One Sentence on a Yasmin Ahmad Film

This picked up from Amir Muhammad on Facebook, and I thought I'd pass it on here :

My book YASMIN AHMAD'S FILMS will be available in November. It's my impressions of watching all 6 of her feature-length films, as well as many commercials, in the month of September. It's not an obituary, neither is it a conventional book of film criticism.

We are currently proofreading the manuscript, and it suddenly occurs to me that it would be nice to have the final pages of the book given over to other people's views. People who have watched and been touched, excited, tickled, by the films. (Think of this as the 'viewer's version' of the coda at the end of MUKHSIN).

So I'd like you to have your say! Please write one sentence on any one of her 6 long films:

- RABUN
- SEPET
- GUBRA
- MUKHSIN
- MUALLAF
- TALENTIME

I think each film will have 1 page, and I will try to cram in as many views as I can. Write about a specific scene, or dialogue, or performance, or the entire film. Write about how it made you feel, or how it related to you, or analyse why it works (or maybe doesn't work) for you.

Some ground rules:
1. The sentence can be in any of the languages used in the films.
2. The sentence should not be more than 20 words. If you are writing in Chinese, then no more than 20 Chinese characters.
3. Send ONLY by email to matahari.books@gmail.com with the heading MY SENTENCE, together with your name and location. Let's make this international!
4. Deadline for submission: 30 September noon (Malaysian time).
5. You can send in more than one sentence, but I will choose one per person.

Due to space constraints, I may not be able to print all the sentences. But here's a hint: try not to pick one of the more 'popular' films, and you might have a better chance lah.

We haven't decided on the retail price of the book yet. But all my writer royalties from the first edition will be donated to the Mercy - Yasmin Ahmad Fund for Children.

A 'teaser' of sorts for the book is my article for the Canadian magazine Cinema Scope here.

* I didn't know what to call this Event on Facebook, but I think Reunion Party works as well as anything else. Yes, use this as a chance to reunite with the films!

regards,
amir.

Yasmin's Poetic Heart

Nothing is more beautiful than the written word ...

In today's Starmag, Abby Wong pays tribute to Yasmin Ahmad and her love of poetry, which she says :

... was endearing because it was a passionate, pure, spontaneous, crazy kind of love. Whenever she came to Kinokuniya Bookstores in Suria KLCC, where I used to work, she would look for me and read me a stanza or two from poems such as Nobel Prize-winning Mexican poet Octavio Paz’ The Tale of Two Gardens. ... As she read out loud uninhibitedly, the words would waft through the air and roll between shelves, intoxicating unsuspecting customers. She had a lilting voice, one that was filled with zeal and intelligence, but that was by no means ever pretentious. ... Some customers, the curious ones, would trace the words back to their source and find her in the poetry section.

Goodbye Yasmin

you mustn't be afraid of death
you're a deathless soul
you can't be kept in a dark grave
you're filled with God's glow

Rumi

My heart breaks today at hearing that Yasmin Ahmad passed away last night. I did not know her well personally but like many people reading this - I felt that I close to her through her films and writings.

She was a truly beautiful individual, a speaker of the common sense that needed to be spoken, and an award-winning filmmaker of immense talent. She portrayed with great warmth a multi-lingual, multi-racial Malaysia in her work and broke down barriers that hadn't ought to exist but sadly do.

(Here's one of her advertisements, made for the 50th Merdeka Day, showing her work in miniature. If kids can get it right, why can't we? :)



She talked of the need for Malaysians to tell their stories and perhaps that is the best way that we can honour her memory, especially if we can summon the same kind of courage, honesty and love. For although we did not have Yasmin with us for anywhere near long enough, there was so much that she taught us that we carry forward.

Al-Fatihah, Yasmin.

Postscript :

fooie on Yasmin the irreplaceable. Zedeck Siew on Yasmin the Storyteller. Adflin can't believe it.

Celebrity Literatis!

Andrew Leci is interviewed by Anu Nathan in Starmag's ReadsMonthly supplement about his first novel Once Removed.

Now Andrew is a bloke I feel I know very well, even if I have never met him, because he's a sports anchor for ESPN and in our house, there's nowhere to run from the rugby matches on TV! (Let me tell you that I can hold my own in any conversation about the sport, but I actually only watch it for all the wrong reasons ... which I'm sure you can guess!)

Once Removed though, is far removed from the sports pitch and is the story of a British expat at large in Kuala Lumpur of the 1970's.

I am not going to be winning any Booker Prize for this one. I wanted to write something that would maybe provoke thought about the way we see expats and the way expats see us ...

And as Anu points out he seems:

... blithely oblivious to the fact that, in many eyes, he’s an expat himself ...

But actually, I must interject, this is what does happens to us long-term mat-sallehs!

I didn’t want it to be an expat book but it sort of turned out that way. Yes, it does reinforce a stereotype. But I think the whole point is that you have to question those stereotypes.... That’s what makes it interesting.

(Rehman Rashid's reviews the book today in the NST.)

I must say that I find it a little strange that Marshall Cavendish (after having tumbled to the fact that coverage on local blogs were the main factor behind the initial boom in sales of Kam Raslan's book Confessions of an Old Boy) haven't made a conscious effort to harness blog-power when promoting other books!

Send out at least a press-kit at least (and a copy of the book would be nice!). Make sure that you have a website set up to promote the book! (Raman of Silverfish and Philip Tatham of Monsoon Books are a lot more clued up!!)

Anyway, elsewhere in ReadsMonthly there is some other much good stuff. Award-winning filmmaker Yasmin Ahmad writes about a favourite book: Rumi's Bridge to the Soul. This I think is beautifully said and delightfully disingenious:

This year, 2007, marks Rumi’s 800th birthday. The motley entourage that gathered on the day of his funeral indicates the sort of pluralism that is now frowned upon by certain quarters. Me, I’m too ignorant to take sides here. There are mighty arguments for and against pluralism, no doubt, and the proponents of each will present a seemingly airtight case. And yet, all it takes is one tiny pin prick, does it not, for us to be able to breathe again?

(I'm amazed and delighted to see that Yasmin has 5,000 books at home!)

Ted reviews of Clive Barker's Mister B. Gone, and Martin Spice is kinder to John Berendt's City of Falling Angels (now in paperback) than I felt like being.

Things Fall Apart ... Perhaps

Was intrigued by this article which appeared a few days ago in Utusan (yes, another one, am actually fascinated by the literary articles in this newspaper which venture into territory the English language newspapers don't seem to touch.)

The writer (who strangely remains anonymous) is talking about a state called Anomie, a lack of regard for the generally accepted social or moral standards, or as Wikipedia kindly defines it for us:

...a reaction against or a retreat from the regulatory social controls of society

Actually the link to the Wiki page is relevant since the writer of the Utusan article seems to have drawn from it very heavily! (Play this game - google names from the article and then look for the English version on the Wiki page - how many can you find? How many sentences are direct translations?) If nothing else I call it lazy journalism.

That doesn't worry me so much as how flawed the argumentation is. The writer doesn't seem to grasp at all what anomie is or how it applies to either film or literature! (Of course, it's such an intellectual word to fling around!) So, Malay novels are getting written in "bahasa rojak" (fruit salad language - a whole mixture of lingos in other words.) And we're supposed to accept this as an example of anomie???

This mixing of languages, known in linguistics as code-switching is a natural feature of the way Malaysians speak, constantly shifting between languages and levels of discourse ... and why shouldn't this be a feature of the films and literature of the country? I am happy to see some of the young writers and filmmakers here exploiting this freedom.*

There's a paucity of other examples in the article from the Malaysian scene. Nothing much about literature, though this of course is the promise of the title. And the writer includes just one indirect reference to film ... Sharifa Amani's shaved head in Yasmin Ahmad's new film Muallaf. In what sense is this an example of anomie? Please do enlighten me! Social values going to the dogs because one actress decided to go "botak" for the sake of art?

Well, I'm not convinced.

All authors and filmmakers worth their salt have a duty to reflect and criticise society. Literature and films should be dangerous and uncomfortable. (Or what are they for?) And writers must above all be true to themselves.

Writers like Camus, Dostoevsky, Sartre, Lermontov wrote from a deep sense of dislocation in their time, still seem streets ahead of many of their contemporaries, and produced some of the world's greatest literature.

And Camus won a Nobel ... the prize you covet so much on behalf of Malay writers. Perhaps there is a lesson to be learned here? This from his acceptance speech:

Each generation doubtless feels called upon to reform the world. Mine knows that it will not reform it, but its task is perhaps even greater. It consists in preventing the world from destroying itself. Heir to a corrupt history, in which are mingled fallen revolutions, technology gone mad, dead gods, and worn-out ideologies, where mediocre powers can destroy all yet no longer know how to convince, where intelligence has debased itself to become the servant of hatred and oppression, this generation starting from its own negations has had to re-establish, both within and without, a little of that which constitutes the dignity of life and death.

I actually suspect that there is plenty of anger and alienation for local writers and filmmakers to draw on if they are brave enough. (For it takes great courage to write boldly and honestly.)

With this I end my little rant, dear Editor of the lit page of Utusan. I am so glad that you have the space to raise important issues ... but I do hope for some more carefully fleshed out arguments!

Postscript:

I realised after writing this that the term "bahasa rojak" actually is used to address very real concerns that the Malay language is becoming debased, especially by the incorporation of English words which are then "Malayised" with suffixes and prefixes and local spelling. I must say that I very much dislike this too, not least because it also debases the English language! An upcoming conference at Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka addresses the issue.

However, while I am all for a purity of the language in publications and on the airwaves, writers of fiction, playwrights and filmmakers must choose the version of the language they feel best serves their purposes, particularly when they represent Malaysian voices . This could be "bahasa rojak" or a plurality of languages. I hope that this issue is brought up too.

Telling Tales

Malaysians have a lot of stories to tell but not many people are telling them ...

Yasmin Ahmad in today's Star.

That's as true when you talk about writing fiction as it is when you talk about films. And it's sad because those stories deserve to be heard.

Congrats to Yasmin on winning the Grand Jury Prize at the 27th Cretell Women Director's Festival.

A Pretty Good Week.

Cast is off now, but I have to wear a sort of glove like thing that acts as a brace for my hand. The bone has healed, but the soft tissue not yet. My hand feels weak and tingly and my wrist still hurts like hell if I bend it at all. But there's an improvement from day to day, and I've started to write longhand with it again which is a terrific relief because I just couldn't think properly with my right hand out of action!

Tuesday got invited to a do for International Women's Day by the US Embassy. Only twenty or so Malaysian women invited - the others dynamic ladies doing stuff like rescuing battered wives, heading corporations, leading political parties, giving legal representation to ingenous people. Beside them,I felt a bit of a fraud. What do you do? people asked. Deep breath. Well, I'm actually an arty-farty-literatti these days I said, and I guess I got invited because I twisted the arm of the embassy last year to fly us out a writer (Oscar Hijuelos! *sigh*) for our literary festival. It was very nice to see Jamilah again - she was so helpful in organising the whole venture. In fact I think that the main thing I got out of organising the literary festival (or KLitfest as dear old Dina Zaman insists on calling it!) was the links I made with different organisatiosn and foreign missions.

The Deputy Chief of Mission who was hosting the event gave a speech about liberty and democracy (as you might expect) and the wonderful contribution made by women and how Malaysian women in particular are a force to be reckoned with. He told us that Condoleza Rice was going to celebrate the day by meeting women from Afganistan and Iraq.

There was a buffet spread but it was so hard to coordinate plate and teacup and plaster cast and keep up a flow of polite conversation with people. I really worked the room though, chatted to as many women as possible. Tried to interest them in promoting my creative writing course to their organisation. (Every opportunity is a marketing opportunity!)

Ohhhh ... and there was the most divine chocolate cake I've ever tasted - crisp crust, light mousse filling - wasn't successful in getting the recipe though. (State secret, apparently.)

Afterwards I walked to KLCC to take the LRT home, but once I was in Suria I decided to go to TGV to catch Sepet. I'm usually so lazy about catching films at the cinema and genrally don't end up seeing them until they finally make it to ASTRO. But Sepet was a must-see and I'm just sorry I didn't go for the premier with the My-Word-Up guys.

I found it a tender, gentle film, with some very funny moments. The casting was excellent, especially the young leads. At last a Malaysian film that addressed the issue of race and cross-cultural friendships, and made the point that each culture has so much to give to other cultures. (There was a little heavy handed didacticism at moments, but I find it easy enough to forgive that.) Loved the way that the dialogue moved between languages - English, Malay, Cantonese, Hokkien - reflecting the way that Malaysians really do negotiate communication.

The only thing I really didn't like about the film was the ending which I felt was a cop-out and the only part of the film that came across as drama-minggu-ini-ish.

Really enjoyed hearing the reactions to it from the audience (almost entirely Malay)around me - who were clearly very much enjoying themselves.

After the film several people came up to ask me what I thought about it because they found it odd to see a Mat Salleh (European) watching a Malay film. One girl asked if I wearing the cast on my arm in sympathy with the character of Keong!

I have a second debt of gratititude to Yasmin Ahmad - every time I take the LRT someone gives up their seat for me immediately, without my neeeding to put on my pathetic look. Still I do hope that this generosity of spirit is prompted by the cast on my arm rather than my looking like a senior-citizen.

Wednesday I was back in town again to chair the video conference with author Toby Litt at The British Council - a great chance to pick up some insider information about writing. This of course deserves an entry of its own.

Thursday had lunch with Oon Yeoh, vegetarian dim sun and noodles at Nature Cafe in PJ while we talked about possible happenings for MPH Writer's Circle. (How do I get drawn into these things?) We also had a chat about publishing, though Oon Yeoh is not into publishing fiction.

Thursday was the second session for my course. It went really well and the group has gelled. Everyone was more relaxed, sceptisicm replaced by a willingness to play and share stories. And it's fascinating to see where the imagination leads when you let it.

I realised when I got home that night that something strange had happened to me: for the first time in months happiness has come and bitten me on the bum.

Censorship and Creativity

Just read the following article in The Malay Mail which made me feel incredibly sad and angry.

Haven't seen Yasmin Ahmad's films yet - but having read the article would very much like to.

But the issue of censorship destroying the creativity of artists here is a perennial one. And I can't see it going away any time soon.

Malaysian art must reflect real Malaysian life (and not be some idealised mirror of how the powers that be would like life to look for their own political purposes). Else honestly, what's the point? Malaysia needs artists with integrity - whether they be writers, playwrights, film makers, visual artists or whatever - who will tell their own truth about love, relationships, race, religion and all those other human issues that affect us all here. (Mat Salleh that I am i consider myself an 'us' not a 'them').

The alternative is that the people with real talent and the power to tell us something about ourselves shut themselves away where they will not get hurt. Or they cross the oceans to other parts of the world where they feel they can have a voice (but hey, will that voice be heard so loudly when there are so many other people whose voices are being heard at the same time?)


MOVIES: Killing ’em softly with their cuts
Meor Shariman

Dec 23:

IT looks like the National Censorship Board has dampened the spirit of another creative and visionary young local film-maker, Yasmin Ahmad.
She's one of many fresh and exciting young directors, whose passion to take local films to new heights has been tamed by our ‘moral police,' who still decide what local moviegoers should and shouldn't watch.

But we will continue supporting these bold directors, who go that extra mile in the name of art.

We hope they won't stop trying to be different and daring, despite being hampered by the Censorship Board who seem to be practising double standards – they butcher the kind of scenes in local movies that are often left untouched in foreign films. Now back to Yasmin. She tried to be as honest as she could in depicting the reality of Malaysian society in two recent films, Rabun and Sepet.

But that, as expected, didn't go down well with the Censorship Board committee.

Her first film, Rabun, shown over TV3, had a scene where an old loving couple take a bath together. That was deemed indecent and was chopped.

There was nothing revealing or obscene about that scene – it's quite common for married, couples, young and old, to bathe together.

The scene was meant to be inspiring as it shows how loving the old couple still are to each other despite being married for so long. After all, Rabun is a tale of undying love between the old couple.

The film was well received by both critics and viewers.

Now, Yasmin's latest film, Sepet – which was shown for a month without any cuts in Singapore – has incurred the wrath of the Censorship Board.

Sepet was first scheduled for a February release with nine cuts. Now, it has been banned.

Yasmin recently met with the committee to discuss the censored scenes. But she came out of that announcing she would quit film-making. (Yasmin made the announcement and shared her experience in a website, www.yasminthestoryteller.blogspot.com) THE NIGHTMARE When Sepet was shown to the Board, it was lambasted by most of the 12-member committee with a few appreciating it. One member said, almost in tears, that Sepet was the most enjoyable movie she ever saw and congratulated Yasmin. Another proudly said that Sepet was a Malaysian movie.

Unfortunately, the rest didn't feel that way. Many even made some ridiculous comments which showed how ignorant they are.

Sepet is a love story between a Malay girl and a Chinese boy – which is not unthinkable in our multi-racial society.

But one committee member's contention was that Yasmin didn't raise the issue of religion; he also asked why the Malay girl didn't try to convert her Chinese boyfriend. He said it would please the Malay audience if the Chinese boy becomes a Muslim at the end of the story.

Another member picked on the scene where Adibah Nor, Ida Nerina and Syarifah Amani lovingly combed each other's hair by the staircase.

His complaint – that scene would encourage Malay women to go back to their bad old habit of picking each other's lice! And if all that weren't discouraging enough, another member brought up the scene where a Malay character was seen in a non-halal Chinese restaurant. That set the stage for the bombshell – the committee decided to ban Sepet! It claimed it represented the rakyat (the people) and ‘had shown the film to some members of the rakyat and the rakyat wanted the movie to be banned'.

With that, Sepet – a film winning rave reviews outside the country – won't be having a cinema audience here.

THE DOUBLE STANDARDS GOING by Yasmin's nightmarish experience, the censorship board committee seems to be confused or is suffering from short memory.

Don't they remember approving films with a similar plot to Sepet in the past? Inter-racial romance is also the theme of Skop Productions' Sembilu 2005, the most-anticipated love story next year.

In Sembilu 2005, a Malay girl falls for a Chinese boy and the latter doesn't convert in the end.

The film has already been approved by the Censorship Board and will be screened in March.

As for the scene in Sepet where a Malay is seen in a Chinese restaurant, there was a similar sequence in Metrowealth Movies Production's Hingga Hujung Nyawa.

That was screened last July, and in that particular scene, a man even bought food from the Chinese restaurant for his dying wife! What was most absurd must be one committee member's complaint about the hair-combing scene in Sepet. It sounds like he's worried that female employees in Government departments will start picking each other's lice during office breaks after watching Sepet! With such a mentality, do we want such a censorship board committee to represent the viewers' choice on what films we should watch? No wonder why our film industry is lagging behind our neighbours like Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia.


Drop by Yasmin's blog
for the whole story.