人质 Threshold

Country of Production: SINGAPORE
　　Expected Date of Completion: April 2009 (In Production)
　　Estimated Duration: 15 mins
　　Language: English / Hokkien Dialect
　　Subtitles: English / Mandarin
　　Shooting Format: HDV (uncompressed)
　　Director and Screenwriter: Loo Zihan
　　Producer: Derrick Chew
　　Director of Photography: Lim Teck Siang
　　Production Designers: Annette Heitmann, Daniel Lim
　　Music Composer: Lim Yi Benjamin
　　Still and Publicity Photographer: Mintio
　　Synopsis:
　　Threshold – Nation before community and society before self.
　　Threshold is a 15 minute experimental short inspired by a true Singaporean entrapment case.
　　The promise of sexual gratification in exchange for drugs tempts Terry to fall into the trap laid out by the Central Narcotics Bureau. Threshold depicts the various incidents that lead up to the moment before Terry arrives. Two law enforcement officers, Anton and Boon grapple with their own morals and the ethics of their actions, climaxing in a shocking revelation from Anton.
　　Threshold is helmed by an award-winning team – written and directed by Loo Zihan, winner of the “Nuovo Sguardi” Award at the 23rd Turino Gay and Lesbian Festival for his debut feature film Solos, and produced by Derrick Chew, producer of Tan Xin (Conversations), which won “Best Film” at the 20th Singapore International Film Festival.
　　Director’s Statement:
　　It was April Fool’s Day in 2006, when the incident happened. 27-year-old Adrian Yeo See Seng was arrested for the possession of drugs in a hotel along Bencoolen Street. The incident came out in the papers a few months later and a mix of emotions ran through me as I read about the details of how he was entrapped by two Central Narcotics Bureau Officers.
　　I was indignant, angry, worried and frustrated – most importantly I was wondering, what would I have done if I were in his shoes? Being human, would I have been able to resist the promise of sex by a charming stranger?
　　Adrian and I graduated from the same secondary school and junior college, and like him, I am gay. I never knew him personally, but I almost knew how it felt like to be him, living out your teenage years in a repressive all boys’ school.
　　At the same time, I sympathized with the two officers who were tasked to trap him. Did they have any moral dilemma about the task at hand? Did their colleagues crack homophobic jokes about them? Who were these faceless, nameless people? Under this surge of confused emoti