Year Without A Summer

"Maybe I forgot to tell you, I am quite obsessed with unnecessary knowledge. When I was 12, I read an encyclopedia - cover to cover. I found the title‚ 'Year Without A Summer' from Wikipedia. It was 1816, and there was no summer that year. In some places in America and China, there were even snowfalls during summer. I can imagine the climate abnormalities must have stirred a sense of doomsday at that time. The crops died, the sky was often tinted orange, famines and war broke out everywhere... the fear and the confusion. Many years later, scientists believe that the climate abnormalities were mainly caused by the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia in 1815, the largest known eruption in over 1,600 years. My story is not about volcano eruption, nor climate abnormalities. My story is about how people often live without really understanding much about what is happening to them. In a way, my film is about the history of sadness." Tan Chui Mui