Sandcastles

Directed by Carin Jin-yi Leong

Length: 17:00
Producers: Martin Loh, James Qiu, Carin Leong, Jacob Fertig, Jaydn Ray Gosselin
Editor: Jaydn Ray Gosselin
Cinematographers: Lincoln Yeo, Luc Ung, Jacob Fertig
Sound Designers: Ernie Goh

SANDCASTLES parallels two Singapores: one in Southeast Asia, and one buried on the western coast of Michigan. On top of sharing the same name, these two places also share a fraught relationship with sand.

Singapore, Michigan was a thriving lumber town in the late 19th century until erosion from mass deforestation caused the sand dunes around it to shift and swallow the town whole. Just as quickly as Singapore, Michigan disappeared under sand, its namesake in the East emerged from it through land reclamation.

The film weaves a narrative that intertwines the two Singapores to depict the temporal nature of human edifices built on and destroyed by nothing more than sand.

Undergraduate Film & TV

carinleongjy@gmail.com

Carin Leong is a Singaporean documentary filmmaker and multimedia journalist based in New York. Her projects have received support from Field of Vision, Singapore International Film Festival, IN-DOCS, and Tribeca Film Institute.

Her work has appeared in Scientific American, Hakai Magazine, and The Atlantic. She holds a master's degree in science journalism from Columbia University and is a graduate of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.