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CULTURE AND THE ARTS


Just-do-it-yourself

Malaysian independent filmmaking

by Dr Khoo Gaik Cheng
Aliran Monthly, Vol 24 (2004): Issue 9

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A SCENE FROM THE BIG DURIAN
big durian
 
start_quote (1K) (Amir Muhammad) boldly broaches sensitive issues like Malay hegemony, the power of the sultans, and the ISA.
end_quote (1K)
Dr Khoo Gaik Cheng

 
Into its fourth year now, the Malaysian independent filmmaking movement has indeed gathered some momentum. Its pioneers Amir Muhammad and James Lee, and stalwarts—Ho Yuhang, Osman Ali, Yasmin Ahmad—are attracting international attention and winning awards at foreign film festivals in Europe, Asia and North America.

Last year, Ho’s film Min won the Special Jury Award at the Nantes Three Continents Festival. Ho also received a script and project development grant from the Hubert Bals Foundation for Summer Kisses, Winter Tears, while Rabun (Yasmin Ahmad 2002), Min and Room to Let (James Lee 2002) were screened at the 21st Turino Film Festival. This January, Amir Muhammad’s The Big Durian became the first Malaysian film to be invited to the festival that made ‘indie films’ hip – the Sundance Film Festival. It is also the second year that Malaysian short films have been programmed at the Asian American International Film Festival, New York.

Surfacing

There are signs that this underground movement is surfacing in the local mainstream. First, Visits: A Hungry Ghost Anthology (co-directed by James Lee, Low Ngai Yuen, Ng Tian Hann and Ho Yuhang) was screened at GSC MidValley Megamall and GSC Gurney, Penang, in August (http://www.visits.com.my/). And award-winning Petronas commercials director Yasmin Ahmad’s interracial teenage romance Sepet (http://yasminthestoryteller.blogspot.com) was released in Singaporean cinemas in September and First Take, Final Cut, Ng Tian Hann’s comedy is showing at GSC in October. James Lee’s long awaited The Beautiful Washing Machine, which has received a positive review in Variety magazine, was screened at HELP Institute, Pusat Damansara on 22 – 26 September.

THE MALAYSIAN INDIES, OR ‘OH, REALLY’?
As new movement, the whole ‘indie’ film scene is tremendously polyphonic and sometimes even contentious. Unsurprising, as fresh territory is being carved up, names sought to be recognised in an arena of stiff competition and dismal funding. Outside of Amir Muhammad’s definition of ‘indie’ as ‘a film that is not accepted by the Malaysian Film Festival’, there is much debate still around the term: i.e. are any of the films from the Odisi series truly independent if they are sponsored by ntv7? Are you still indie if you make your film with a FINAS grant? Can you be indie only because you come from a wealthy family (a.k.a. the Eric Khoo syndrome)? Is ‘indie’ a pseudonym for arthouse self-indulgently slow films? Is indie only digital?

There is no clearcut answer to any of the questions above. Just who decides what film and which filmmaker is ‘indie’ or an indie pioneer becomes blur if we read outside of the English media and look also to the Chinese and Bahasa Malaysia media. Those considered as indie know only too well the marketability and particular cache of the ‘indie’ label in the film festival circuit and choose to embrace or adopt cautiously or reject the term for various reasons of their own: modesty, pride, savviness, quiet confidence and sheer indifference to labels.

It is important to note continuity even as we talk about the emergence of the 21st century indie filmmakers, for others have tread the difficult path of independent filmmaking before them, with varying success: Mansor Puteh with Seman and Stephen Teo with Bejalai in the 1980s, Julian Cheah in Penang, Bernice Chauly (Bakun and Child’s Play) and Teck Tan (Spinning Gasing) to name a few. ‘Continuity’ is the key term here too as film students move from student projects with course-imposed deadlines to the more difficult endeavour of making films in their own time outside of work once they graduate.

Some notable shorts and features that have ridden the current wave of indie filmmaking may not be followed up by more film ventures for the simple reason that the director/filmmakers are more interested in theatre than film (Nam Ron’s Gedebe, Huzir Sulaiman’s That Historical Feeling). While others are honing their craft and earning a living working on television productions, commercials, music videos, video games and corporate videos...and hopefully, biding their time to make their next indie work.

Even as I may wish for a cosmopolitan attitude to be the defining characteristic of the Malaysian indies, fractures are evident. There are freelance individuals as well as people working in their own groups and production companies, often formed jointly with friends from their film-school days or who work within their institutions (MMU, CENFAD, Akademi Filem, Akademi Seni Kebangsaan, Limkokwing, USM, UNIMAS, UiTM, etc.) who feel disconnected from the Malaysian Independent Filmmakers (MIF, a loose group formed by James Lee, Lina Tan, Amir Muhammad). For some, there has always been a sense of exclusion or self-exclusion from the inner circle or ‘the Bangsar theatre crowd’, so aptly captured in Lips To Lips. Nonetheless, although Lips to Lips may not have positively or negatively inspired them, its appearance on the local scene did mark the beginning of indie screenings for KL audiences — which included space for a diverse array of professional and amateur shorts, animation, features and documentaries.

As the stakes get higher, and the same few names are promoted locally and abroad, such feelings of detachment and alienation might well exacerbate and the openness, generosity and mutual support characteristic of the incipient moment, dissipate. Filmmaking, like any other business in Malaysia as indie filmmakers are beginning to realise, is inherently political when it comes to state allocation and commercial funding, more a matter of who you know than how good you are. Ultimately, it will be a challenge to see how the indie film movement, as a polyphonic whole, faces and weathers this without disproportionate tension and fragmentation.

by Dr Khoo Gaik Cheng
The current KL-based independent filmmaking phenomenon in Malaysia began in 2000 with Amir Muhammad’s film Lips to Lips, deemed ‘Malaysia’s first digital feature’. Its Just-Do-It-(Yourself) sensibility, yet commercial look and wide festival circulation, provided the impetus for other trained and would-be amateur filmmakers to make their own movies. The common sentiment was, ‘If Amir [the writer] can do it, so can we,’ or ‘so should we’! (See box)

Graphic designer and theatre actor-turned-filmmaker James Lee quickly followed on Amir’s heels with the quirky post-Reformasi Snipers (2001) and his beautifully composed avant-garde but little understood Ah Beng Returns (2001). The indies are characterised by youthful (yet cynical) determination NOT to offer the same kind of mindless formulaic entertainment Malaysian audiences have come to expect from Malay cinema as well as blockbuster Hollywood. Many of the filmmakers are below 35-years-old and, for the first time, many are Chinese Malaysians who are interested in telling stories about working and middle-class Chinese rather than offering the same tired stereotypes of the greedy, materialistic Chinese businessman on screen. Portraying such reality means sometimes using non-actors and employing Chinese dialects or English rather than only Malay (see box).

Meant to provoke

Indie filmmaking has burgeoned due to the availability of cheap digital video technology, pirated foreign VCDs, DVDs and software, not to mention the government’s push for IT in its establishment of the Multimedia University and the Multimedia Development Corporation (MDC). Underground, low-budget (around RM 50,000), non-profit oriented ‘guerilla filmmaking’ (i.e. shot without permits and licences), most indie films are made without consideration of being screened in the censor-ridden mainstream cinemas and are meant to provoke critical audience engagement by not underestimating the intelligence of its viewers.

Most independent films are privately- rather than state-funded, though, as more quality indies are getting critical attention from international festivals overseas, they are beginning to get recognition (and some state funding) at home. For example, Ho Yuhang’s second feature Sanctuary has been selected to be in competition at the most prestigious Asian film festival, Pusan, this October. This is a high achievement and the filmmaker needs RM 250, 000 to transfer his digitally-shot video to 35 mm film as Pusan only accepts competition entries in that format.

Public screenings are limited to a few licensed premises such as The Actors’ Studio, the Kelab Seni Film screenings at the HELP Institute, the annual Malaysia Video Awards (MVA), and sometimes the Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall and the National Art Gallery (check film listings in KL business and entertainment magazines and newspapers like The Edge [see the cultural pullout, Options] KLue, and the kakiseni.com and artspen.com websites).

Distribution and sales is a perennial problem as the filmmakers themselves are not organised into an entity that can take over the management and marketing side of the business so that they can focus on creative work. Usually, distribution and sales is abandoned as indie filmmakers tend to do what they are best at—make movies. Music copyright is another deterrent to wider distribution and sales. Some enterprising individual filmmakers, however, do make VCDs to sell or distribute to friends.

Cosmopolitan and cosmopolitical

Malaysian indie films are known for their diversity: of styles, genres (animation, horror, video essay, experimental film, narrative, documentary, short and feature-length) issues, approaches. While the developmentalist push of the 1990s is responsible for the growth of independent digital filmmaking in Malaysia, indie filmmakers themselves question the ideology of mindless consumption propagated by the state. Films by Tan Chui Mui (Hometown), Deepak Kumaran (Wind Chimes), Teo Yong Jin (Coffeeshop), James Lee (Min and Room to Let) all point to the changes wrought during the last decade by developmentalist modernity in creating alienated, lonely subjects lost, or at least coping with life in the global consumer-oriented city. Perhaps what characterises the Malaysian indies is ‘cosmopolitanism’ in the Kantian sense of ‘a worldwide community of humanity committed to common values,’ and as ‘a political project for recognizing multiple identities’ (see Steven Vertovec and Robin Cohen, eds. Conceiving Cosmopolitanism: Theory, Context and Practice. New York: Oxford UP, 2002) that is oriented to the individual who is simultaneously a member of many groups.

A FEW WEBSITES TO FIND INDEPENDENT MALAYSIAN FILMS
Like Amir’s 6horts, The Big Durian embodies such cosmopolitan and ‘cosmopolitical’ sensibilities that transcend ethnic boundaries within the nation (see Bruch Robbins and Pheng Cheah. Cosmopolitics. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota Press, 1998). It questions Malaysia’s social pluralism as a viable multicultural model by portraying the outrageously funny myths each ethnic group has of the other, while ostensibly exploring the racialised dimensions and hysteria behind Prebet Adam going amok in Chow Kit in 1987. Amir traces this back via Operation Lallang, to the May 13, 1969 race riots. Weaving together staged and real-life interviews, truth and fiction, he boldly broaches sensitive issues like Malay hegemony, the power of the sultans, and the ISA. Working with multiethnic crews, and unafraid to write stories about and feature communities other than their own (the HIV-positive in A Place Called Home, transsexual sex workers in Bukak Api), it is the work of this younger generation of cultural producers and activists deserve the support of Malaysians in their work.

We need to build a strong support base to keep local talent from leaving to work for transnational companies like Lucasfilm Animation in neighbouring Singapore.

Dr Khoo Gaik Cheng, a Penangite, is a Fellow at the Asia Research Institute, Singapore. She specialises in cultural studies.


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