor, Greg Tay, who is veteran editor who works on local TV shows and dramas. He kindly offered to help us complete postproduction at pro bono rates. Creepy Duck, a famous Hollywood poster designer as well as Alex Oh a well-known composer and engineer, also came on board our film to assist us.

We began to get publicity from overseas too! Rue Morgue, the largest horror film magazine, in Canada, wrote a feature on us for the 2025 spring issue!

I also met Warren Sheldon who is both a supporting cast member and a staunch champion of the film. He has Charcot-Marie Tooth, a rare genetic disease, which affects his nerves, muscles and motor functions. He encouraged me to start a fund raiser campaign to help with the remaining costs of the film such as film festival submissions, marketing and accessibility aids like open captions etc. Singapore’s disability community which includes our allies contributed more than 6,000 GBP.

This is why I feel that our feature film is truly the collective effort of Singapore’s disabled community because all of us rallied together, pouring in our time, money, effort and resources. Together, we made the impossible possible. We created an amazing indie film with disabled cast and crew on an ultra-low budget without grants and studio support.

Regards


Reena Deen( Zareena Nazimudeen)






 
 
 

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