Director Statement
In our country, people believe that if someone had an experienced the scary and frightening events, the guardian souls from the body would run away and that person would never have a dream anymore. In order to become cure from that, the soul has to be summoned back.
‘Song of Souls’ is not only the voice of a mother who is moaning and bewailing for her vanishing children but also the sound of calling my own souls as a filmmaker.
In this film, the last songs of an ancient classical female singer, which is nearly extinct, are filmed honorably. Her songs are not only about sunset, love and nostalgia but also referring and wishing for the future of the country.
‘Song Of Souls’ is also an inner journey to the childhood memories of listening to the story telling, traditional folk songs, the Kinnari-Bird dance and the sounds of drumswhile interpreting them as symbols of the aftermath of war like an abstract view.
Biography
Sai Naw Kham made his first foray into directing in 2014 whilst a beginner student at Yangon Film School with The Crocodile Creek, a short film which merged myth and memory to explore present-day environmental issues in Myanmar’s Yangon River. For his next film, 32 Souls (YFS, 2015), he travelled to his native Shan to portray one woman’s memories in this war-torn part of Myanmar. Following its international premiere at DOK Leipzig in 2016, this film went on to screen to acclaim at festivals including Busan in Korea and at Kathmandu’s Film South Asia Festival in Nepal. In 2020, he directed a short drama, The Forgotten Voices of the Mekong, which has screened at a number of festivals as part of an anthology film entitled ‘Mekong 2030’. Song of Souls is his first feature-length documentary.
Filmography
Song of Souls / Feature Length Documentary / 2023
THE FORGOTTEN VOICES OF THE MEKONG / Short Film / 2020
NO REAL BODY / Short Film / 2020
WAVE / Audio-Documentary & Animator/ Animated Documentary / 2018
LETTER TO A BIRD Co-Director / Experimental Film / 2017
SCARECROW Co-Director / Short Film / 2016
32 SOULS / Documentary / 2015
THE GATE 54 / Documentary / 2015
THE CROCODILE CREEK / Documentary / 2014