Freelance musician Reuben Kee composed the soundtrack for a film set in Cambodia a year before the dragon-boating accident claimed his life. -- PHOTO: ERM MARKETINGThe Straits Times
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April 22, 2008
HE LOST his life in the tragic dragon-boating accident last year in Cambodia. But a year before he died, freelance musician Reuben Kee composed the soundtrack for a film set in the country.
The 104-minute film, titled To Speak, is about a 12-year-old girl's struggle to help her family out of poverty and was written and directed by Singapore-based Australian Craig Ower, a freelance business consultant.
It made its debut at the Montreal World Film Festival last September and was also screened at the recent Singapore International Film Festival.
The film will be shown once more this Saturday, to raise funds for the Tabitha Foundation, a non-governmental organisation that champions micro-savings among the needy in Cambodia.
The screening will also be held in honour of Kee and the funds collected will be donated in his name.
The audience will be able to listen to the 50-minute soundtrack, a fusion of modern sounds and traditional Cambodian music that Kee worked on for eight months.
Ower says: 'You would think listening to the music that there was this Hollywood soundtrack going on, but it was him working on it from his HDB bedroom.'
Kee, a self-taught musician who played the piano, had also composed music for eight film scores, six musical and theatre works and six game soundtracks.
He had studied digital media design at Nanyang Polytechnic.
He was among five Singapore dragon boaters, members of the national team, who drowned in the Tonle Sap River in Phnom Penh when the dragon boat they were in capsized after a race. Their 17 teammates survived.
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