Heather Teo

The Old Man and the Scene

2020

For 70-year-old Kheng, terminal illness is a thundercloud that throws his quiet everyday life into shadow. Fearful of what is to come, the old man fades, withdrawing into himself as the threat of death looms. His daughter, Lin, does her best to care for him but struggles with also being a newly single-parent to 19-year-old Ben, who is reeling from his parents’ divorce.

One night, Kheng encounters Ben’s EDM (Electronic Dance Music) playlist and is inexplicably hooked. To everyone’s surprise, the music brings Kheng to life and introduces a world where death sentences are drowned out by deafening beats. The music gradually brings the family together, revealing unlikely lessons about how to love, live, and be happy, in the strange and wonderful rave that is life.

Danger Pain Harm

2019

If fear was a landscape, how would it be navigated? Why is this terrain so dangerous, yet so alluring? 

Danger Pain Harm is an evocative study of the duality that is fearlessness and fear - the symbiotic relationship between the two that carves the textures of our everyday existences. 

My infinite thanks to the amazing people at Finding Pictures for taking my writing and making it into something so beautiful.

Old of Things

2017

In 2016, the residents of the Dakota Crescent estate received notice of eviction in lieu of redevelopment. The film grants exclusive access into the life of Yee Geok Eng, a resident in her late 60s, as she navigates the different phases of redefining everything she understands as home; the search for security, comfort, and family amidst an upheaval of life as she knows it. This film is a personal memento, but also a monument to all the spaces of memory that have quietly become forgotten histories.