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“To Say Goodbye” is part of a compilation of 7 short films that Tan Chui Mui has written, directed and edited, and which she calls “All My Failed Attempts”. She shot one every month in 2008, while developing her second feature film, “Year Without a Summer”

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The movie begins with Berg, a young man, smoking, while, Fei, a girl is calling his name, asking him to open the door while yelling that she loves him. Eventually she comes in, stating that it is her birthday, but he does not seem to care, or for her in particular. Instead of reacting to her, he continues using his pen nervously on something that looks like a sketch. She is obviously dressed up, in a red dress, and she keeps walking around his room, while he tries to constrain his nerves, by ignoring her. Nothing seems to phase her though...

One of the greatest aspects of cinema, making it distinct from other media, is the fact it can capture time. While the Brothers Lumiere already emphasized this point with their first films showing the arrivals of trains at local stations, perhaps no one else has explained the relationship of time and cinema better than Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky in his masterful essay “Sculpting in Time”. Film, similar to photography, is capable of capturing a certain moment in time, but can also reproduce it as much as the viewer likes. Given this ability, we as the audience are able to re-live and contemplate on the moment, resulting in the possibility of film changing our way of thinking and our lives. While most certainly not every director follows these principles as highlighting the entertainment aspects of the medium is much more profitable, there are those who have managed to test and to...