So 'touching', it makes US editor cry

It was so touching, it made the editor of HuffPost Good News tearful.

No surprise then that local short film Gift managed to go viral beyond Singapore and attract 400,000 views on YouTube since the sub-section of US online news site The Huffington Post wrote about it last Tuesday.

The moving seven-minute film tells of the fraught relationship between a poor man and his neglected and resentful young son. The boy grows up and learns after his father's death that his earlier absence had to do with showing kindness and generosity to the less fortunate.

Gift was released earlier this year on video-sharing platform Viddsee, a Singapore company that curates short films from South-east Asia.

It has become its most-viewed short film so far, out of more than 300 on their site, said co-founder Derek Tan.

This was after Mr Tan successfully pitched the possibility of a feature on Gift to a friend working at the Huffington Post. The friend was the one who told him about the editor's teary reaction.

The HuffPost Good News wrote of Gift: "It shouldn't take a seven-minute video to make us appreciate what our parents do for us, but we've found one anyway... It's a simple reminder to not judge a book - or a dad - by the cover."

Said Mr Tan: "Our server crashed last Thursday after viewership soared past 100,000, as the Viddsee platform wasn't ready to handle such a huge load."

The following day, his team uploaded Gift onto YouTube.

Some of the mostly positive comments that netizens posted described the clip as "beautiful" and "touching"."

'GOOD MESSAGE'

The film's director, Daniel Yam, 40, said: "When we made the film (last October), we were hoping that more people would see it because it carries a good message about volunteering."

Gift was made as a project for The Community Chest of Singapore, a non-profit organisation that channels resources to social services, to raise donations and promote volunteerism.

Mr Yam, who has been in the short film industry for the last 15 years creating mostly corporate videos for his production company The Creative Room, added: "We thought of a different way to create a story that could impart the value of The Community Chest, which is essentially to care and share."

Said actor Michael Chua, 53, who played the father in Gift, of his role: "It required a huge range of emotions and it's quite a mix of everything."

He said he has received comments on his Facebook page from Indonesia, Thailand, Germany and even Russia about Gift, and gets "a lot of people quoting my famous line" from the film.

He said: "It's the part where I say, 'Being rich is not about how much you have but how much you can give'.

"The fact that this has become influential is just absolutely gratifying."

Chua, who has two children in their late teens, is not surprised by viewers' emotional response to Gift because a few tears rolled down his own cheeks while filming a particularly memorable scene.

He said: "I remember the part where I call my son, after knowing that I didn't have much time to live because of my sickness, to ask if he was coming home for Chinese New Year's Eve reunion dinner, and his response was that he was busy and had no time to do so.

"It made my heart break.

"I really submerged myself into the character for that scene without realising it and I felt the pain that would have struck any father if that had happened."

crobert@sph.com.sg

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