Buenos Aires

The South American premiere of Lelaki Komunis Terakhir takes place this very week at the Buenos Aires 8º Festival Internacional de Cine Independiente.

No I have never been to South America and am unable to now - but it has always been one of my dreams, as the continent has produced many favourite books. Plus, Bafici happens to be the festival which contains the highest ratio of wanna-see movies of any festival I've ever screened in. (This is my third time, natch).

Spanish is such a great language, no? So sexy. Check out the synopsis written by the festival programmers:

La premisa parece temeraria, imposible: contra la historia de setenta años en Malasia, a través de los lugares y momentos en la vida del esquivo Chin Peng, sin dejar de lado ni el control británico ni la influencia china, ni la ocupación japonesa, ni los exilidos tailandeses ni los pomelos de Ipoh. Es que si para el malaya Amir Muhammad el cine y la politica siempre fueron hermanos de sangre - como lo probó en las anteriores The Big Durian (2003) y The Year of Living Vicariously (2005), vistas en dos últimas ediciones del Bafici - en The Last Communist ofrece un certificado de que el cine todavia esta por inventarse. Entrevistas, dibujos, historias de vida, reportes policiales, jóvenes y viejos, catedráticos y revolucionarios y hechos históricos terribles contados con unas sorprendentes canciones - como si Muhammad fuera un cineasta brechtiano pop - animan una pelicula de una vitalidad y una imaginación cinematografica apabullantes. Preguntarse si esta es un filme documental es tan pertinente como interrogar a un fósil por el viaje espacio. Una pelicula que huye todo el tiempo de los ordinario, es desir, una pelicula extraordinaria.

The Spanish word for movie, pelicula, starts off by sounding like the Malay for 'odd.' Just one of the amazing nuggets I picked up when I tried studying Spanish a decade ago (it's almost all gone now) in preparation for living in a Spanish-speaking city named New York. That synopsis in English (although I can't take credit):

Its premise seems impossible, rash at best: recounting a history of seventy years in Malaysia through the places and moments in the life of the elusive Chin Peng, without overlooking British control, Chinese influence, Japanese occupation, Thai exile or the pomeloes from Ipoh. For Malay Amir Muhammad, cinema and politics have always been blood-related - as he proved in The Big Durian (2003) and The Year of Living Vicariously (2005), screened at Bafici's two latest editions - in The Last Communist he draws up a manifesto stating that cinema is still in swaddling clothes. Interviews, drawings, life stories, police reports, young and old, scholars and revolutionaries and terrible historic events retold through some amazing songs - as if Muhammad were a Brechtian pop film-maker - breathe life into a film with an overwhelming cinematic imagination. Wondering whether this is a documentary is as relevant as interrogating a fossil about space travel. A film constantly on the run from the ordinary, this is, an extraordinary movie.