Watch local films for free on Viddsee

If you liked local director Kelvin Sng’s Taxi! Taxi! starring Mark Lee, Gurmit Singh and the adorable Dr Jia Jia, you might wanna check out another of his films, The Gang.

No prizes for guessing that The Gang is a 70s underworld story of love, betrayal, crime and brotherhood set right here in Singapore. But you might be surprised to hear that this 30-minute film is now showing not at a cinema, but in the virtual world – on a new streaming platform for Southeast Asian films called Viddsee.

Launched last week by two local filmmakers, Viddsee is already offering more than 100 short films, which add up to more than 1,000 minutes of free movie viewing.

Co-founder Ho Jia Jian told xinmsn that unlike YouTube or Vimeo, Viddsee focuses only on Southeast Asian films, which will make it easier for aspiring local filmmakers to showcase their works. He said that lesser-known filmmakers might struggle to make their mark on YouTube or Vimeo because their shorts would be “drowning in the midst of all the other films out there, the Gangnam Style remixes and so on”.

Viddsee also stands out from other online services because it has a screening process to ensure that the films posted meet a certain quality standard.

Right now, the platform doesn’t make any profits -- the founders are running it simply out of passion for local cinema.

Jia Jian wrote, “While content is readily available over the Internet today, it’s still hard to find culturally contextual content from Singapore and around Southeast Asia. We hope to showcase a myriad of unique stories from Southeast Asian filmmakers and to empower the audience with a choice to discover new content from their very own countries."

Start watching now at http://viddsee.com/