Komunis & Kampung

Moving along...

2007-07-08T02:42:00.000+08:00

I will no longer be updating this blog, even though I will keep it for sentimental reasons!

I will instead be updating Writing by Amir regularly, which will include also news of the two documentaries that have been chronicled right here.

Ayuh!

Cineaste

2007-06-13T11:07:00.000+08:00

An article on my movies is published in the Summer 2007 issue of the American magazine Cineaste , which includes an interview. I haven't read it myself!

Singapore cinema release

2007-04-23T08:29:00.000+08:00

Spread da word! Apa Khabar Orang Kampung (under its English title Village People Radio Show) will begin screening at Cathay Picturehouse, Singapore, from 10 May.

It has been passed by the censors without cuts but rated NC16 (content not suitable for children below 16).

The screening at the Singapore International Film Festival last Saturday was sold out. What's great is that some Malaysians travelled from JB and Malacca just to catch it.

This is a review that appeared when it premiered in Berlin:

VILLAGE PEOPLE RADIO SHOW
(Apa Khabar Orang Kampung)

Malaysia/2007/72 min

Director/screenplay: Amir Muhammad
Production company: Da Huang Pictures
International sales: Red Films
Producer: Tan Chui Mui
Executive Producer: James Lee
Cinematography: Albert Hue
Editor: Akashdeep Singh

Screen International Daily
14 February 2007

Reviewed by Dan Fainaru at the Berlin Film Festival

A sequel of sorts to Amir Muhammad’s The Last Communist, which toured the festival circuit, Village People Radio Show is a laid-back documentary shot in Southern Thailand that delivers more than enough on the Malayan Communist Party and its members in recent years.

Whether it will manage to draw the attention of the general media outside its own territory remains to be seen. It is still not certain whether the Kuala Lumpur censors will clear it for screening in Malaysia or decide, as they did with The Last Communist, to ban it a fortnight before its planned release.

The communists in Malaysia have always had it tough. During the last century, the country was run first by the British, then occupied by the Japanese, then the British returned before the country’s independence in 1957.

The predominately ethnic-Chinese party was accused of being atheist in a predominately Muslim society, as well as working with foreign forces, and was eventually banned. With active financial support from China, it pursued its struggle against the government until 1989, when a peace treaty of sorts was signed.

Many of the guerrilla fighters long ago moved their families across the border into Thailand and continue to live there peacefully. It is here that Muhammad found a handful of Malay communist party survivors last year – one of them, Pak Kassim, died three weeks after the shoot aged 86.

Muhammad is an unusual documentary film-maker who is notorious for interrupting his previous work with specially commissioned songs or even refraining from showing his subjects on screen.

This time he uses a slightly more traditional approach but nevertheless disrupts time and again the flow of testimonies with excerpts from a Thai soap opera inspired by Shahespeare’s A Winter’s Tale.

The technique wakes up the proceedings to a certain degree because the interviews, while dealing with serious matters, unfold in a relaxed way, implying its subjects are now not troubled by what happened.

The paradise landscape in which they now live, doted on repeatedly by Muhammad’s camera, suggests the former fighters are at peace with themselves. A Winter’s Tale may appear to associate with their lives, but ‘all’s well that ends well’ is perhaps a better reflection.

Appeal denied. The ban is final.

2007-03-21T19:10:00.000+08:00

Got this fax today (click to enlarge!):

I truly appreciate the Visit Malaysia 2007 logo at the top right.

I am disappointed, of course. But at least it will show in Singapore next month, and it has already been confirmed for 9 other festivals.

And, most importantly, I have started working on the next one.

A wise person once said, "Rezeki ada di mana-mana..."

Amen!

Singapore premiere

2007-03-15T11:15:00.001+08:00

Village People Radio Show will screen in the 20th Singapore International Film Festival.

Date: 21 April (Saturday). 9:15pm
Place: National History Museum
Ticket: S$8.40

My interview with the Singapore Straits Times last week has been filed here.

Jom!

My appeal letter, faxed today

2007-02-26T12:19:00.000+08:00

Kepada:
Encik Mansor Embong
Setiausaha
Bahagian Kawalan Filem
Unit Penapisan Filem
Kementerian Dalam Negeri
Fax: 03 8889 1685

Daripada:
Amir Muhammad
Da Huang Pictures Sdn Bhd

Rujukan Tuan: 1408160001

26 Febuari 2007.

Tuan,

14 DALIL MENGAPA ‘APA KHABAR ORANG KAMPUNG’ TIDAK LAYAK DIHARAMKAN.

Saya merujuk kepada surat pihak tuan bertarikh 12 Febuari. Saya telah membaca 7 sebab untuk pengharaman filem dokumentari saya. Di sini saya ingin membuat rayuan supaya pengharaman tersebut ditarik balik. Dalil-dalil saya ialah:

1. Sebab-sebab pengharaman langsung tidak menyentuh aspek keselamatan negara sebaliknya interpretasi sejarah (dalam hanya beberapa dialog) yang bercanggah dengan versi rasmi. Saya kira hal interprerasi masih tidak merbahaya dan tidak patut menerima pengharaman, memadai dengan amaran atau potongan. Sejarah yang beku ialah sejarah yang sudah mati. Contohnya lihat saja perbezaan interpretasi mengenai Hang Tuah dan Hang Jebat dalam 50 tahun kebelakangan ini.

2. Sebab pengharaman yang terakhir ialah filem ini tidak sesuai untuk ‘masyarakat umum.’ Dengan ini saya meminta slot ‘tayangan terhad’, tertakluk kepada syarat-syarat tertentu. Contohnya filem The Passion of the Christ. Malaysia dengan bijak menghadkan filem ini kepada penonton Kristian, dan tanpa iklan. Diharap langkah bijak sebegini dapat diambil untuk filem ini juga.

3. Merujuk kepada sebab-sebab pengharaman, jelas terdapat kekeliruan yang amat dasar di antara “apa yang dikatakan oleh filem ini” dengan “apa yang dikatakan oleh sebahagian orang yang diwawancara dalam filem ini.” Dokumentari Apa Khabar Orang Kampung mengambil sikap yang objektif, tanpa menggunakan suara latar. Ia sekadar merakam satu tempat yang tak pernah dilihat oleh masyarakat tempatan yang lain. Tugas saya sebagai pengarah ialah merakam. Penonton dianggap sudah cukup bijak untuk mendengar apa yang diucapkan tanpa melatah atau mengamok; dan membuat tafsiran sendiri. Samalah seperti dialog filem fiksyen Puaka Tebing Biru di mana Nasha Aziz berkata ‘Mak tak percaya kat Tuhan ke?’ Ini hanyalah pandangan watak itu dan bukan pandangan filem itu secara keseluruhan.

4. Dokumentari ini patut diberi klasifikasi 18PA untuk unsur politiknya. Apabila warga Malaysia cukup umur 18 tahun, mereka telahpun melalui sistem sekolah rendah dan menengah yang cukup cemerlang dan sudah tahu, malah telah hafal, versi sejarah yang rasmi. Justeru itu, menonton dokumentari Apa Khabar Orang Kampung tidak akan memudaratkan mereka.

5. Filem ini boleh sahaja dimulakan oleh perkataan yang tertera di skrin, contohnya “Amaran Oleh Kerajaan Malaysia: Fahaman Komunisme Dilarang Dan Anda Ditegah Daripada Meniru Ideologi Merbahaya Ini!’ Ayat ini boleh terbit dalam saiz font yang amat besar. Ayat ini juga boleh berkelip-kelip seperti lampu neon supaya lebih jelas. Kalau tak cukup satu tanda seru boleh guna lima atau sepuluh.

6. Dokumentari ini mungkin patut diluluskan untuk orang yang telah menonton rancangan yang mendakyah anti-komunis seperti ‘Jungle Green Khaki Brown.’ Setelah disogok rancangan sebegini (yang menggunakan aksi lasak dan muzik yang menghiburkan), tidak mungkin seorang penonton itu akan terpengaruh oleh dialog orang-orang tua dalam Apa Khabar Orang Kampung.

7. Dokumentari ini mendapat tayangan perdana dunia di Festival Filem Antarabangsa Berlin, tidak jauh daripada runtuhan Tembok Berlin. Lebih 1,000 orang menontonnya. Biarpun penduduk Berlin pernah mengalami trauma akibat pertembungan Barat dengan komunisme, tidak ada penonton yang protes, pengsan atau mengamok. Kita boleh sahaja anggap Jerman sebagai negara maju, tapi bukankah Malaysia juga bercita-cita untuk menjadi negara maju dalam masa hanya 13 tahun lagi?

8. Pengharaman filem ini tampaknya bercanggah dengan beberapa prinsip yang terkandung dalam Wawasan 2020 yang menjadi pegangan kita, seperti “berjiwa bebas”, “masyarakat demokratik yang matang”, “progresif” serta “masyarakat liberal dan bertolak ansur.”

9. Filem ini besar kemungkinan akan lulus untuk tayangan di Singapura seperti Lelaki Komunis Terakhir tahun lepas. Tidakkah kita berasa sedikit kaget dan jengkel bahawa rakyat Singapura (yang berkongsi sejarah Darurat dengan kita) sudah dianggap cukup matang sedangkan kita belum?

10. Filem ini boleh juga ditayang kepada mereka yang telah membuat ikrar ‘Akujanji’ sebelum dan usai menontonnya. Ikrar ‘Akujanji’ ini boleh disamakan dengan proses yang harus dilalui oleh mahasiswa, pensyarah dan kakitangan kerajaan. Tapi kali ini mereka harus ‘berjanji’ untuk tidak sekali-kali amalkan fahaman komunisme, biarpun dalam mimpi.

11. Dalam 10 tahun kebelakangan ini, lebih ramai rakyat Malaysia dimangsai keganasan dan kerakusan Mat Rempit berbanding komunis. Namum sudah 3 filem mengenai Mat Rempit dibenarkan untuk tayangan luas di seluruh negara. Tidak adakah sentimen menghormati mangsa mereka?

12. Perang Dingin sudah berakhir pada tahun 1989 dan Malaysia sekarang menjalin hubungan yang amat baik dengan negara-negara China dan Cuba. Jadi kenapakah topik komunisme itu dianggap masih tabu?

13. Malaysia tahun ini meraikan 50 tahun sebagai negara demokrasi. Dalam satu demokrasi, kepelbagaian pendapat patut dibenar malah diraikan. Jika tidak, tidak ada bezanya dengan negara tanpa demokrasi, seperti yang pernah kita lihat di beberapa negara komunis dan teokratik.

14. Puluhan rencana telah ditulis dalam akhbar tempatan apabila Lelaki Komunis Terakhir diharamkan tahun lalu. Kita boleh saja anggap puluhan rencana ini mewakili satu minoriti yang bersedia untuk menontonnya, dan dokumentari ini juga. Justeru itu tayangan harus dibenarkan untuk minoriti ini. Jika ada yang tidak mahu menonton, mereka ada pilihan untuk tonton filem lain seperti Remp-It 2 (yang besar kemungkinan akan lulus).

Sekian. Majulah filem untuk negara.

Yang Benar,

AMIR MUHAMMAD
Pengarah Apa Khabar Orang Kampung

Banned

2007-02-22T10:32:00.000+08:00

Apa Khabar Orang Kampung (known overseas as Village People Radio Show) has been banned by the Malaysian censorship board.

It was sent to the board on 18 January and the decision was made on 12 February but I only got the news today due to the Chinese New Year holidays.

7 reasons were given for the ban. They are:

1. The theme of this film seems to portray the crusade of the United Communist Front in Peninsular Malaya back then as a noble one which should be acknowledged. Therefore the film's message sides with these people especially the ethnic Malay communists.

2. This film also shows that the Malaysian government is unfair in failing to acknowledge their crusade.

3. This film shows the opinions and stories only of the communists about their stance and their purpose for fighting so that society will sympathise with and acknowledge their contributions.

4. Criticisms against the Malaysian Government are blatantly shown in this film for offering unacceptable rehabilitation terms as opposed to the Thai government which was willing to provide land, houses and basic amenities to support them after they stopped being communists. Aside from criticising the government, the monarchy and the Malays are also insulted.

5. This film tries to belittle Tunku Abdul Rahman, the former Malaysian Prime Minister, as the person responsible for the failure of the Baling Talks but the true fact is that the Communists did not agree to lay down their arms.

6. The former communist members likened their crusade to the crusade of Malay anti-British warriors such as Dato' Bahaman, Mat Kilau, Tok Gajah, Dato' Maharaja Lela, Tok Janggut and others. This is a distortion of historical facts.

7. This film is not suitable for public viewing because of its correct (sic) facts and it also touches on the sensitivities and bitter memories of security forces and members of the public who had been victims of communist violence.

(I think in the 7th reason, what they mean is 'incorrect' rather than 'correct.' How nice of me to correct their typos!)

I have until 10 March to appeal the decision. I will send the appeal letter sometime next week.

Now on Amazon.com

2007-02-09T19:56:00.000+08:00

The Last Communist DVD is finally out on Amazon.com, the world´s largest online retail store.

It is in Mandarin, Malay, Tamil, Hokkien, Cantonese and English with English subtitles. A very Malaysian mix, wouldn´t you say?

It is US$19.99 and can be ordered from anywhere around the world.

The doctor

2007-01-23T20:21:00.000+08:00

Pak Budin was the doctor of the 10th Regiment. Ethnic Chinese, Muslim convert, and self-taught physician, he would cure various ailments and injuries through his remedies. Everyone who has seen Apa Khabar Orang Kampung would agree that his interview is certainly one of the most spirited, especially when he would talk about his method of 'korek' (digging) and the unusual (to us) use of 'anak ayam' (chicks).

His legs were once paralysed in battle but he managed to heal them. After that, he could scale mountains. He still went to his farm every morning.

We were sad to learn that Pak Budin passed away last Saturday at the age of 82. He never got a chance to see his interview. But his contribution is there; in fact his is the last voice you can hear on the trailer.

After Pak Kassim, he is the second person in the documentary to die since our interviews were conducted a mere five months ago. Some would say we are haunted! But it's better to just say: Inalillah!

Berlin

2007-01-17T21:54:00.000+08:00

Apa Khabar Orang Kampung makes its world premiere next month at the 57th Berlin Film Festival in the International Forum of New Cinema.

This is the same place where Lelaki Komunis Terakhir premiered last year. I couldn't attend last year but I do plan to go this year. Although we are a small documentary, three of the other crew members will be there as well: Hardesh Singh, Tan Chui Mui and Liew Seng Tat.

Here are the screening times:

11 Feb 2:45pm CinemaxX5 (media screening)
12 Feb 8:15pm CineStar 8 (open to public)
13.Feb 3:00pm Cubix 7 (open to public)
14 Feb 12:30pm Arsenal (open to public)

If you are in the area do drop by!

The full Forum line-up has been officially announced. I am looking forward to meeting my old friend Aureaus Solito from The Philippines. He made a big splash last year with his debut film The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros; he is now presenting what the Americans would call his "sophomore pic," Tuli. It's about circumcision. Now why hasn't a Malay filmmaker thought of that before?

Another Malaysian film, Yasmin Ahmad's Mukhsin, will screen in the Generation section (the same one which The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros won last year!). As I have not seen it I will catch it there.

It has also been invited to 2 other festivals but those shall be announced in due time.

Praise the Lord and Baby Jesus!

"Apa Khabar Orang Kampung" trailer

2007-01-13T13:21:00.000+08:00

Apa Khabar Orang Kampung is complete and will soon screen overseas, where it is known as Village People Radio Show.

The international trailer:

It was edited by Azharr Rudin.

If a local release can be arranged, perhaps a slightly different one can be made. Who knows?

Coming to Zagreb

2006-12-02T23:40:00.000+08:00

Lelaki Komunis Terakhir screens on 9 December in the Human Rights Film Festival of Zagreb. This might be the first time I am in the same section as Richard Linklater and Terrence Malick.

This might also be the last international screening of the year, bringing the total to over 20 festivals. I never thought it would travel so well overseas since I always thought it was kind of a 'local' subject and approach. The irony of course is that no local screenings have been possible.

Oh well. As the Malay scientist says in Atomic Jaya: "Chest la vie!"

Coming to Manila

2006-11-27T17:34:00.000+08:00

Lelaki Komunis Terakhir is the opening film of Cine Veritas, a human-rights film festival at the University of the Philippines, next week. This will be my first trip to Manila and I am quite chuffed.

The photo you see is from a great film called Manila: In the Claws of Neon by the great director Lino Brocka.

The Philippines continues to make the most interesting films in South-East Asia. I wrote an article about some of them 4 years ago and since then newer names and films have cropped up. Perhaps my Manila trip will inspire a follow-up piece, who knows?

Coming to Noo Yawk

2006-11-13T15:42:00.000+08:00

Lelaki Komunis Terakhir screens at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City on 8 & 9 December. It is part of a programme called Asian Cinevisions which presents, erm, cinema from Asia.

At the risk of coming over all gushy, New York is my favourite city and the place where I first fooled around with the idea of making films. I took a course in NYU in the summer of 1995 and directed five 16mm shorts (I got a D for the first and an A for the last). In addition I managed to watch over 90 films not only at the NYU library but at places like Film Forum, the Angelika, the Anthology and, yes, MOMA.

I would never have gone there if I hadn't met and interviewed U-Wei Haji Saari in Malaysa two years before that in Kuala Lumpur. He had studied film in New York in the 1980s. His first feature film had just come out and he became the first person to make me realise that making films could be something I'd want to pursue.

I visited the city again this summer (the first time this century) to find that although much had changed (Times Square now seems like Disneyland), the old buzz was still there and the service staff as reassuringly rude as ever.

Coming to Nantes

2006-11-08T11:15:00.000+08:00

Lelaki Komunis Terakhir screens at this year's Festival of 3 Continents in Nantes, France, which runs from 21-28 November. Now that you asked, the three titular continents are Asia, South America and Africa.

This is the second French screening, after the Marseille International Documentary Festival in July.

Coming to Amsterdam

2006-11-03T16:02:00.000+08:00

Lelaki Komunis Terakhir will screen on 24 and 27 November as well as 3 December in the International Documentary Film Festival of Amsterdam. This is the largest documentary festival in Europe.

Of special relevance in this case is the fact that The Jan Vrijman Fund, which is administered by the festival, helped pay for the documentary to be made all those months ago. If you are in the area do drop by.

Coming to Stockholm

2006-10-26T14:04:00.000+08:00

Lelaki Komunis Terakhir screens on Nov 16, 21 and 26 at the Stockholm International Film Festival.

It is placed in a category called Collage which contains, I trust you will find, some intriguing titles.

Last Communist sequel in progress

2006-10-19T19:58:00.000+08:00

By Fathi Aris Omar

The Star. 19 Oct 2006

PETALING JAYA: Not discouraged by the ban on Lelaki Komunis Terakhir (The Last Communist) in May, filmmaker Amir Muhammad is now completing a sequel to the controversial documentary.

The new film focuses on former Malay guerillas of the 10th Regiment of the defunct Communist Party of Malaya (CPM).

Named after Apa Khabar Orang Kampung, a popular song by the late Sudirman Arshad, it records the daily lives of former CPM members staying in the Ban Chulabhorn Pattana 12 or the 12th Chulaborn Development Village, not far from the Narathiwat-Kelantan border.

The village, developed following a tripartite agreement between the CPM, the Malaysian Government and the Thai Government, is said to be the original base of the 1,000-strong 10th Regiment.

Of the 140-odd families currently living there, fewer than 20 residents were born in Malaya. Of these, 15 – now in their late 70s or early 80s – were interviewed for the sequel.

Amir, 34, said he and a five-man crew spent some 10 days in August recording the current way of life of the former guerillas.

According to him, one of those interviewed, Pak Majid – whose original name is Idris Yusof – had served in both the British and Japanese armies before joining the CPM.

“He said no one had ever asked him about his experience, so we talked for three hours. His story is very interesting,” Amir told mStar Online, The Star’s Bahasa Malaysia news portal.

Apart from interviews, the film will also incorporate CPM propaganda materials, including its radio broadcasts, films and leaflets.

Amir said the sequel had been planned earlier and not in reaction to the criticisms directed at The Last Communist, banned following protests by various quarters, leading to a controversy involving film activists and politicians.

Hopefully, he added, Apa Khabar Orang Kampung would be approved for commercial screening early next year.

The film, now in the editing stage, is scheduled for screening at a film festival in Iran in January.

Asked how confident he was that it would be approved by the Censorship Board, Amir said: “If Remp-It can be approved, why not my film? There are no sex or violent scenes. Only old people talking.”

On a related note, Amir said the former guerillas were given 2.4ha of land each for agriculture development but none of their efforts was successful.

As a result, many of the young people from the village had migrated to other places to look for jobs.

In the light of the insurgency in the southern Thai provinces, he added, they had also been accused of involvement in the separatist groups.

Most of them had denied this and the Thai Government also believed they were not involved, he said.

Amir tidak serik dengan komunis!

2006-10-17T17:48:00.000+08:00

Oleh Fathi Aris Omar

MStar. 17 Oktober.

(The full article in Malay can be read here.)

Story of his life

2006-10-15T12:35:00.000+08:00

We knew him as Pak Kassim. Most of the village called him Pak Majid. His real name was Idris Yusof.

When we interviewed this 86-year old for Apa Khabar Orang Kampung, I found his story one of the most compelling accounts in the whole village.

As a young man he had been part of the British reserve army; then he joined the dreaded Kempetai (the Japanese military police) and was jailed for this after WWII; and then he joined the communists. He was part of the 10th Regiment's 'Long March' into South Thailand in the mid-1950s. He would not see his native Malaya/Malaysia again for 5 decades.

He told us that no one had asked him to tell his life-story before.

And so he talked.

For 3 hours.

And nothing was boring.

His pithy, poignant account, laced with occasional sarcasm and a touch of braggadocio, and punctuated by his raspy smoker's laugh, actually form the backbone of Apa Khabar Orang Kampung... although we do of course hear from other folks as well. I decided this structure early on, even before we started editing. He also spoke on guerrilla food, propaganda, Malaysia's development, Islam, the sultans, his own family...

Three weeks after the interview, on 18 September, he passed away peacefully. I only found out about it this month. So all the while, we were actually editing the story of a man who is no longer with us. Unlike Rashid Maidin, he was not a top leader, so the news didn't get any coverage.

Even in the regiment he was a somewhat controversial presence due to his previous links to not only the British but the Japanese.This position as minority-within-minority probably contributed to his more individual take on things; he didn't just recite slogans; his unorthodox, contradictory journey gave him an almost iconoclastic bearing.

We remarked that he seemed quite healthy even though he had complained of various ailments. He certainly did not falter or complain of fatigue when talking to us. Now I know why. He was, quite literally, telling the story of his life.

The documentary will be dedicated to his memory.

Invite to talk

2006-10-01T12:04:00.000+08:00

I will be giving a talk and slide-show presentation on the making of Apa Khabar Orang Kampung. It should last an hour, after which buka puasa delights beckon from dozens of eateries nearby!

Where: Silverfish Books, 67-1, Jalan Telawi 3, Bangsar Baru, KL.
When: 5:30pm, Saturday, 14 October.
How Much: Gratis, dong.
Inquiries: (03) 2284 4837.

By the way, the boy in our promo postcard that you see is named Awie. He is the first person who speaks in the documentary.

Coming to Oslo

2006-09-28T10:35:00.000+08:00

Lelaki Komunis Terakhir will makes its Scandinavian premiere on Oct 7 and 10 at the Films from the South Festival in Norway. The festival also has this year an Abbas Kiarostami retrospective with the maestro in attendance.

As far as I know this is the first time I'm screening in Norway. Something to make you go A-ha!

Coming to Taiwan

2006-09-26T05:35:00.000+08:00

Lelaki Komunis Terakhir screens on 28 October and 3 November at the Taiwan International Documentary Festival. I hope to attend both screenings as I am also on the jury there for the shorts.

Yes this is my first time to Taiwan, now that you asked.

Coming to London

2006-09-15T01:40:00.000+08:00

Lelaki Komunis Terakhir will screen on Oct 22 & 24 at the London Film Festival.

This is the 50th year the festival has been around but the first time it has screened something from Malaysia. Wish I could be there to meet the punters at the ICA and NFT (two places where I used to watch films more than a decade ago). But it's better to celebrate Raya at home, methinks. If you can attend, do let me know how it goes!

Coming to Vancouver

2006-09-10T09:50:00.000+08:00

Lelaki Komunis Terakhir will screen on Oct 5 & 6 at the Vancouver International Film Festival

Lots of goodies are in store for the festival, and I plan to attend both screenings. I was last in Vancouver 3 years ago for The Big Durian and enjoyed it lots. I hope there is still a big bunch of Malaysian students there who will turn up and laugh at all the right places.

First look at Apa Khabar Orang Kampung

2006-08-28T00:08:00.000+08:00

It was a 10-day shoot: 16-25 August. The location was a village in Sukhrin, Narathiwat, South Thailand, home of retired members of the 10th Regiment, the only Malay-Muslim division of the Communist Party of Malaya.

140 families live there now. Fewer than 20 people were those born in Malaya before the regiment began its 'Long March' across the Thai border in the early 1950s. They would not see Malaya/Malaysia again for five decades. We spoke to all of these pioneers who happened to be there, and a few more besides.

Apa Khabar Orang Kampung will look and sound very different from Lelaki Komunis Terakhir. For reasons that will, I hope, be obvious when I explain later, the English title is not a direct translation but rather Village Radio.

Over 3,000 stills were taken by the intrepid Danny Lim. This is a sample. We heard many stories there; these pictures indicate some of them. As for the complete picture, this will only emerge when we start editing in a few days.

Not to be outdone, our Director of Photography Albert Hue, who also took hundreds of stills, has blogged them here. Now let's see which pompous blowhard dares criticise his 'cinematography'!

Off to shoot the sequel

2006-08-14T07:35:00.000+08:00

Right after we finished shooting Lelaki Komunis Terakhir almost a year ago, I knew that that I wanted to make a separate documentary covering something that I didn't get to cover the first time around: Local communists who also happened to be Malay and Muslim.

Tomorrow, Tuesday 15 Aug, we will set off for South Thailand to begin shooting this next documentary. I will be reunited with some of the same people from the first project and also some new folks.

Executive Producer: James Lee
Producer: Tan Chui Mui
Writer/Director: Amir Muhammad
Camera: Albert Hue
Assistant Director: Liew Seng Tat
Sound: Hardesh Singh
Still Photography: Danny Lim
Editor: Akashdeep Singh

Some further details:

Budget: RM60,000
Estimated duration: 72 minutes

After a fierce bidding war, the production company that is handling it will be Da Huang Pictures. Financially, it would not have been possible if the LKT T-shirt and DVD had not sold well, so thanks for buying!

We are set to return on 26 August. During the shoot days I will not be able to check email or even receive phone-calls, so if you don't hear back from me, don't panic! If you are the reading kind, you can catch up on recent books that cover some of the same ground, including Islam Melayu Komunis and the very readable Gerakan Kiri Melayu dalam Perjuangan Kemerdekaan.

If all goes well and if God wills it, it will be ready by year's end. I hope to screen it commercially in early 2007.

Oh yeah: The title is Apa Khabar Orang Kampung. There is no English title yet, but I doubt it will be a literal translation.

See you at the end of the month with pictures and reports from the shoot.

Reviews online

2006-07-27T07:39:00.000+08:00

As far as I know these are the reviews that can be found online. Written by folks who had seen it and at least a paragraph long. All in English unless otherwise stated.

1. Variety, by Russell Edwards (USA).

2. Yawning Bread (Singapore).

3. MovieXclusive by Stefan Shih (Singapore).

4. Cakap Cakap Cinema (blog) (Malaysia).

5. Killersherpa (blog) (Singapore).

6. Film Kritiken (in German) by Thomas Hajduk (Germany). Translation here.

7. Kakiseni by Sharaad Kuttan (Malaysia).

8. Kakiseni by Zedeck Siew (Malaysia).

9. Kakiseni by Pang Khee Teik (Malaysia).

10. Velvet Rockmine (in Spanish) by Gonzalo Beladrich (Argentina).

11. MStar (in Malay) by Salhan K Ahmad (Malaysia).

12. Sign and Sight by Christoph Mayerl (Germany).

13. Die Tageszeitung (in German) by Ekkehard Knorer (Germany) Translation here.

14. Utusan Malaysia (in Malay) by Noor Azam Shairi (Malaysia).

15. The Fool's Progress (blog) (Singapore).

16. Ampulets (blog) (Singapore).

17. Seattle PI by Sean Axmaker (USA).

18. Malaysiakini (letter) by Adil Johan (Malaysia/Canada).

19. Otterman speaks (blog) (Singapore).

20. The Star by Shahanaaz Habib (Malaysia).

21. Asia Pacific Arts by Rowena Aquino (USA).

22. Aliran by CY (Malaysia).

23. Tonton Filem (blog) (in Malay) by Fadz (Malaysia).

24. Orange Polyester (blog) by Victor Serge (Canada).

25. Analizme (blog) (in Spanish) by Maza (Chile).

26. Farmacia (blog) by Herr Wollman (Norway)

27. The Academic Hack by Michael Sicinski (USA).

28. I Intend to Escape (blog) by Paul Stott (UK).

29. Kidd a Blogger (blog) by Wern Kidd (UK/Malaysia).

30. Stomach of Chaos (blog) by Kudo (UK/Malaysia).

31. Orang Jauh (blog) by FF (UK/Malaysia).

32. World Socialist Web Site by David Walsh (USA).

33. Criticine by Benjamin McKay (South-East Asia)

Seen at HMV Singapore

2006-07-13T12:37:00.000+08:00

Photos courtesy of See Ming.

Your Film Is Banned. There's Not Enough Violence.

2006-07-09T11:26:00.000+08:00

By Dennis Lim

The New York Times. July 9, 2006

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia:

"YOU haven't seen the movie," the director Amir Muhammad said, addressing the small crowd that had come to hear him talk about the most controversial Malaysian film of the year. "Now buy the T-shirt."

Mr. Amir, 34, is one of this country's leading independent filmmakers, and from the point of view of the authorities, something of a pest. His newest film, The Last Communist, is, as he puts it, "a semi-musical documentary road movie" based on the life of Chin Peng, once the leader of the outlawed Malayan Communist Party. (Mr. Chin, now 84, is an exile in Thailand.) It was to have been the first local documentary to open theatrically in Malaysia. Instead, it is the first Malaysian film to be banned at home.

Forbidden to screen the film even in private settings, Mr. Amir has been speaking out about the ban. On a recent Sunday, at an event sponsored by a political publisher, he previewed the film's trailer, relayed news of its DVD release in Singapore (cautioning that possession of the film in Malaysia constitutes a criminal offense) and sold The Last Communist T-shirts to recoup some of the lost box-office revenue.

After the movie had its premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival in February, Mr. Amir submitted it to the Malaysian censorship board, which passed it for release without cuts. Because of its eyebrow-raising title — Communism is a taboo topic here, a legacy of the Malayan emergency of the 1940's and 50's, when the British colonials battled a ragtag but dogged Communist insurrection — he was asked to screen the film for the Special Branch, the arm of the police force responsible for internal security. Mr. Amir said the officers who attended had no complaints, though, he added, "one of them said people might be bored."

In May, two weeks before the film was set to open, Berita Harian, a conservative local daily, published a series of articles denouncing the film as a glorification of Communism. None of the journalists involved, or the historians and politicians they quoted in the articles, had seen the film or asked to see it, Mr. Amir said.

On May 5 the Home Affairs Ministry, which oversees the censorship board, retracted its approval, citing public protest. The ban set off a flood of media commentary, much of it questioning the ministry's decision. After a screening was held for Malaysian members of Parliament, the home minister, Radzi Sheikh Ahmad, said the real problem was that the absence of violence in the documentary could create the misconception that Chin Peng was not himself violent. "It will be like allowing a film portraying Osama bin Laden as a humble and charitable man to be screened in the United States," Mr. Radzi told a local newspaper.

Mr. Amir said, "I think this is the first time a film has been banned for not being violent enough."

Earlier bans have earned the censorship board here a reputation for being both draconian and capricious. Schindler's List was deemed Zionist propaganda. Zoolander, in which Will Ferrell's character tries to assassinate the Malaysian prime minister, was thought unsuitable for obvious reasons. Daredevil was blacklisted because its superhero sounded, well, satanic.

Malaysian censors have long taken their cue from the autocratic style of Mahathir Mohamad, the former prime minister who stepped down in 2003 after 22 years in power. The attitudes of the cultural gatekeepers provide a window into the contradictions and tensions unique to this multiracial, polyglot society, which has a politically dominant Malay Muslim majority and sizable minorities of ethnic Chinese and Indians.

Within Kuala Lumpur's small group of independent filmmakers, Mr. Amir is a distinctive voice. A law school graduate and occasional newspaper columnist, he has concentrated on reviving the lost art of the film essay for a society that hasn't always had much to balance the official narrative.

"There are 15 universities in Malaysia, and only one has a history department," Mr. Amir said. Accordingly, his films function as sardonic memory aids. The Big Durian (2003), named for a thorny local fruit, is a meditation on Malaysian racial politics, revisiting the 1969 riots between Malays and Chinese, and the government's 1987 Internal Security Act clampdown, in which more than 100 activists and artists were detained and several newspapers shut down.

Combining real and scripted interviews, The Big Durian vividly shows how national traumas can, in a culture of opacity and evasiveness, be collectively forgotten. The film, the first Malaysian movie shown at the Sundance Film Festival, was never submitted for the censors' approval — its head-on approach to the prickly subject of race would seem destined to disqualify it immediately — and has only screened at movie clubs here.

Mr. Amir made The Last Communist because he was intrigued by the demonization of Communism in history textbooks and government statements. Commonly termed traitors, the Communists were widely viewed as rabid nationalists who, after fighting alongside the British against the Japanese occupiers in World War II, mounted a guerrilla insurgency against the colonial rulers.

Using Chin Peng's 2003 memoir, My Side of History, as a road map, The Last Communist passes through the small towns where Mr. Chin, the son of Chinese immigrants, lived from his days as a student Communist leader to his time on the run as the most wanted man in the British empire. In these sleepy backwaters Mr. Amir interviewed dozens of locals, mainly about their day-to-day work lives.

The resulting travelogue, punctuated by musical numbers spoofing the songs from the instructional films the British used to circulate, poses sidelong questions about empire, patriotism and national identity. Details from Mr. Chin's life appear as on-screen text, but the man himself is conspicuously absent. Not a single photograph is shown; the only likeness is a cartoon.

"I didn't want to use archival stuff," said Mr. Amir. "That's such a comfortable way of presenting history. The idea was to show that history happens in the present tense."

Mr. Amir, who is Malay Muslim, believes the controversy surrounding his film, like so much else in this country, may be less a matter of ideology than race. The ban appears to have resulted from the pressure applied by Berita Harian, a paper whose politics Mr. Amir classified in a recent blog entry as "verging on the ethnocentric and semifascist." One of its editorials advised Mr. Amir to stick to documenting the lives of Malay heroes. (Most Malaysian Communists were of Chinese descent.)

Though disappointed about the ban, Mr. Amir is busy with other projects. He is finishing a horror movie, Susuk, and is about to start a publishing house. He plans to write the first title himself: a volume of political humor called Malaysian Politicians Say the Darndest Things.

He's also shooting a sequel to The Last Communist. The first film took him to Betong, a village in southern Thailand where Malaysian Chinese Communists live in exile. This time he's heading to another Thai village, Sukhrin, where the few Malay Communists settled. Given the switch in racial emphasis, Mr. Amir expects the official response to be telling. "If they're smart, the government would ban this one too," he said. "Otherwise it might expose their hypocrisy."

Soundtrack etc. launch party

2006-07-06T10:33:00.001+08:00

What: Launch of the CD Eating Pomeloes from Tokyo to Tamil Nadu makes my Heart go Gubra by Hardesh Singh, which features his music from Lelaki Komunis Terakhir, Gubra, Chemman Chaalai, Tokyo Magic Hour and Mukhsin; as well as the DVD The Year of Living Vicariously by Amir Muhammad.

Where: Laundry Bar, The Curve, Mutiara Damansara.

When: Tuesday, 18 July, 9pm to late.

Features live music performances by Zalila Lee and Fancy Poultry of all the original songs in Lelaki Komunis Terakhir! And video art! As well as merchandise galore!

The music (three songs as well as a bonus extra) can be previewed now at the Pomelo Music blog.

Singapore video release

2006-06-27T21:24:00.000+08:00

The official VCD and DVD for The Last Communist is distributed by Comstar in that bastion of democracy and artistic expression, Singapore.

It is available at major outlets in Singapore. I think the VCD comes out first and then the DVD. Either way, it has been passed without cuts, rated PG, and is available with optional English and Chinese subtitles.

Alas! Possession of this VCD or DVD in Malaysia is a criminal offence since it is banned. If you are caught with it, you can be fined up to RM50,000 or jailed up to five years. Don't say I didn't warn you.

T-shirt now on sale

2006-06-12T14:19:00.000+08:00

The official T-shirt for Lelaki Komunis Terakhir is now on sale!

You haven't seen the movie, now buy the T-shirt!

It is available in 4 sizes (S, M, L and XL) and on sale from today at:

1. Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre (KLPAC) Resource Centre, Sentul Park, Jalan Strachan, Kuala Lumpur. Tel: (03) 4047 9052. Opening times: 12pm-6:30pm (Tues-Sun) (when there is a performance on at one of the halls, this is extended to 8:30pm). Mon closed.

2. Silverfish Books, 67-1 Jalan Telawi 3, Bangsar Baru, Kuala Lumpur. Tel: (03) 2284 4837. Opening times: 10am-8pm (Mon-Fri), 10am-7pm (Sat & pub hol). Sun closed.

3. SIRD/Gerakbudaya Enterprise, 11, Lorong 11/4E, Petaling Jaya. Tel: (03) 7957 8342. Opening times: 9am-6pm (Mon-Fri). Sat & Sun closed.

4. Wondermilk/The Click Project, 37 Jalan SS 21/1A Damansara Utama, Petaling Jaya. tel: (03) 7725 8930. Opening times: 10-6pm (Mon-Fri). Sat & Sun closed.

It is white with the 'single pomelo' design shown further down this blog.

It can also be ordered online now at Kinibooks.

The price is RM35 and only 500 shirts will be sold. Yes, the move to make back some of the money that the ban has cost me begins here.

I no longer seek to change the way you think; merely the way you dress.

Oh yes, these venues (except for Wondermilk) also sell the DVD for my previous documentary, the Indonesian-set The Year of Living Vicariously, for RM25.

Da Malaysia Code, uncut

2006-06-10T09:35:00.000+08:00

Comment by Zaharom Nain

The Star. 9 June.

Suddenly, everyone’s a psychic and film critic.

Indeed, in the true spirit of Malaysia Boleh, Malaysians – from the all-powerful politikus to the seemingly-ordinary rakyat – have in the last couple of months been crawling out of the woodwork, to show the world how truly maju (progressive) we are. And what a sad sight it has been.

First, we had a report in a Malay newspaper that Finas (National Film Development Corporation) was screening lucah (pornographic) movies, based on the complaints of unknown and unnamed individuals.

The film series was initially conceived by film lovers evidently led by academic and culture vulture Dr Wan Zawawi Ibrahim.

It was largely made up of foreign-language movies, created by independent filmmakers interested in telling stories, making audiences think, using film as an art form, and eschewing the idea of making movies for a quick buck.

And, indeed, there is a growing audience for these films in Malaysia. An audience evidently fed up with the commercial scene, including the Malaysian (Malay) movie scene, with its ongoing themes of cinta (love), duka (heartbreak) and jenaka (comedy).

Anyway, to cut a tedious – but sadly, recurring – story short, apparently on the basis of this one allegation in the daily, without any evidence offered, without any specific movie being mentioned, Finas requested the series organisers to cease and desist.

Which they did, of course, under protest. What is stupefyingly silly about this whole episode is not that Finas made such a decision. That is its right.

But the decision evidently was made without separating fact from fiction, without distinguishing between what may really be quality films and, quite simply, the depraved perceptions of the complainant(s).

More than that, there was just no real public discussion of the issue, merely assertions about public opinion.

The same, however, cannot be said of Amir Muhammad’s Lelaki Komunis Terakhir.

There was much public discussion surrounding the film, although virtually no one had seen it.

And it looks like not many will, now that its “on-off” banning by the Home Affairs Ministry is finally “on”.

It was probably the first-ever locally made documentary film that was condemned so viciously even before it was available for viewing. Condemned based on the imaginings of the inquisitors, the paranoia of the persecutors.

Is it too much to ask that if we are to make valid judgments on anything – including potentially controversial films – that we at least know something about it first-hand and not hear about it second-hand or third-hand?

Surely that’s the least we could do if we wish to be a “scientific, progressive society” (Ah yes, Vision 2020 and the nine challenges, remember?) in the not-too-distant future.

In the case of Lelaki Komunis Terakhir, even the authorities appeared confused, making more U-turns in their statements than Michael Caine did in The Italian Job.

One said that Lelaki Komunis Terakhir was harmless but amateurish, and a couple of days later changed that to “threatening national security”!

Another asserted that the film would upset and shock the older generation who had suffered at the hands of the terrorists.

Let’s get a sense of perspective here. The permit that was being applied for was for a limited run in a couple of cinemas. As with any other movie like, say Sembilu 55 or Pontianak 15, people interested in watching Lelaki Komunis Terakhir would then need to purchase a ticket to view it.

Nobody young or old, hitam manis or kuning langsat, rich or poor, left-winger or goalkeeper, male, female or other was going to be FORCED to view the movie and possibly die of boredom than of shock and horror.

And even if some viewers did get upset or were shocked, so what? To develop as a people, surely we need to take the rough with the smooth, the bad with the good, nightmares with dreams. What’s the point of denial?

First, let’s all agree that films, plays, dramas, popular culture generally all contain opinions, points of view.

There is this notion of authorship. It is a ridiculous myth that a film must consider all points of view or, even worse, only the official viewpoint.

For example, John Pilger’s award-winning documentaries are opinionated, so too are Robert Fisk’s critical commentaries on the war in West Asia. In no way do they toe the official Bush or Blair line.

Second, painful though it may be for some to accept, people like Chin Peng are part of Malaysia’s history – we can’t simply erase that, if we wish to call ourselves a democracy.

We need to remember that it is people like Hitler who burn books, it is murderous regimes like Pol Pot’s in Cambodia that try to erase history.

Fact is, there are a lot of shocking and upsetting events that have happened throughout history and continue to happen on a daily basis – the recent Indonesian earthquake, the May 14 threatening mob in Penang, the ongoing war in Iraq.

Are we supposed to shield our oh-so-sensitive selves from all these and pretend that such incidents, such shocking and disastrous events don’t happen? Deny their occurrence?

Are we to then abandon yet another 2020 challenge, that of creating a caring society?

Because, in all seriousness, how could we even dream of creating such a society if we are emotionally lobotomised?

And emotionally lobotomised is precisely what we risk becoming if the types of films we can watch and other forms of artistic and personal expression become increasingly dictated by the demands of the bigots, the paranoid and the insecure.

* Zaharom Nain is an Associate Professor at Universiti Sains Malaysia.

Invite to talk ... and T-shirt launch!

2006-06-09T14:19:00.000+08:00

PRESS RELEASE

Amir Muhammad, a critically acclaimed Malaysian director, writer and producer, recently courted controversy over his latest film, "Lelaki Komunis Terakhir" (The Last Communist), which resulted in the film banning by the Minister for Home Affairs.

Strategic Information and Research Development Centre (SIRD) is pleased to have Amir share his thoughts and experiences on the making and subsequent banning of his film.

11 JUNE 2006, Sunday
3.30 pm - 5.30pm
Auditorium, Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall (1st Floor)
1 Jalan Maharajalela, Kuala Lumpur.

Amir is a writer and independent filmmaker based in Kuala Lumpur. He has been writing for the Malaysian print media since the age of 14. In 2000 he wrote and directed Malaysia's first DV feature, and his works have been featured in many international film festivals including Sundance and Berlin. He has also helped produce several other Malaysian DV movies.

The official T-Shirts of "Lelaki Komunis Terakhir" will be launched at the talk. Get them before they're banned.

* Seats are limited and reservations must be made in advance. Please make your reservations via phone during office hours (03-79578342) or email to sird@streamyx.com

Ban this!

2006-06-03T15:30:00.001+08:00

The Malaysian ban is final. The Home Affairs Minister Radzi Sheikh Ahmad says so.

We have not managed to make an appointment to see him. We sent him a 2-page appeal letter on 23 May but he has not replied. When I called his private secretary a few days ago, I was told that "the Minister has more important things to do now."

The same report gives a clue about what some of these things might be: In the final paragraphs he reminds Puteri Umno members to register to vote.

The reasons that he has given in the media for the ban have ranged from: It's insensitive to release it when Umno is celebrating its 60th anniversary; it might make people think Chin Peng is a 'poor old man'; and (my favourite) the documentary does not show enough violence.

Radzi had initially said that the Umno Supreme Council and not the government would have the final say. He seems to think that the Emergency affected Umno more than any other segment of society. But this proposal seems to have been quietly dropped.

He said that the ban was because "the people had protested." The fact that the majority of commentators online as well as in the English, Chinese and Malay print media are opposed to the ban does not seem to concern him; are these not people? The fact that the new Censorship Board committee (which had passed the documentary uncut) seems now determined to start treating Malaysians like rational people also means nothing. How many steps forward, how many steps back?

Lelaki Komunis Terakhir is now the first Malaysian movie to be conclusively banned, with no possibility of appeal.

There have been other Malaysian films banned before - Spinning Gasing, Amok, Fantasia - but these were reversed on appeal, sometimes by going right up to the Prime Minister. I don't feel like going up to the Prime Minister. I've never even met the guy, and I'm sure he has more important things to do.

Yes, I lost a bit of money. But this can be slowly regained through the Korean TV sale and the Singapore box-office.

Of course I'm disappointed; not so much for myself as for what this signals for a country that has been lately harping on the need for a 'First World mentality' and to have a 'knowledge-based economy'. This is the same government that wonders why so many of its graduates that study overseas choose to stay overseas!

Will this discourage me from making other documentaries? Hell no. This is my country as much as it is any politician's, and I will continue to pursue subjects that interest me.

Will this discourage me from trying to release future movies in Malaysia? Well, this is a tougher one. The past month (since the ban was announced on 5 May) has been such an intense one. I don't know if I want to go through that again. It distracts me from what I should be doing, which is concentrating on the next documentary, which I am quite excited about and now raising money for.

I would like to thank all of you who have written in support, either on your blogs, or in newspaper columns, or who just utilised the Comments function on this here site. I have no illusion that you did it because you are concerned about me; rather you were -- quite rightly -- concerned about where this country is heading. The passion and intelligence displayed have been quite humbling, and of course inspiring.

I will continue to talk about this ban if asked. And there are many more overseas screenings lined up.

I have not 'given up' but time is precious and I need to pick my battles. I am sure the Malaysian public is resourceful enough to eventually see the documentary if they so wish.

What did hurt me (I'm only human) is when people say that my documentary will offend their grandfathers who 'fought' the communists. I had no wish to offend people's grandfathers, especially those I'd never met. And then I thought: What did these grandpas fight for? Seriously. Assuming they really risked their lives and fought, what were the ideals that motivated them? I would have thought they were fighting for the right for Malaya (and later Malaysia) to be a democratic society with plural voices, and not the totalitarian state that they assumed the communists would bring about. Totalitarian states, as we all know, are notoriously fond of banning things that don't immediately follow the party line. So did they really get what they fought for?

There have been many ironies attached to this project, and here is another: A huge worry that was articulated (mainly by people who had not seen it) is that this little documentary will somehow promote Chin Peng. Thanks to the publicity the ban has generated, a rep from a major local book-chain told me that Chin Peng's book is now sold-out and new copies had to be ordered. The past month has seen the highest sales of any time since it was launched.

To give the government due credit, this was probably all a roundabout way of encouraging people to read. And to this what can I, a longtime reader, say but Syabas?

Coming to Seattle

2006-06-01T21:38:00.000+08:00

Lelaki Komunis Terakhir will screen on June 15 and 18 at the Seattle International Film Festival. This is the second US festival after its sold-out screening at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival last month.

Seattle is a bigass festival that screens about 300 films this year. It is now in its 32nd year. As far as I know this is the first time it has selected something from Malaysia. So if you know anyone in the city of Starbucks and Nirvana (I'm showing my age here), do spread it around.

Let the past remain where it belongs

2006-05-31T09:49:00.000+08:00

By Brian Yap

The New Straits Times. 31 May 2006

AND so it has come to pass. Despite MPs and a significant number of commentators finding nothing objectionable with Amir Muhammad’s The Last Communist, the film will remain banned.

Facts, common sense and reasoning, once again, have lost out to . . . actually, I don’t know what.

Nonetheless, the ban and the clamour of voices against it highlight the struggle going on between the progressive and conservative sections of our society today. Both are seeking to define the nation’s present and future.

On one side, we have those keen to push Malaysia to become a more open and tolerant society that values discourse, dissent and debate as a means to progress. On the other, are those not keen on change and ready to stifle any dissenting voices or do not understand.

In the past 20 years, Malaysia has undergone tremendous economic development. We have also become quite good at setting records. But if we have been growing in terms of buildings, cars and highways, what many like myself believe is that it is time to progress in other meaningful ways, in terms of culture, arts, media, ethnic relations, human rights and equality.

It is time for Malaysians, and not only Malaysia in the physical sense, to shine.

While many would attribute the opening up of Malaysia to the new leadership, I think it’s an inevitable development after 22 years under one prime minister. Civil society and politicians from both sides of the aisle would probably not allow anyone else such an iron grip over the country again.

But progress often faces resistance from those threatened by change. When a civil society dialogue aimed at countering the erosion of the Federal Constitution was held, some felt threatened. Unfortunately, they fought back not with factual arguments or intellectual debate, but with mob violence.

Or how about the MyTeam vs national squad football game last weekend? Regardless of the match quality, it was more than a game on the field, but also a challenge to the FAM and its way of doing things. Of course, there would be resistance. Instead of being supportive of all Malaysian football, some football officials went as far as belittling the MyTeam squad as "instant noodles".

Yet, in the end, FAM played it safe by fielding not the national team as previously stated but one that was comprised mostly of under-20 players.

Returning to the realm of film, the same resistance to change and progress can be found. As a writer for a Klang Valley arts and entertainment monthly, I am familiar with the work of independent film-makers such as Amir.

It is distressing to see how the work of such forward-thinking people is constantly being challenged by those threatened by emerging voices.

It’s not just the ban. When Yasmin Ahmad’s Sepet, a film that won the Best Asian Film Award at the 18th Tokyo International Film Festival, also became popular with local audiences, it wasn’t met with the support one would have expected.

Where was the Malaysia Boleh brigade? Instead, it was called by some as an undeserving winner of best film at the Malaysian Film Festival, or even worse, a subversive film that threatens our culture.

It’s no secret that the mainstream Bahasa Malaysia film industry, generally, doesn’t appeal to non-Malays, or those looking for more than mere entertainment. So when films from outside the industry appeal to Malaysians (as well as foreigners), some found it threatening. Just when we were starting to see these independent movies make their way into our cinemas, the backlash began.

The fact is independent film-makers like Yasmin, Amir, James Lee, Ho Yuhang and many others have attained international acclaim without depending on either government or mainstream film industry support.

Despite receiving positive reviews from international media, winning accolades at film festivals from Asia to Europe to the Americas, these film-makers have neither over-inflated their achievements nor have they asked for datukships.

Some might think it takes an E-Village to make films, but the independent film-making community managed to bring their creative visions to life on small budgets by working on one another’s projects, multitasking as producers, directors of photography, publicists, and even actors. And for what? Financial gain can’t be a motivation, as many of these films are virtually ignored by the local movie- going public.

In fact, if money were so important, all their films would be in BM, considering how Malaysian films that aren’t in the national language are ineligible for tax rebates on ticket sales.

So here they are, making films because they want to, not bothering anyone, yet finding themselves attacked by politicians, media and film industry people threatened by their success.

Instead of putting these multi-ethnic, creative people on RTM’s payroll, we have someone spouting inanities about how wives should never let their husbands cook.

It is because of this sense of being unrepresented that young people like myself are turning away from traditional media, preferring the Internet as a source of information. Conservative voices are also abundant online, but at least they can’t stifle the opinions of others.

Still, I suppose it’s not surprising that as we head towards the much- lauded goal of becoming a modern, developed nation, we will be impeded by the heft of our history and by those unwilling to let the past remain where it belongs — in the past.

* Brian Yap is a writer at the Klang Valley monthly magazine KLue.

Ironi filem Lelaki Komunis Terakhir

2006-05-30T20:54:00.000+08:00

Oleh Ahmad Fitri Che Musa

Harian Metro. 30 Mei

IRONI, pada saat kita mahu membebaskan minda mentaliti kelas ketiga, ada pihak yang masih bersuara konservatif yang tidak dapat menerima realiti sejarah. Tidak dapat menerima hakikat bahawa semua peristiwa pahit dan kesengsaraan itu berlaku untuk kita belajar dan mengambil iktibar.

Sudah tiba masanya masyarakat berfikiran matang dan bijak serta tidak menjadikan hampir semua isu remeh sebagai sensitif.

Komunis. Sebilangan kita tidak memahami sejarah yang tepat mengenai kumpulan haluan kiri itu. Perkataan ‘komunis’ sahaja cukup membuatkan hati kita gusar.

Malangnya, kita hanya kenal sejarah kumpulan bintang tiga itu ketika belajar subjek sejarah di sekolah. Itupun secara ringkas. Ataupun kita kenal kekejaman komunis daripada cerita nenek moyang. Atau mungkin melalui filem Bukit Kepong?

Namun, apabila dijolok, kita cepat melenting. Tidak hairanlah apabila filem dokumentari, Lelaki Komunis Terakhir (LKT) arahan Amir Muhammad diharamkan 5 Mei lalu hanya kerana tajuknya dan desas-desus serta komen yang mendakwa ia mengagungkan perjuangan bekas Setiausaha Agung Parti Komunis Malaya (PKM), Chin Peng.

LKT adalah dokumentari separa muzikal yang menjejaki bandar kelahiran dan tempat yang pernah didiami Chin Peng. Dokumentari itu memaparkan temuramah dengan individu yang kini tinggal di bandar di Sitiawan, Bidor, Taiping, Ipoh dan Betong, Thailand. Tiada temuramah bersama Chin Peng.

Pelik apabila pengharaman dibuat selepas beberapa individu yang mempunyai agenda ‘ultra-conservative’ tertentu mengkritik kewajaran filem itu sehingga ia boleh menenggelamkan suara dan pemikiran yang adil dan rasional.

Ironi juga apabila filem dokumentari Lelaki Komunis Terakhir diharamkan padahal buku biografi Chin Peng iaitu Alias Chin Peng - My Side of History dihalalkan penjualannya dan mencatat jualan tinggi di pasaran.

Bukan itu saja, buku mengenai Chin Peng yang lain seperti Dialogues with Chin Peng: New Light on the Malayan Communist Party juga dijual secara terbuka di kedai buku utama negara.

Kedua-dua buku itu secara terang-terangan mengagungkan Chin Peng dan penuh dengan biografi, temuramah, pengakuan serta gambar Chin Peng.

Jika ia boleh membawa kesan negatif, bayangkan sejauh mana ia mendatangkan kesan buruk kepada lebih kurang 50,000 pembaca Malaysia sama ada yang membaca versi bahasa Inggeris atau Cina.

Selain itu, pendirian tidak konsisten Menteri Kebudayaan, Kesenian dan Warisan, Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim juga menambahkan kekeliruan masyarakat mengenai filem dokumentari LKT itu.

Sebelum menonton LKT, Rais pernah berkata, “Untuk berlaku adil kepada industri, kita hanya boleh membuat komen jika kita telah menonton filem itu. Inilah keadilan.

“Peraturan keadilan menyatakan bahawa jika anda tidak menonton filem itu, bagaimana anda boleh mengatakan filem itu anti-keselamatan, anti-komuniti...tetapi saya bersetuju tajuk itu mengerikan bagi komuniti Malaysia.”

Malah selepas menonton filem itu bersama anggota Parlimen lain di Perbadanan Kemajuan Filem Nasional Malaysia (Finas) pada 21 Mei lalu, beliau berpendapat filem LKT tidak membawa satu kisah penting sehingga perlu timbul kontroversi.

Menurutnya, fakta di dalam filem itu boleh diperoleh daripada buku mengenai Chin Peng yang terdapat di pasaran tempatan

Rais berkata “Tidak ada fakta baru kecuali kandungan filem atau wawancara yang membawa gambaran kurang jelas atau kurang muktamad bagi satu-satu pihak tapi itu biasa.”

Walau bagaimanapun, selepas ditanya sekali lagi oleh pemberita empat hari kemudian, beliau memberikan ulasan berlainan dengan kenyataannya terdahulu.

Beliau berkata, “Filem LKT mengagungkan Chin Peng dan kita tidak sepatutnya agungkan dia. Dalam hal ini, Datuk Seri Mohd Radzi Syeikh Ahmad membuat keputusan betul dengan tidak membenarkan filem dokumentari itu ditayangkan.”

Adalah menghairankan apabila Rais memberi pandangan bertentangan dengan kenyataan sendiri.

Lain pula dengan Menteri Hal Ehwal Dalam Negeri, Datuk Seri Mohd Radzi Syeikh Ahmad yang pada awalnya mengharamkan penayangan terbabit dengan alasan ‘orang awam’ sudah membantah.

Apabila ditanya pemberita selepas menonton filem LKT, beliau berkata akan membawa isu filem berkenaan ke Majlis Tertinggi (MT) Umno untuk mendapatkan pandangan.

“Saya akan membawa (isu filem itu) ke MT untuk dapat nasihat, mungkin kita tayang pada MT. Filem ini banyak membabitkan Umno,” katanya.

Beliau berkata, penahanan filem itu daripada ditayangkan 18 Mei lalu adalah kerana masa tayangannya tidak sesuai iaitu hampir dengan sambutan ulang tahun Umno yang ke-60 pada 11 Mei lalu di Johor Bahru.

“Sentimen ahli Umno pada masa itu tidak sesuai. Pasal itu saya tahan (penayangan filem itu) walaupun (filem itu) diberi kelulusan (oleh Lembaga Penapisan Filem) untuk ditayangkan,” katanya.

Menurut Radzi lagi, judul filem berkenaan tidak sesuai memandangkan ia bukan menceritakan mengenai Chin Peng.

Sememangnya Radzi selaku Menteri Hal Ehwal Dalam Negeri mempunyai kuasa mengharamkan LKT mengikut Seksyen 26 Akta Penapisan Filem 2002 sekiranya ia membabitkan soal keselamatan dalam negeri tetapi adakah MT Umno forum yang sesuai untuk membincangkan filem itu?

Sebelum ini juga, LPF sudah meluluskan tayangan filem LKT tanpa suntingan dan diberi klasifikasi ‘U’ tetapi kelulusan tayangannya ditarik balik oleh Kementerian Hal Ehwal Dalam Negeri.

Persoalannya, adakah LPF gagal dan tidak berkemampuan melihat apa yang ditafsir dan dinilai oleh Radzi selaku Menteri Hal Ehwal Dalam Negeri sehingga ia diharamkan walaupun tayangan filem itu sudah diluluskan LPF?

Barangkali apa yang diutarakan tokoh sejarah negara, Profesor Emeritus Datuk Dr Khoo Kay Kim berasas apabila beliau berkata, “Sebelum meluluskan, biarlah pihak yang arif menontonnya terlebih dulu. Dalam hal ini LPF tentu tidak benar-benar faham jika kita minta mereka menjelaskan apa itu komunisme dan faham apa sejarah darurat.”

Bagaimanapun, Pengerusi LPF, Mohd Hussain Shafie berkata walaupun dokumentari terbabit mengisahkan bekas seorang pemimpin parti yang diharamkan, filem itu tidak akan menyebabkan apa-apa kesan negatif kepada rakyat Malaysia.

“Apabila sesuatu filem cuba menyebarkan ideologi (komunisme), kita tidak akan benarkan,” katanya.

“Peranan utama kami di sini mengesan hal-hal yang boleh mengancam keselamatan negara. Tetapi daripada penilaian kami, filem (LKT) ini tidak lebih sebuah dokumentari mengenai hal-hal sejarah yang orang ramai boleh baca dalam buku sejarah atau di tempat lain,” katanya.

Bagi Amir, filemnya itu tidak lebih daripada dokumentasi untuk mengenal sesebuah masyarakat kerana adalah lebih baik dengan mengkaji minoriti kerana golongan minoriti ini mendapat kesan secara langsung daripada pihak berkuasa.

Selepas kontroversi ini, Amir, anda mungkin mahu menukar tajuk filem dokumentari LKT kepada Pengkhianat Negara atau Petualang Negara.

Tetapi agak pelik apabila tiada orang yang bergendang dan mencanang kontroversi apabila filem terbaru Senario Dalam Pemburu Emas Yamashita menggunakan nama dan gambar jeneral Jepun yang pernah menyebabkan satu Malaya sengsara ketika zaman penjajahan Jepun. Kelakar bukan? Sensitif atau kurang peka? Anda tentukan.

MPs don't give 2 thumbs up

2006-05-29T07:28:00.000+08:00

A gonzo video recording of the press conference on 21 May, when Lelaki Komunis Terakhir was screened for Malaysian MPs and some media folks at Finas. Featuring comments by Rais Yatim, Lim Kit Siang, Jins Shamsuddin and many more.

It is only minimally edited, and presented in English and Malay with no subtitles. Total running time is 30 minutes but it is broken up into 4 parts here.

I would like to thank the hard-working staff of Greenlight Pictures for uploading the video.

Coming to Korean TV

2006-05-25T08:42:00.000+08:00

Lelaki Komunis Terakhir has been purchased by the South Korean TV station EBS, which will hold the Korean broadcasting rights from next week. A highly-placed person from this station saw it at the Singapore International Film Festival last month and liked it enough to begin a correspondence. It will screen 3 times in the next 2 years.

EBS is state-owned so it is like the Korean version of RTM. It has the option of screening either a Korean-dubbed or subtitled version. I secretly hope for the first option because I think an all-Korean version of the documentary would be kind of cute.

South Korea has had many traumatic encounters with Communism in the past (there are a few rippling blockbusters of theirs that attest to this even if you don't read History books) but has no problem showing it. And it's also considered of sufficient technical merit to be broadcast.

Well, lots of Korean dramas now screen on Malaysian TV and have a screaming fan-base. It is nice for trade to go the other way for a change, even for such a modest venture. Such a patriot I am.

BERNAMA report

2006-05-22T09:03:00.000+08:00

Rais Finds 'The Last Communist' Film Not Offensive

KUALA LUMPUR, May 21 (Bernama) -- The banned musical documentary The Last Communist is not offensive, said Culture, Arts and Heritage Minister Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim.

"The plot isn't controversial and there's nothing that could be deemed as offensive from the cultural viewpoint," he said.

The facts portrayed in the documentary could be read in the book about former Communist Party of Malaya leader Chin Peng sold in book stores, he told reporters after joining Members of Parliament to watch the film at the National Film Development Corporation (Finas) Sunday.

The Internal Security Ministry banned the documentary produced by independent film-maker Amir Muhammad on May 10 days before its screening in cinemas although it had been passed by the Censorship Board.

The ban followed criticisms that the film glorified the cause of the communists and Chin Peng.

The documentary was screened for the MPs at the request of parliamentary Opposition Leader Lim Kit Siang who wanted to see the justification for its ban.

Rais said there was nothing new in the film except for the interviews with the Communist Party of Malaya's former members.

"They were vague, not conclusive for any quarters... that's normal," he said, adding that whether the ban would be lifted was the prerogative of the Internal Security Ministry.

He said his ministry would give its views if it was asked to do so but he hoped the issue would not be blown out of proportion.

Lim said that he could not see anything controversial that could justify the banning of the film.

"When I went in, I was prepared to be outraged. But, hard as I tried, I could not find anything to be outraged about because it does not glorify the Communist Party or Chin Peng, and does not even promote communism.

"It just used the Chin Peng connection to make a documentary about life in the country and a little bit about life at the border. Some scenes such as the charcoal factory (in Taiping), petai boys (in Bidor) are an eye opener for many and highly educational," he said.

PAS secretary-general Datuk Kamaruddin Jaafar said it was a simple film portraying the life of a group of Malaysians in the 1940s and 1950s.

"It does not even tell a full story on the communist insurgency in the country nor is it a propaganda film," he said, adding that it would not leave a negative impact on the audience.

The first Malaysian review

2006-05-18T09:16:00.000+08:00

In the interest of history

Lelaki Komunis Terakhir (The Last Communist)
Directed by Amir Muhammad

Review by Jeremy Mahadevan.
New Straits Times. 18 May.

LET’S imagine that the communists triumphed back in the day, defeating the British and the local military and police. Picture a world where we’re all lining up for weekly food allocations, living in dormitories, singing songs about Engels and carrying around little red books with Chin Peng’s face on the first verso.

Had that unlikely victory taken place, what would our history books look like? Would the Emergency be remembered as a time of Imperialist brutality and bourgeois excess? Would Henry Gurney, Harold Rowdon Briggs and Tunku Abdul Rahman have joined Voldemort as “they-who-shall-not-be-named”?

We’ll never know for sure. But we do know how our country turned out under a conservative, capitalist government — the proof is all around us. Looking at us now, with our business-savvy MPs and foreign investments, it’s almost unimaginable that history once held us in a fork between godless communality and religious profitability. Yet it did, and this is why Amir Muhammad’s new film Lelaki Komunis Terakhir is such affecting viewing.

All right, we all know it’s banned, it’s a danger to us all, and it might resuscitate communism and send it trampling all over the fragile edifices of our prosperity like a big red Godzilla. It’s strange when people assume that silence will change history, because it won’t. Any Malaysian lucky enough to see this film will realise that all Malaysians should see it, because it elucidates parts of our history that are locked out of our school syllabuses.

The film’s not perfect; in fact, it’s one of Amir’s less polished works, although considering the ambition involved, that’s understandable. Most of the movie runs like the documentary that it is, but it’s loosely divided into chapters by the inclusion of musical interludes, allowing Amir to revel — as he undoubtedly does — in having made a “semi-musical documentary road movie”.

The songs are not without reason, though — they provide vital comic uplifts and give the audience space to breathe after each chapter’s barrage of images and information. The narration is presented as text on-screen rather than a voiceover, so at points you might hurt your head trying to concentrate on two things at once. I know I did... that pau-making machine was just too fascinating.

The songs, written by Hardesh Singh with lyrics by Jerome Kugan, successfully parody the patriotic and/or motivational music that anyone who has tuned in to RTM will be familiar with. The multi-racial “dance troupe” ought to have hammed things up a bit more, but the “singer” Zalila Lee does a wonderfully poker-faced job.

More spectacular musical sequences would have immersed the audience deeper in the movie, dispelling a bit of the wackiness that causes people to shift uneasily and glance at each other, but criticising a film for not having a big enough budget is entirely pointless.

The main strength of this movie, aptly enough, is in the people. Amir has an uncanny ability to display the individualities of his subjects, focusing on the things that make them true characters. The “Petai Boys” of Bidor are particularly cool, as well as the boss of the charcoal factory who, for some reason, addresses the camera as “ladies and gentlemen”.

As we’re taken from town to town, retracing the path of Chin Peng’s life, we get to see how things are now in the landmarks of the famous communist’s life. The interviews are not always skewed towards the Emergency — rather, these are just people outlining how they live and work, what they do and why they do it. This is not a movie about communism, it’s a movie about Malaysia and Malaysians, which makes the ban all the more unfair.

Amir is not interested in glorifying communism — in fact, Chin Peng doesn’t even appear in his movie, a gap that he justifies by saying that he’s “never liked talking to politicians” and that “on one level, the documentary is about the idea of absence”.

He has said in the past that if we were living in a communist country today, he’d be making a film about capitalists. What he wants to study are the outcasts, those relegated from society.

Hence, the movie builds up to a visit to the villages in Thailand that now house the communist cadre and their families. It then becomes clear that this is also a film about how history deals with people, and how people deal with history.

It’s sad that due to unrest in Southern Thailand, Amir failed to visit the villages occupied by Malay communists, since this would have helped to dispel the misconception that the Communist Party was made up exclusively of ethnic Chinese.

As it is, those other villages are only mentioned, not shown. But it’s still exceedingly heartening to see a film that stoically portrays our nation’s history, choosing not to honour or to criticise, but simply to document.

* The reviewer caught Lelaki Komunis Terakhir in Singapore.

Singapore cinema run extended

2006-05-17T22:35:00.000+08:00

I thought it would last only a week. But due to popular response, The Last Communist will continue screening in Singapore from 18 May until ... well, until people stop buying tickets.

The Picturehouse venue is still:

Levels 5 & 6, The Cathay Cineplex
The Cathay, 2 Handy Road, Singapore 229233

Cinema Phone Booking:
6235 1155

Reservations can be made at the Cathay ticketing website.

The screenings for the next seven days are at 10:55pm. This might seem like an odd time for a documentary but the Midnight screening I had in Toronto's Hot Docs early this month proved to be one of the best yet. So venture forth into the darkness if ye dare.

Meanwhile, the Malaysian fate remains uncertain.

Reading list

2006-05-15T18:50:00.000+08:00

The indefatigable journalist Fathi Aris Omar, whom I first knew from the early days of Malaysiakini, has compiled all the available online articles and commentary on the ban in his blog here. Phew!

The first article in a Malaysian newspaper to be written by someone who has seen it

2006-05-14T15:58:00.000+08:00

"Kenapa Lelaki Komunis Terakhir?"

Oleh Saifullizan Tahir

Mingguan Malaysia. 14 May

"Semua keluarga yang bahagia itu serupa; setiap keluarga yang tidak bahagia, merana dengan cara mereka tersendiri" - Leo Tolstoy.

KATA-KATA sakti yang membuka cerita Anna Karenina karangan penulis besar Rusia, Leo Tolstoy itu menjadi antara ilham kepada Amir Muhammad untuk mengerjakan dokumentari terbarunya Lelaki Komunis Terakhir.

Amir terilham bahawa untuk mengenal sesuatu masyarakat, kajilah mereka yang berada di pinggirnya dan bukan mereka yang selesa di tengah-tengah.

Tetapi filem itu telah mengundang kontroversi sejak awal lagi, sejak sebelum ia mula dibikin. Seorang ahli politik mengeluarkan kenyataan bahawa filem itu cuba mengagungkan perjuangan komunis.

Malah minggu lepas apabila filem itu mula diperkatakan menjelang tayangannya di pawagam terpilih yang sepatutnya dijadualkan pada 18 Mei ini, timbul suara-suara yang tidak senang dengan perkembangan Lelaki Komunis Terakhir.

Apa yang menghairankan tidak seorangpun dari mereka, termasuk wartawan tersebut yang sudah menonton filem ini.

Lain pula pandangan Presiden Persatuan Sutradara Malaysia (FDAM), Dr. Mahadi J. Murat misalnya ketika diminta pandangan beliau tentang dokumentari itu dan kontroversi yang timbul.

Sebagai pembikin filem dan ahli akademik Mahadi merasakan beliau perlu menonton filem itu sebelum membuat sebarang komen.

"Saya melihat filem sebagai filem. filem adalah satu kerja seni. Saya mahu melihat apa yang generasi baru ini lahirkan." katanya.

Tetapi secara peribadi Mahadi menjelaskan bahawa beliau memang sentiasa menanti kemunculan filem-filem keluaran tempatan.

Penulis sendiri mempunyai pengalaman peribadi tentang komunis. Walaupun datang daripada generasi yang tidak mengalami zaman perang secara langsung. Sungguhpun begitu, kami selalu dihidang dan dijamu dengan memori-memori peperangan dan kerengsaan generasi sebelumnya.

Sewaktu kecil, apabila balik ke kampung nenek, setiap malam kami akan diceritakan tentang kekejaman tentera Jepun dan kemudiannya komunis. Kami mendengar kisah bagaimana datuk saudara dan anak perempuannya ditahan komunis dan hilang tanpa khabar berita sampai ke hari ini.

Kesengsaraan dan azab kehidupan yang dialaminya itu dipindah turun ke dalam benak dan hati penulis yang ketika itu masih empuk. Semua itu meninggalkan kesan yang bukan sedikit kepada pemikiran dan emosi kolektif penulis.

Jadi apabila Amir mahu membuat filem mengenai Chin Peng, penulis terus dikejutkan oleh artificial memory yang telah lama tertanam dalam benak dan jiwa.

Pelbagai perasaan berkecamuk: Kenapa perlu menjolok sarang tebuan? Kenapa perlu mengejut gergasi sangsi yang sedang enak tidur?

Bukan sesuatu yang menyenangkan apabila kita disuruh bersemuka dengan sesuatu yang pernah memberi kesan mendalam kepada orang yang kita sayang. Malah memori mereka sudah seperti menjadi memori kami sendiri. Dendam mereka (yang kini menjadi dendam kami), kembali menyala.

Tetapi perasaan itu jugalah yang membuatkan rasa ingin tahu tentang dokumentari itu semakin menjadi-jadi.

Sebelum Amir mula membuat filem itu sendiri, penulis ada bertanya kepadanya, kenapa? Jawapannya ketika itu, kerana dia ingin tahu.

Setelah filem itu siap dan sedia untuk ditayangkan, sekali lagi penulis bertanya soalan yang sama. Kali ini Amir memberikan jawapan yang sama tetapi dengan sedikit penjelasan.

"Untuk mengenal sesebuah masyarakat adalah lebih baik dengan mengkaji minoriti, kerana golongan minoriti ini mendapat kesan secara langsung daripada pihak yang berkuasa.

"Mereka yang berada dirangkum majoriti selalunya selesa dan tidak merasa. Kalau negara kita ini merupakan negara komunis, saya rasa saya lebih tertarik untuk membuat filem tentang kapitalis."

Memang komunis dan komunisme memberikan banyak kesan langsung kepada perkembangan negara ini.

Lihat saja bagaimana pengstrukturan semula penduduk di Malaysia ketika itu, dan kesannya sehingga sekarang. Kaum Cina ditempatkan di bandar atau di pinggirnya supaya senang dikawal kerana jika di kampung atau di pinggir hutan mereka akan lebih terdedah dengan komunis yang majoritinya adalah berketurunan Cina. Dasar pecah dan perintah oleh Jeneral Sir Gerald Templer memberi kelebihan kepada kaum tersebut sehingga kini

Malahan undang-undang mengenai filem iaitu Akta Filem (Penapisan) 1957 yang disemak semula pada tahun 1971 digubal kerana komunis! Ingatkah kita bagaimana filem digunakan oleh regim Jerman sebagai penyebar propaganda yang paling berkesan? Jika berkesempatan tontonlah filem Der Ewige Jude (Yahudi Selamanya) (1941). Filem yang meyemarakkan rasa benci rakyat Jerman kepada kaum Yahudi. Tetapi, Lelaki Komunis Terakhir bukan filem propaganda.

Filem Amir ini lebih mirip kepada road movie, berbeza daripada filem dokumentari sebelumnya The Big Durian(2003) dan Ada Apa Dengan Indonesia(2005).

Apabila akhirnya dapat menonton sendiri filem dokumentari ini, penulis dapat merumuskan bahawa Amir sebenarnya bukan hanya bercerita tentang Chin Peng. Chin Peng hanyalah kalam untuk Amir menceritakan tentang sesuatu yang lebih besar, tentang Malaysia!

Melalui filemnya ini, Amir melakarkan potret Malaysia yang sangat familiar kepada kita tetapi pada satu sisi lain, agak berbeza - bagai artis impressionist melukis di kanvas. Dia tidak hanya merakamkan apa yang dilihat dengan mata kasar, tetapi turut menelanjangkan rupa jiwa masyarakatnya dengan larian berus yang unik dan tersendiri.

Amir membawa kita menjelajah ke utara Semenanjung Malaysia, singgah di tempat-tempat yang pernah dilalui oleh Chin Peng. Sepanjang perjalanan itu, dia menemubual pelbagai lapisan rakyat Malaysia dari pelbagai kaum mengenai diri mereka. Kemudiannya temubual yang sama dengan mereka yang kalah perang. Jika dihalusi, semua ini bukan dibuat secara rawak. Semua disusun dengan teliti.

Selain temuramah, apa yang menyegarkan adalah selingan lagu-lagu. Pendekatan ini secara sengaja melanggar rukun filem dokumentari. Ia meniru gaya filem propaganda Inggeris terhadap komunis. Lagu-lagu itu digubah khas oleh Jerome Kugan dan Hardesh Singh, pujangga dan pengubah lagu muda yang sedang meningkat naik.

Sehingga kini filem ini telah ditayang di beberapa festival di luar negara. Antaranya Hong Kong, Singapura, Seattle dan Toronto. Semasa di Singapura, sambutannya amat di luar dugaan.

Semasa sesi soal jawab,dapat dilihat bagaimana mereka di Singapura cukup cemburu dengan demokrasi kita yang semakin matang.

Pascaskrip: Sepuluh hari sebelum Lelaki Komunis Terakhir dijadual ditayangkan di pawagam, Kementerian Hal Ehwal Dalam Negeri mengeluarkan arahan melarang tayangannya.

"Who is Afraid of the Last Communist?"

2006-05-14T13:18:00.000+08:00

Who is Afraid of the Last Communist?

By Farish A. Noor

The news that the film Lelaki Komunis Terakhir (The Last Communist) by Malaysian director and producer Amir Muhammad has been banned by the Ministry of Home Affairs - despite the fact that it had been passed by the Malaysian Censor Board - has struck some by surprise.

After the initial hullaballoo brought about by some individuals and groups, including UMNO Youth, who argued that the Malaysian movie industry ought to have focused more on national heroes who fought against the Malayan Communist Party instead, the Malaysian public has been left none the wiser. The Home Ministry has defended its decision to keep the film out of our cinemas on the grounds that 'the Malaysian public' has demanded it. For a government that has not proven as effective when it comes to probing into the internal affairs of the police and the alleged misconduct of some of its members, the Home Ministry now seems to have returned to form and is acting speedily to serve the interests of the public!

Here the first of many questions arises: Who, pray tell, makes up this nebulous 'Malaysian public' that is ever so sensitive to the depiction of Malaysia's leftist leaders, activists and intellectuals? If the mass 'protests' against the film are to be taken into account, then surely one would have to also take into consideration the actors and agents who were behind these protests themselves - in this case none other than the leaders and members of the Conservative Barisan Nasional coalition themselves whose ideological differences with the secular left are well known and documented.

Secondly we are then forced to ask what service this ban is meant to do for us, the Malaysian public, in whose interests the ban was imposed in the first place. Underlying the argument of the Home Ministry seems to be a paternalistic logic of pastoral and custodial care that seeks to domesticate society by safeguarding it from 'insiduous' and 'subversive' elements (catchwords of the Cold War one would recall). One can only wonder if this is the same sort of parental control logic that prevails when the state-appointed authorities act against Malaysian couples who hold hands in public and are accused of 'indecent behaviour'...

The Malaysian state remains stuck in its maximalist model of policing and control, like some overbearing parent that cannot come to terms with the fact that his children have grown up and can now think for themselves. Are we, the Malaysian public, wise and mature enough to vote for the government yet immature enough not to be able to assess the merits of director Amir Muhammad's movie on our own? Or would we need to be given printed guidelines to help us interpret every sentence, every scene, every character, in any film deemed 'unfit' for Malaysian consumtion? If that be the case, the Ministry could have provided us with printed illustrated guidelines that spell out how to interpret the movie and whose side we should take while watching it. A photo of Chin Peng could have been printed with the warning: 'Orang Jahat- Jangan ikut lagaknya. Bahaya- Macam Darth Vader'.

The bottom line is that Amir Muhammad's film was an attempt - albeit in his own artistic mode - to interpret the character and personality of an individual who was instrumental in the formation of post-colonial Malaysia.

Whatever Chin Peng's ideological convictions may have been, he stands among the most important political figures of Malaysia in the 20th century. The fact that he is of Chinese background is also important for the simple reason that it reminds us of the contribution of the non-Malay communities to the development first of colonial, and later post-colonial, Malaysia. It is sad enough that the number of non-Malays who appear in our history books are few and far between. Now it would appear that those who were in the opposition camp are doubly damned for being both non-Malay and in the opposition as well. Will our present day non-Malay opposition leaders like Lim Kit Siang and Karpal Singh suffer the same fate in the future, one wonders?

The writing of Malaysia's complex history can and will be a difficult venture indeed. The enterprise is fraught with difficulties that extend well beyond the ideological and political. Any nation as plural and articifical as Malaysia will have to grapple with its contigencies and radical accidental moments of hazard and chance. Malaysia - the country that was initially thought to be a potential Balkans in the 1950s - has turned out to be one of the few so-called economic miracles of East Asia instead. But this development has not followed a linear path, nor was it predetermined by fate or necessity. Many characters and events were thrown into the bargain, and each of them - both positively and negatively - did, in their own way, steer the ship of the Malaysian state to where it is today.

Chin Peng and the Malayan Communist Party were among those crucial actors whose role was pivotal in the formative years of Malayan nationalism in the 1930s and 1940s, when the decolonisation movement was gaining momentum and the nascent idea of a Malayan (later Malaysian) nation came into being.

If anything, Chin Peng and the MCP should be remembered for what they were: partners in the collective attempt to free Malaya and Malayans from the yoke of British colonialism and Western imperialism. The British understood very well why the Malayan Communist Party was a threat to their own imperial and colonial interests, for the Communists were hardly allies who could be counted upon to defend the rights and privileges of the colonisers. Instead the British chose to support the liberal Malayan conservatives like Onn Jaafar who later created the Independence for Malaya Party (IMP) that was little more than a soft bulwark against the tide of growing anti-colonial sentiment spreading through the country and the region by extension.

During its heyday, the Malayan Communist Party was part of a greater international coalition that struggled against both colonialism and imperialism and which regarded Fascism as its greatest enemy. While the liberals and conservatives among our forefathers lay dormant, the Malayan Communists were the ones who stood up against both Japanese militarism, and following the Second World War, the attempt by the former colonial powers to reimpose their imperial rule in Asia. Were these 'sins' that they, and us, should be ashamed of?

To return to the original question posed at the beginning: If Amir Muhammad's film on Chin Peng is deemed as unfit or even dangerous for the Malaysian public, we need to ask ourselves whose interests are being served here? The Malaysian public that still has to learn the true extent of the commitment and sacrifice of all Malaysians from all races and all walks of life in the anti-colonial struggle? Or the interests of the conservatives among us who insist that theirs and theirs alone is the official account of Malaysian history that deserves to be told? One can understand how and why the British colonisers were adamant that the Malayan Communist Party should be destroyed and all traces of it wiped out. But why should the same skewered beliefs be held by the Malaysian political elite of today?

* Farish A Noor is a Malaysian political scientist and human rights activist, based at the Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO), Berlin. The above article was written for Eye Asia.

Limited screening in Singapore 11-17 May

2006-05-11T02:04:00.002+08:00

The Last Communist screens at The Picturehouse for a limited showcase starting this Thursday (11 May)

Tickets now available for booking.

Screening times:

Thu 11 May: 5:20pm
Fri 12 May: 11:35am & 5:20pm
Sat 13 May: 11:35am & 5:20pm
Sun 14 May: 11:35am & 5:20pm
Mon 15 May: 5:20pm
Tue 16 May: 5:20pm
Wed 17 May: 5:20pm

Please check for details at the Cathay ticketing website.

Cinema Location:
Levels 5 & 6, The Cathay Cineplex
The Cathay, 2 Handy Road, Singapore 229233

Cinema Phone Booking:
6235 1155

THE LAST COMMUNIST
Writer/Director/Producer : Amir Muhammad
PG, 90minutes, Malay/Chinese dialects/Tamil with English subtitles

Recently screened at the 19th Singapore International Film Festival to a full house. Recently banned in Malaysia.

A semi-musical documentary inspired by the early life and legacy of Chin Peng, exiled leader of the banned Communist Party of Malaya. Interviews with the people in the towns he lived in from birth to national independence are interspersed with specially composed songs in the mould of old-fashioned propaganda films.

Official website

Why is Lelaki Komunis Terakhir banned in Malaysia?

2006-05-09T06:06:00.000+08:00

In March 2006 we submitted my documentary Lelaki Komunis Terakhir (known in English as The Last Communist) to the Malaysian Film Censorship Board (LPF). “We” in this case refers to myself as well as Red Films, the local production company which is the co-producer.

Lelaki Komunis Terakhir is a semi-musical road movie documentary tracing the towns in which Chin Peng (exiled leader of the banned Communist Party of Malaya) lived in from birth to national independence in 1957. It does not include any interviews with, or even photographs of, Chin Peng himself. The documentary features interviews with people who live in those same present-day towns such as Sitiawan, Bidor, Taiping, Ipoh and Betong, Thailand. Along the way there are also specially-composed songs and capsule biographical data explaining what Chin Peng did in those towns. Chin Peng himself is mentioned only once during the interviews.

What were my expectations upon submission to LPF? I can honestly say, “I don’t know.” Censorship in this country is an unpredictable thing. I am not a censor so I wouldn’t know what a censor would look out for or find objectionable. I just hoped for the best.

Lelaki Komunis Terakhir had been shot over the course of 4 weeks in late 2005. The total budget including promotion is RM80,000. The shoot had the necessary permit from the National Film Development Corporation (Finas). This was not a ‘guerrilla’ or ‘underground’ shoot and Red Films is a licensed production company responsible for, among others, last year’s teen futsal romance Gol & Gincu.

The funding came partly from the Jan Vrijman Fund of Amsterdam which is a documentary fund for developing countries and not (as a letter in last year’s Berita Harian claimed) a body responsible for spreading communism worldwide.

When the news came out that the documentary was going to be made, UMNO Youth issued a single protest letter. As I had not even started shooting, they were probably making an assumption about its content. I did not respond to this protest letter as I believed the proper thing to do is to make the documentary first.

Lelaki Komunis Terakhir made its world premiere at the prestigious Berlin Film Festival in February. The audience included the Malaysian ambassador to Germany who said he enjoyed it. It has since been invited to 14 other film festivals around the world, including London, Seattle, Vancouver and Hong Kong. All these invites were received up to and including April this year.

In April we received the good news: Lelaki Komunis Terakhir was passed uncut by the censors. Yes, not a single cut. And the rating given was U, meaning suitable for all ages. After a meeting that we had with LPF chairman, he clarified that this approval meant that we could screen it in the three digital cinemas we had asked for: namely, the Golden Screen Cinemas of MidValley, One Utama Kuala Lumpur and Gurney Plaza, Penang. This approval did not include VCD/DVD sales and TV broadcast; we were made to understand that these extra approvals would depend on the public reaction after watching it in the cinemas.

I am not naïve and do know that the subject of communism is taboo in Malaysia. I maintain that Lelaki Komunis Terakhir was made with a certain sense of responsibility and sensitivity to history. It is not a propaganda film but a rather odd documentary. “Odd” is the word I heard when I screened it overseas, but most meant it in a nice way.

Being “odd” as it is, we never wanted a big nationwide release. Lelaki Komunis Terakhir is a documentary shot and finished on digital video. It is not a feature film with stars. It is therefore not “commercial.” There are only 3 cinemas in Malaysia equipped to show digital-video movies and these happen to be the 3 cinemas that we chose. (Berita Harian brought up a bizarre point that Kuala Lumpur and Penang have a majority Chinese population but I fail to see why this matters). Each cinema can fit not even 100 people so it is a very limited screening and hardly Lord of the Rings.

After discussion with Golden Screen Cinemas, we set 18 May for the release date on these 3 screens.

Oh yes: Due to its subject-matter, we were asked to hold a special screening for officers of the Special Branch unit of the Royal Malaysian Police Force. I never knew of any other film that has received such a request but we obliged. We screened it for an audience of 20 Special Branch officers. After the screening we had a nice discussion. They did not indicate any objection to the documentary; one said “It should be OK” but another said, “It’s very academic and most people will be bored.” A few of them took my name-card but said they had none of their own. We did not hear from them again.

All seemed to be going well until Berita Harian ran a series of articles criticizing the LPF’s decision to approve the documentary. Berita Harian was the only newspaper in the country to do this. These articles appeared on May 3, 4 and 5 of the newspaper. These included interviews with politicians, filmmakers and academics who seemed appalled that such a documentary was approved for screening.

On the evening of May 5, Red Films received instructions from the Ministry of Home Affairs to not screen Lelaki Komunis Terakhir anywhere in Malaysia. The reason cited was that “the public had protested.”

We of course cancelled the Golden Screen Cinemas release date and also an Ipoh charity screening on 19 May (for which separate approval was in the process of being obtained from the Ipoh police department).

The decision to ban the documentary was based on the series of articles in Berita Harian. I need to emphasise this point: No one in Berita Harian has seen the documentary. And no one interviewed by Berita Harian had seen it either.

According to friends of mine who were called up by Berita Harian (and who refused to make any comments), the question that was asked of them was “Do you approve of this Amir guy making a movie glorifying communism and Chin Peng?” This sort of leading question obviously got the answers that the paper was looking for. The people who were quoted were making comments on a documentary they had not even seen. Some of them didn’t even know of its existence until Berita Harian told them. In other words, they literally didn’t know what they were talking about.

I was called up by that newspaper on 3 May to give my comments. The reporter said, “There are all these people angry at you. How do you respond?” I said, “They haven’t even seen the documentary. How am I supposed to respond?” He seemed disappointed that he couldn’t goad me into saying anything else.

Why did Berita Harian object to the documentary even without seeing it? Berita Harian is a conservative newspaper whose cultural politics verges on the ethnocentric and semi-fascist. Proof of this was its intense daily campaign (which ran for weeks) to discredit Yasmin Ahmad’s Sepet after it won Best Film at the Malaysian Film Festival. Berita Harian was the only newspaper to take such exception to this interracial romance as being “insulting to Malay culture”. Its Assistant Entertainment Editor Akmal Abdullah even appeared on the RTM talk-show Fenomena Seni to further denounce Sepet and its follow-up Gubra along the same lines. He seemed to take particular exception to the plot of a Malay girl falling in love with an “infidel” (Chinese) youth.

Akmal in his weekly Thursday column Epilog (ironic that such a Malaycentric writer would choose such a foreign word) also ran a weekly campaign against any local film not made in the Malay language. He sees this as part of some kind of conspiracy to “destroy Malay culture”. He singles out internationally acclaimed, small movies like The Beautiful Washing Machine, Sanctuary and Chemman Chaalai (made by people from what he terms “foreign” and “immigrant races”) for attack but has offered no proof that he has even seen any of these fine works.

In fact, central to Berita Harian’s objection to Lelaki Komunis Terakhir seems to be that Chin Peng is an ethnic Chinese. I was ‘advised’ in these articles to concentrate on Malay characters from now on; even if they are radical or communist it’s OK!

More evidence can be found on Berita Harian’s reactionary, racist cultural views. This is the same newspaper that a few years ago ran a long, positive review of that famous anti-Jewish fraud, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion! The fact that it could run such a review with no apology or retraction already places it beyond the ethical standards of civilised international journalism.

I repeat: The censorship board, whose job it is to monitor these things, had obviously found nothing objectionable in the film; this is why it was passed uncut.

The censors of all the countries that have screened the documentary so far in festivals (including Germany, Hong Kong, Argentina) passed it uncut too.

In none of the international reviews published did the critics say anything about how this was a ‘dangerous’ movie that will ‘harm the public.’ The advantage these reviews have over Berita Harian: They were written by people who had actually viewed the documentary. Not one of them came to the conclusion that I was “glorifying” any political leader including Chin Peng. All those reviews are available here:

Variety
Sign and Sight
Film Kritiken
Die Tageszeitung
Sight & Sound

OK you might say those are ‘liberal’ and ‘tolerant’ countries whose standards don’t apply to us. But how about this: Singapore passed it uncut too! Yes, Singapore! The very country that barely has any opposition politicians or chewing gum.

It screened at the Singapore International Film Festival in late April. I was there at the full-house screening. I can assure you that no one ran amok after the screening or threatened national security. People just politely went back to the MRT and their lives.

It is, to put it mildly, horribly unfair for a movie to be banned based on comments by people who had not seen it. I am dismayed that a single newspaper (and a culturally chauvinistic one at that) could cause the Home Affairs Ministry to reverse the decision by the censors.

* Perhaps the objections are to the title? Well, Malaysia did once ban Daredevil and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers because of the words ‘devil’ and ‘morphin’ (which sounds like morphine) respectively. But that was in the past. The current Censorship Board seems determined to not make Malaysia an international laughingstock for ill-advised bans such as those. Do we want to return to those times?

* Perhaps the objection is to the very subject of communism? If communism is so untouchable, why is Malaysia now such pals with China and Cuba?

* Perhaps the objection is to “glorifying” communism and Chin Peng? I repeat: This charge has only been made by people who have not seen the documentary. Read the reviews by people who have seen it.

* Perhaps the objection is to painful depictions of the past? Lelaki Komunis Terakhir has no archive footage or historical recreations of war at all. The most violent image you will see is a strip of petai beans being removed from its tree in Bidor. Government-funded films like Leftenan Adnan, Paloh and Embun all feature violence but no one protested about those.

* Perhaps the objection is to the subject of Chin Peng? Well, Chin Peng’s book is not banned (even though he is), so why a different standard for the documentary, which was furthermore not made in cooperation with him?

* Perhaps the objection is to the fact that some communists were interviewed? Well, the 15-minute sequence in Betong (out of the 90 minutes of the whole documentary) does have retired men and women from the Communist Party of Malaya. But they are living lawfully as farmers and traders in land provided after the Peace Agreement in 1989 between Malaysia, the CPM and Thailand. Although they do describe some of their previous experiences in the jungle, they are in no way advocating a return to war. What does a Peace Agreement mean if the other side cannot even be seen and heard at all?

* Perhaps the objection is to the fact that Chin Peng is ethnic Chinese? Well, you got me there!

We will be meeting with the relevant Ministry to appeal the ban. I made the documentary for Malaysians first of all, since it is about our own past and present. Screening in foreign festivals is worthwhile but it has never been my primary intention. A Malaysian audience (the ones who can stay awake for a 90-minute documentary with no love stories, fight scenes or special effects) will understand it so much more.

This is what I humbly ask: If you feel the public has the right to see Lelaki Komunis Terakhir, please write to the press. The authorities do take note of reports in the media. (That’s why the ban happened in the first place!)

Even if you feel this doesn’t affect you, and you wouldn’t even want to watch the documentary anyway: What’s to stop the same newspaper from starting a campaign against some other local movie, book or song for being “not Malay enough”? That might certainly affect you in the future.

I made a multilingual documentary that explores the diversity and plurality of contemporary Malaysia to contrast against the more turbulent times of Chin Peng’s era. It is about both the geographic and historical ‘landscape’ that make up a country. It is this very diversity that is under threat if we allow chauvinists to determine what the rest of us can or cannot see.

"Tayangan Lelaki Komunis Terakhir" dilarang

2006-05-09T01:53:00.000+08:00

Tayangan 'Lelaki Komunis Terakhir' dilarang

Oleh Salhan K. Ahmad & Fathi Aris Omar

Mstar. 8 March.

PETALING JAYA: Filem dokumentari kontroversi Lelaki Komunis Terakhir arahan Amir Muhammad tidak akan ditayangkan minggu depan di pawagam seperti dijadualkan berikutan larangan oleh Kementerian Hal Ehwal Dalam Negeri (KHEDN) pada Jumaat lalu.

Satu sumber di kementerian tersebut memberitahu mStar Online hari ini, surat rasmi telah dikirim kepada Red Films, syarikat pengeluar filem ini, lewat petang Jumaat lepas.

Larangan tersebut diambil dipercayai selepas beberapa pihak menyuarakan bantahan mereka, khususnya seperti dilaporkan oleh sebuah akhbar berbahasa Melayu minggu lepas.

mStar Online difahamkan, larangan kementerian tersebut meliputi "penayangan, pempameran, pengedaran dan penyebaran" filem 90 minit yang mengisahkan perjalanan hidup Chin Peng, pemimpin Parti Komunis Malaya (PKM) yang diharamkan.

Filem dokumentari semi-muzikal ini turut memuatkan lagu-lagu selain wawancara dengan beberapa pihak, termasuk 20 minit dengan pejuang-pejuang gerila bersenjata ini yang kini menetap di Betong, selatan Thailand.

PKM menandatangani perjanjian damai dengan kerajaan Malaysia pada Disember 1989.

Filem ini turut diilhamkan daripada buku autobiografi Alias Chin Peng: My Side of History, tulisannya bersama ahli sejarah Ian Ward yang diterbitkan pada 2003. Ia mengisahkan kehidupan dan tafsiran sejarah bekas setiausaha agung PKM itu yang kini hidup dalam buangan di Thailand.

Filem Amir ini bagaimanapun tidak memuatkan wawancara dengan watak utamanya, Chin Peng, walau lebih 80 orang ditemui dalam proses pembikinannya.

Dalam kenyataannya kepada mStar Online Mac lalu, Amir berpendapat ketiadaan wawancara dengan pemimpin gerila ini, kini 82 tahun, dalam filemnya akan memberikan "kesan misteri yang berpanjangan kepada penonton".

Surat KHEDN itu yang ditandatangani oleh seorang pegawai di Bahagian Kawalan Filem kementerian terbabit dibuat berdasarkan Akta Penapisan Filem 2002.

Menurut surat itu, larangan dibuat dengan alasan "mengambil kira kepentingan awam."

Amir, dalam satu mesej SMS (khidmat pesanan ringkas) kepada mStar Online hujung minggu lalu, berkata beliau sudah dimaklumkan mengenai larangan ini daripada syarikat penerbitnya. Beliau bagaimanapun enggan mengulas lanjut kerana sedang menghadiri satu festival filem dokumentari di Toronto, Kanada.

Lelaki Komunis Terakhir, atau judul Inggerisnya The Last Communist yang dihasilkan dengan bajet RM50,000 itu, pada asalnya dijadualkan ditayangkan di tiga buah pawagam GSC di Kuala Lumpur dan Pulau Pinang mulai 18 Mei ini.

Sementara satu tayangan amal akan diadakan di Ipoh pada 19 Mei.

mStar Online difahamkan semua tayangan ini akan dibatalkan sebagai mematuhi arahan KHEDN tersebut. Penerbit ini bagaimanapun dilaporkan bercadang mengemukakan rayuan kepada kementerian, kata seorang jurucakapnya kepada satu akhbar dalam talian Sabtu lepas.

Filem ini yang diluluskan Mac lalu tanpa sebarang suntingan oleh Lembaga Penapisan Filem (LPF) telah ditayangkan di beberapa festival filem antarabangsa, termasuk yang terbaru di Festival Dokumentari Antarabangsa Kanada Hot Docs di Toronto (festival dokumentari terbesar di Amerika Utara) minggu lepas dan Singapore International Film Festival pada 27 April lalu.

Pengerusi LPF Mohd Hussain Shafie baru-baru ini berkata walaupun dokumentari tersebut berkenaan bekas seorang pemimpin parti yang diharamkan, filem itu tidak akan menyebabkan apa-apa kesan negatif kepada rakyat Malaysia.

"Apabila sesuatu filem cuba menyebarkan ideologi (komunisme), kita tidak akan benarkan," beliau dipetik sebagai berkata kepada The Star.

"Peranan utama kami di sini mengesan hal-hal yang boleh mengancam keselamatan negara. Tetapi daripada penilaian kami, filem (Lelaki Komunis Terakhir) ini tidak lebih sebuah dokumentari tentang hal-hal sejarah yang orang ramai boleh baca dalam buku-buku sejarah, atau di tempat-tempat lain."

Bagaimanapun beberapa pihak dilaporkan kurang senang dengan kelulusan yang diberikan oleh badan penapisan filem ini.

Ketua Puteri Umno, Datuk Noraini Ahmad menyifatkan tindakan LPF itu sebagai "tidak wajar". Negara mempunyai tokoh-tokoh yang lebih berwibawa untuk diteladani dan usaha mengagung-agungkan pemimpin komunis adalah tidak wajar, katanya pada Rabu lepas.

Dalam laporan yang sama, pakar sejarah profesor emeritus Datuk Khoo Kay Kim menyarankan agar "LPF merujuk pihak yang arif terutama dari segi kesannya jika filem kontroversi itu ingin disiarkan kepada umum dan tidak bertindak terburu-buru dalam memberikan kelulusan."

“Sebelum meluluskan, biarlah pihak yang arif menontonnya terlebih dulu. Dalam hal ini LPF tentu tidak benar-benar faham jika kita minta mereka menjelaskan apa itu komunisme dan faham apa sejarah darurat," beliau dipetik sebagai berkata.

Dalam laporan susulan akhbar tersebut Jumaat lalu, persatuan pengamal filem tempatan digambarkan "kebingungan apabila mengetahui filem tersebut bakal ditayangkan pada 18 Mei sedangkan mereka tidak tahu menahu mengenai pembikinannya."

Persatuan Pengeluar Filem Malaysia (PFM) dan Persatuan Pekerja Filem Malaysia (PPFM) dilaporkan berkata penerbitan filem itu tidak wajar, selain LPF juga tidak sepatutnya meluluskan filem itu untuk tatapan rakyat.

"Saya juga terkejut apabila LPF sendiri boleh beri kelulusan terhadap filem ini," kata presiden PFM, Ruhani Abdul Rahman seperti dilaporkan.

Sementara presiden PPFM, Syed Mohamed Hassan pula berkata, "kami di PPFM berasakan filem sebegini tidak wajar dibuat apatah lagi ditayangkan untuk umum di pawagam. LPF harus memikirkan soal sensitiviti masyarakat sebab komunis atau PKM menjadi musuh negara (sebelum perjanjian damai)."

Dalam laporan berasingan di akhbar yang sama Jumaat lepas, LPF berkata pihaknya akan mengkaji semula kelulusan Lelaki Komunis Terakhir jika menerima banyak bantahan daripada orang ramai. "Kalau ramai yang desak, kami akan kaji semula," Mohd Hussain dipetik sebagai berkata.

Penghujung Mac lalu seorang wakil Barisan Nasional (Gerik) pernah mempertikaikan kewajaran menjadikan tokoh PKM ini sebagai tema filem di Dewan Rakyat. Datuk Dr Wan Hashim Wan Teh dilaporkan berkata "kenapa Lelaki Komunis Terakhir sedangkan kita mempunyai pahlawan kita sendiri?"

Sementara Pemuda Umno sendiri turut membantah projek Amir ini sejak perancangannya setahun lalu.

"Curtains for The Last Communist"

2006-05-09T01:47:00.000+08:00

Curtains for The Last Communist

By Cindy Tham

The Sun. 7 May

PETALING JAYA: Just 10 days before it is to hit the big screen, the Home Ministry has banned Amir Muhammad's film, Lelaki Komunis Terakhir (The Last Communist), despite it having got the nod of the Film Censorship Board which comes under the ministry.

A spokesman for Red Films, the distributor which also holds the production permit, confirmed it received a faxed letter from the ministry on Friday afternoon.

The letter noted that although the film had been approved by the censors, the ministry had decided to ban it "in the interest of the public", she told theSun.

This means they cannot display/exhibit, screen, distribute and disseminate the film.

Lelaki Komunis Terakhir was scheduled for screening at Golden Screen Cinemas in Gurney Plaza in Penang, Mid Valley Megamall in Kuala Lumpur and 1 Utama in Selangor on May 18 and at a private charity event in Ipoh the next day.

"Red Films and Amir plan to respond to the ministry this week to confirm that we will abide by the letter," she said. "We also plan to appeal to have a discussion with the ministry to review the decision to ban the film."

Amir, the writer, director and producer of the film, is attending the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival in Toronto, Canada, and will be heading to the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival after that. He is scheduled to return to Malaysia on Saturday.

Lelaki Komunis Terakhir, a "semi-musical documentary inspired by the early life and legacy of Chin Peng, exiled leader of the banned Communist Party of Malaya", is among the films screened at both festivals.

The spokesman said the ministry's decision came as a "surprise" because "we've already had a discussion with the censorship board prior to the approval".

Public wants movie banned: Chai Ho

By Llew-Ann Phang

PETALING JAYA: The curtains shall remain closed on the movie Lelaki Komunis Terakhir (The Last Communist) because that is what the public wants.

Deputy Home Minister Datuk Tan Chai Ho said today (May 8, 2006) even though the National Film Censorship Board (LPF) had approved the screening of Amir Muhammad's latest film, the minister, Datuk Seri Mohd Radzi Sheikh Ahmad, retracted the approval last Friday (May 5, 2006).

"Under Section 26 of the Film Censorship Act 2002, the minister has the right to revoke or cancel approval because of public interest, and that is why the movie is not being screened," Tan said.

The Act says the minister may at his absolute discretion, prohibit the exhibition, display, distribution, possession, circulation or sale of any film or film publicity material if he or she is of the opinion that it would be contrary to public interest.

Tan said he heard there were many objections from the public about the movie after newspapers publicised it, and the minister had to consider these.

"The public was not very happy about the movie," Tan said, denying that the objections were from any religious group.

Red Films, the movie's distributor and co-producer, confirmed it received a faxed letter from the ministry on Friday (May 5, 2006) afternoon, noting that although the censors had approved the film, the ministry decided to ban it.

The semi-musical documentary inspired by the early life and legacy of Chin Peng, exiled leader of the banned Communist Party of Malaysia, was scheduled to make its debut at Golden Screen Cinemas in Penang's Gurney Plaza, Kuala Lumpur's Midvalley Megamall and 1Utama on May 18, 2006 as well as at a private charity event in Ipoh the following day.

Among public protests to the movie were news reports and editorials in Malay dailies, particularly over the last week that highlighted objections from veteran politicians, members of Parliament and historians.

One editorial in Berita Harian by Akmal Abdullah said while it might not be fair to punish the film without watching it, especially since the LPF had already approved its screening, the movie was a "tribute" to a Communist leader and the Communist struggle.

The assistant entertainment editor said Communism was not dead and could be revived at any time.

First blog review

2006-05-06T21:34:00.000+08:00

A Singaporean bloke took the trouble to write a review after the SIFF screening here. He even has a video-clip of me doing the Q & A. Such enterprise! Once our own National Service brats grow up, I can only hope they will be as hard-working.

From Berita Harian, 5 May

2006-05-05T10:47:00.000+08:00

PFM, PPFM anggap ‘filem komunis’ tidak wajar

Mereka terkejut filem Lelaki Komunis Terakhir mendapat lampu hijau Lembaga Penapisan Filem Malaysia

Berita Harian. 5 May

PERSATUAN Pengeluar Filem Malaysia (PFM) dan Persatuan Pekerja Filem Malaysia (PPFM) mengaku tidak tahu menahu mengenai penerbitan filem dokumentari Lelaki Komunis Terakhir sama ada di peringkat awal hingga posproduksinya kerana tenaga kerja serta penerbitnya bukan ahli mereka.

Dua persatuan perfileman yang berpengaruh itu juga menyifatkan penerbitan filem itu tidak wajar dalam konteks Malaysia yang berdaulat pada masa kini dan akan datang, selain Lembaga Penapisan Filem Malaysia (LPF) juga tidak sepatutnya meluluskan filem itu untuk tatapan rakyat.

Presiden Persatuan Pengeluar Filem Malaysia (PFM), Ruhani Abdul Rahman, berkata beliau hanya tahun filem Lelaki Komunis Terakhir muncul apabila ia mula menjadi sebutan beberapa penggiat filem dan kemudian mengetahuinya menerusi media massa apabila bakal ditayangkan bermula 18 Mei ini.

Kata Ruhani, secara peribadi dia sendiri terkejut apabila dokumentari mengenai Chin Peng dihasilkan dan dalam diam-diam sudah hendak ditayangkan kepada umum.

“Penerbit filem dokumentari ini bukan ahli PFM. Kami tidak tahu menahu dan tidak pernah terbabit dalam memberi kerjasama. Saya juga terkejut apabila LPF sendiri boleh beri kelulusan terhadap filem ini. Bila masanya Amir mengarah filem ini? Kita pun tidak tahu siapa pembiaya dan penerbitnya?

“Apa yang kita kesalkan, kalau untuk bercakap mengenai perjuangan sejarah, tidak adakah cerita yang dapat mengangkat martabat perjuangan tokoh nasionalis bangsa dan negara kita, daripada mengambil cerita mengenai komunis dan pemimpin Parti Komunis Malaya (PKM) yang terbukti dulu banyak memberi kesan sengsara terhadap rakyat.

“Tidak adakah wira Melayu yang boleh Amir angkat menerusi filem dokumentari. Kita belum ada filem dokumentari mengenai tokoh kita seperti Datuk Onn Jaafar, Tunku Abdul Rahman malah tokoh radikal seperti Ibrahim Yaacob atau Dr Burhanuddin Al-Helmy? Kenapa pilih Chin Peng?

“Memang kita tidak lagi menonton cerita Lelaki Komunis Terakhir, tetapi soalnya kenapa subjek itu dipilih? Ini mengundang sensitiviti masyarakat. Ia akan menjadikan rakyat mungkin marah dan tidak suka. Inilah masalah pembikin filem generasi baru yang lebih berkiblat cara filem Barat. Di Amerika, pembunuh diberi kemasyhuran dengan menerbit filem mereka untuk mempromosikan kejahatan mereka itu menerusi teknik cerita yang berselindung bahawa pembunuh itu orang baik. Inikah yang hendak diikut?” kata Ruhani.

Presiden PPFM, Syed Mohamed Hassan turut menafikan ada ahli PPFM menjadi krew untuk filem dokumentari berkenaan kerana pihaknya sendiri tidak tahu mengenai perjalanan produksi dan penggambarannya.

“Kami di PPFM berasakan filem sebegini tidak wajar dibuat apatah lagi ditayangkan untuk umum di pawagam. LPF harus memikirkan soal sensitiviti masyarakat sebab komunis atau PKM menjadi musuh negara. Walaupun persembahannya tidak ada babak perang atau tidak muncul Chin Peng secara fizikal, tetapi semangat, personaliti dan jiwa komunis Chin Peng tentu ditunjukkan secara psikologi.

“LPF kena berani. LPF memang perlu bersikap terbuka tetapi biarlah lebih sensitif. Sensitiviti masyarakat kena ambil kira kerana gerakan komunis memberi penderitaan kepada rakyat di negara ini sama ada sebelum dan selepas Malaysia merdeka.

“Kita dalam dunia filem tahu, filem sebegitu akan dipaparkan dengan babak yang bermain secara psikologi dengan visual dan garapan tersirat. Ini boleh merosakkan pemikiran generasi muda. PPFM tidak bersetuju Lelaki Komunis Terakhir ditayang secara umum.

“Kenapa sebelum filem ini diberi kelulusan LPF, biarlah ia ditayangkan dulu di Parlimen, biar Parlimen putuskan layak atau tidak untuk ditayangkan kepada rakyat Malaysia. Ini filem yang sensitif kerana berkaitan Chin Peng.

“Krew filem ini bukan ahli PPFM. Saya sendiri tidak tahu siapa krew yang bekerja dengan produksi ini dan siapa menjadi pembiaya filem ini. PPFM juga berasakan rakyat Malaysia tidak wajar dihidangkan filem mengenai Chin Peng. Kita kena ada semangat cintakan bangsa dan negara kerana perjuangan tokoh nasionalis dulu membolehkan generasi sekarang hidup sejahtera di negara ini.

“Sebenarnya, apa pun alasan diberi, soalnya apa sangat cerita yang mahu menunjukkan kisah komunis dan mahu menghargai mereka yang menjadi komunis? Kalau kita biarkan negara ini bebas tanpa had kepada sesiapa saja, bermakna kita tidak percaya dengan tokoh nasionalis kita dulu. Kita kena melindungi perkara ini daripada digembar-gemburkan untuk generasi akan datang,” kata Syed Mohamed.

From Berita Harian, 4 May

2006-05-04T18:09:00.000+08:00

Filem Lelaki Komunis Terakhir untuk rakyat Malaysia?
Oleh Akmal Abdullah

Berita Harian. 4 May.

SEMINGGU selepas parti bangsa Melayu terbesar dunia, Umno menyambut ulang tahunnya ke-60 pada 11 Mei ini, masyarakat di negara ini pula akan meraikan satu filem dokumentari mengenang perjuangan Parti Komunis Malaysia (PKM) yang diharamkan serta mengenali lebih dekat pemimpin utama kumpulan pengganas itu, Chin Peng.

Ada satu ironi dan sinikal apabila dua parti itu ‘dirai dalam bulan sama’ mengikut cara berbeza. Dua parti yang bertentangan ideologi. Umno sebagai tonggak parti sah yang menerajui kerajaan sebagai ketuanan politik di Malaysia diraikan atas kesedaran meneruskan survival bangsa era ini dan masa depan, manakala PKM sebagai parti yang diharamkan kerana gerakan subversif untuk merosakkan ketenteraman negara serta kefahamannya menolak kewujudan Tuhan. Perjuangan PKM sejak 1930 hingga 1989 nyata sia-sia.

Kelahiran filem berjudul Lelaki Komunis Terakhir yang mendapat bantahan pemimpin dan veteran politik negara, tokoh sejarah dan ahli Parlimen itu bagaimanapun diberi kelulusan Lembaga Penapisan Filem Malaysia (LPF) dan bakal ditayangkan di Malaysia pada 18 Mei ini di pawagam terkemuka di Kuala Lumpur dan Pulau Pinang, iaitu kawasan majoriti penduduk Cina serta satu tayangan amal di Ipoh pada 19 Mei ini.

Filem adalah filem. Filem juga alat hiburan. Namun, dalam erti kata lebih besar, filem ialah rakaman kehidupan, sejarah dan budaya masyarakat. Paling besar, filem adalah alat propaganda individu, kumpulan, bangsa, komuniti, negara mahupun kerajaan. Maknanya, dalam konteks ini, filem dokumentari Lelaki Komunis Terakhir yang dihasilkan pengarah generasi baru, Amir Muhammad mempunyai signifikan dalam konteks rakaman kehidupan, sejarah dan propaganda. Seseorang individu itu akan dikenang dengan pelbagai cara untuk membuktikan kewujudannya masih relevan menerusi falsafah perjuangan, ideologi, keganasan dan agenda politik.

Adalah tidak adil kita terus menghukum filem Amir itu tanpa menontonnya terlebih dulu apatah lagi LPF sudah meluluskannya. Kita sedar, apabila LPF sudah beri kelulusan, barangkali cerita filem itu tidak memberi kesan kepada keselamatan negara. Namun, filem dalam bentuk dokumentari itu juga kita akui tidak akan dapat lari daripada satu tribute untuk pemimpin komunis, satu pergerakan atas nama PKM untuk mengajak rakyat di negara ini mengenang semula susur galur Chin Peng yang menjadi teraju utama pemberontakan bersenjata komunis di Tanah Melayu sejak Jun 1948 untuk mengambil alih kuasa pemerintahan di bumi tercinta ini.

Chin Peng atau nama besarnya Ong Boon Hu, anak Sitiawan, Perak sudah menjadi ahli PKM sejak berusia 18 tahun dan dilantik menjadi Setiausaha Agung PKM dalam usia 26 tahun selepas Lai Teck melarikan diri. Di bawah pimpinan Ching Peng, ramai anak watan derita dan nestapa, darah menjadi mainan anggota PKM dan beribu-ribu nyawa melayang. Akibatnya, Chin Peng sehingga ini dilarang masuk ke Malaysia.

Catatan sejarah membuktikan, kekejaman PKM menyebabkan kematian 2,461 penduduk awam dan 1,851 anggota keselamatan maut, selain 1,383 penduduk cedera serta 807 orang hilang! Kita berharap Lelaki Komunis Terakhir tidak lagi mengembalikan kenangan dan mencipta glamor terhadap Chin Peng yang mengetuai pemberontakan dan serangan ke atas balai polis, lombong bijih timah, ladang getah dan penduduk kampung. Tragedi Bukit Kepong yang difilemkan Jins Shamsuddin menjadi mimpi ngeri kita betapa pergerakan kejam komunis sanggup membunuh polis yang menjaga keselamatan negara, lalu kanak-kanak kecil menjadi yatim dan isteri menjadi janda. Kehidupan masa itu menjadi ‘neraka’ kerana komunis sanggup membunuh nyawa orang kampung semata-mata mahu mendapatkan beras dan gula.

Diharap, filem Amir itu tidak memuliakan kekejaman Ching Peng dan anak buahnya untuk mencapai cita-cita mewujudkan Republik Komunis Malaya. Walaupun kita tahu PKM sudah diharamkan dan gencatan senjata sudah dibuat, tetapi ideologinya tidak pernah mati, bila-bila masa ia boleh dihidup dan disegarkan semula. Namun, kita yakin, Lelaki Komunis Terakhir tidak mungkin cenderung ke arah itu kerana ia sudah diluluskan LPF. Namun, kena ingat atas nama filem juga, propaganda boleh digunakan dengan teknik persembahan secara halus jika ada unsur mengangkat biografi dan kronologi kehidupan Chin Peng diwujudkan meskipun tanpa babak perang atau aksi ganas dalam hutan. Kita harap selepas ini, Amir dan pengarah Melayu generasi baru lain lebih prihatin kepada perjuangan tokoh nasionalis bangsanya sendiri seperti Ibrahim Tok Janggut, Tun Perak, Datuk Maharaja Lela, Mat Kilau, Datuk Bahaman, Tok Gajah, Dol Said, Mat Salleh, Tok Naning, Rosli Dobi, Temenggung Jugah, Abdul Rahman Embong, Tengku Kudin, Long Jaafar, Datuk Sagor, Sultan Abdullah (Perak) dan Sultan Abu Bakar (Bapa Johor Moden) mahupun Datuk Onn. Mungkin, Amir tidak kenal mereka ini.

Kata orang, luka lama berdarah kembali, mimpi negeri zaman datuk nenek mula menghantui kita...

From Berita Harian, 3 May

2006-05-03T13:31:00.000+08:00

Censors accused of being insensitive

By Norfatimah Ahmad, Jalal Ali Abdul Rahim, Masrina Mohd Yunos and Adha Ghazali

Berita Harian. 3 May

KUALA LUMPUR: The decision of the Malaysian Film Censorship Board (LPF) to allow the screening of the documentary Lelaki Komunis Terakhir which talks about the life of the former head of the Communist Party of Malaya, Chin Peng, is described as not appropriate.

Various people who were contacted for reactions concerning the issue criticised the LPF's action because it it seen as insensitive to the people of this country especially the victims and families who suffered atrocities committed by the communists.

The head of Puteri Umno, Datuk Noraini Ahmad said the LPF's action is not appropriate as it is not right for anyone to glorify the communist leader when the country has much more credible people that we can learn from.

She said, the issue relating to the production of this documentary and whether it was appropriate to be approved by the authorities was discussed earlier but did not continue because it was thought that the film would never become a reality.

History figure, Professor Emeritus Datuk Khoo Kay Kim said the LPF should not have been hasty in giving approval for the documentary but should have consulted experts especially about the potential effects of screening it to the public.

"Before passing it, let experts view it first. In this case I think the LPF doesn't really understand if we were to ask them to explain communism and the history of the Emergency."

"The cruelty of the communists caused suffering to the public and security forces. Screening it will only make them feel uneasy," he said when asked to comment on the LPF's decision to allow the documentary by Amir Muhammad to screen in cinemas from 18 May.

However the documentary was passed for only three screens operated by Golden Screen Cinemas (GSC) namely Mid Valley and One Utama, Kuala Lumpur; and Gurney Plaza in Penang.

UMNO veteran. Tan Sri Aziz Tapa said the documentary should have been banned from screening because hatred towards Chin Peng is very deeply felt especially by the victims of the Communist Party's cruelty and although the wounds have disappeared, the scars remain.

"Just mention Chin Peng and people will get angry. The screening will cause this anger to resurface especially among families of victims and we are worried 'old wounds will bleed again'" he said and also suggests that the approval might have been made by a young LPF officer who is too eager for 'democracy' without realising the effects.

Another UMNO veteran, Tan Sri Zaleha Ismail said she opposes strongly the screening of the documentary because it will only hurt the feelings of those who suffered atrocities committed by communists.

Meanwhile, the Director of the National Internal Security and Public Safety Department, Datuk Mustafa Abdullah said he is unsure about the approval status of the screening of the documentary.

He said that until now, his department had not received any information about the making or screening of the film but is certain the Special Branch unit of Police Headquarters knows about it.

"Whatever it is, I am sure there is a reason for the approval given by LPF for the documentary to be screened," he said and refused further comment.

The President of the Former Armed Servicemen Association of Malaysia, Datuk Mohamad Ghani said that the LPF's decision could anger all army personnel especially those who fought against the communists.

"This film seemingly belittles our struggle in the security forces to fight communists but during that time, more than 11,000 policemen, soldiers and civilians were killed."

*Translated from the original Malay.

Off The Edge, May 2006

2006-05-03T08:19:00.000+08:00

The current issue of Off The Edge magazine (with Nicol David on the cover) has a photo-essay by Albert Hue on some of the Perak locations we went to for this documentary. The photos are best appreciated in context so they will not be reproduced here. Do check it out at a good news-stand near you. For RM10 you will even get to keep a copy. How cool is that?

From Mingguan Malaysia

2006-04-30T16:34:00.000+08:00

Lelaki Komunis Terakhir goes to cinemas

By Noor Azam Shairi

Mingguan Malaysia. 30 April

All the controversy generated by a few people about the documentary Lelaki Komunis Terakhir before the film had even been written or shot will be answered when it meets audiences in cinemas starting 18 May.

The documentary directed by Amir Muhammad has received official approval from the Malaysian Film Censorship Board (LPF) for general viewing.

The approval, however, is only for three screens run by Golden Screen Cinemas in Mid Valley and One Utama, Kuala Lumpur; and Gurney Plaza, Penang.

LPF Chairman Mohd Hussain Shafie was recently quoted by The Star as saying, even though the documentary is about the former leader of the banned Communist Party of Malaya, Chin Peng, it will not cause any negative effects.

He said that the documentary did not propagate communism but merely used facts that are readily available in history books.

LKT uses those historical facts as a backdrop but it actually examines what Amir has termed as the "landscape" of this country.

"I am not just talking about the geographic landscape but the historical one. When making Lelaki Komunis Terakhir I wanted to know what this landscape called Malaysia actually is," said Amir in an interview with The Bangkok Post.

Before Lelaki Komunis Terakhir, Amir made the documentary The Year of Living Vicariously which examined the shifts of political consciousness in post-Suharto Indonesia.

After that documentary, Amir was inspired to investigate his own country, and coincidentally that was the time Chin Peng came out with his memoirs, My Side of History, which became the basis for Lelaki Komunis Terakhir.

Lelaki Komunis Terakhir which is described as a semi-musical documentary combines Amir's interviews with people from various walks of life and his observations and experience in several towns where Chin Peng lived in Peninsular Malaysia.

Before the limited screening here, Lelaki Komunis Terakhir was screened at the Berlin International Film Festival and received encouraging reviews from international critics.

The documentary has also been invited to several other festivals including Hong Kong, Singapore and Vancouver as well as documentary festivals in Canada, Munich and Amsterdam. Lelaki Komunis Terakhir will also be screened in Ipoh on 19 May as a charity screening for the Perak Heritage Society.

In another development, Amir has just finished filming Susuk under Grand Brilliance, which he directed with Naeim Ghalili. Susuk is scheduled to meet audiences at the end of the year.

* Translated from the original article.

Associated Press article

2006-04-29T11:57:00.000+08:00

Like his life, film about Malaysia's notorious communist guerrilla also in a limbo

By EN-LAI YEOH Associated Press Writer

26 April.

(AP) - KUALA LUMPUR -Malaysia's most reviled communist lives in a limbo, unsure if the government will ever let him return home from exile in Thailand.

A somewhat similar fate has befallen a film about Chin Peng, the forgotten communist insurgent leader whose fighters battled British Commonwealth troops in the jungles of Malaya from 1948 to 1957, the most brutal period in the country's modern history.

Malaysia's Censorship Board has approved without cuts "Lelaki Komunis Terakhir," or "The Last Communist," a part-musical satire, part-documentary. But the board only approved it for restricted release in three cinemas nationwide, and it cannot be publicly sold in disc format.

"The Last Communist" by Malaysian filmmaker Amir Muhammad played at the Hong Kong International Film Festival and the Singapore International Film Festival and is set to be shown at the Seattle Film Festival and Toronto's Hot Docs festival.

Amir said he has no intention of making a hero out of Chin Peng but made the film because he wanted to tell the story of a man who has virtually ceased to exist in Malaysia's official history.

Once demonized in school textbooks, Chin Peng, 82, merits only passing references today, said Amir.

"His role in Malaysian history has gotten smaller and smaller," Amir told The Associated Press. But the threat posed by Chin Peng and his forces was exaggerated by the British, he said. "He was like the phantom menace."

Underpinning the Malaysian censors' reluctance is a deep-seated dread of communism among Malaysian leaders, and fears that glorifying a leftist insurgent - even a reformed one - could lead some to question the country's hard-won capitalist prosperity.

The country's ruling party, the United Malays National Organization, said documenting the life of Chin Peng was tantamount to communist propaganda.

"This is an extremely sensitive issue. I don't think the people who have fought for our country will appreciate such a movie being shown, and I'm sure there will be protests," said Azimi Daim, the information chief of the United Malays youth wing.

There are other important stories in Malaysian history, he said. "Why are we coming back to this issue of Chin Peng again?"

Such concerns are also largely behind the government's refusal to allow Chin Peng to return home even though he has pledged loyalty to the country and laid down arms under a 1989 peace treaty.

Chin Peng, an ethnic Chinese whose real name is Ong Boon Hua, was not always the bad guy.

During World War II, he and his guerrillas provided the bulk of resistance to the Japanese occupation after Allied troops were swept from the Malayan peninsula and Singapore. For his courage, he was awarded the Order of the British Empire.

After the war, the communists began a nationalist fight against colonial rule. Leading a 10,000-strong force, Chin Peng faced some 70,000 British, Australian, New Zealand, Fijian, Gurkha and other British Commonwealth troops from 1948 until 1957, when Malaysia, then known as Malaya, was granted independence.

Some 10,000 people are believed to have been killed in the decade-long insurgency, a period known as the Emergency.

After independence, Chin Peng continued to fight the Malaysian government. But with the dragnet closing in on his jungle hideouts and his Marxist-Leninist campaign losing steam, he fled to China in 1960. From there he went to southern Thailand where he settled with hundreds of exiled fighters loyal to him.

Amir's 90-minute film is essentially a documentary that tells the life of Chin Peng in chronological order. But it does not feature Chin Peng, referring to him only through captions describing important events in his life superimposed on shots of locations.

The movie also has song-and-dance numbers, performed by actors, about political events surrounding the Emergency.

It contains sound bites from his companions in their homes in exile. Like Chin Peng, they too yearn to return.

"Are you used to a wanderer's life? Do you miss your hometown?" one elderly former guerrilla belts out during a karaoke session caught on film.

Amir said the former guerrillas don't regret their years of in combat. "They speak kind of fondly of the time they have spent in the jungle.... What surprised me is how energetic they were," he said.

"The Last Communist "is based on Chin Peng's 2003 autobiography "Alias Chin Peng: My Side of History," co-authored by Singapore-based historian Ian Ward. It was shot over four weeks last year at a cost of 50,000 ringgit (US$13,620; euro11,107), financed by a Dutch foundation.

After the 1989 peace deal, the government of then-Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said it would allow former communist guerrillas to return to Malaysia and to "freely participate in political activities" under the Constitution.

But none of the former fighters has been granted permission to come back. Malaysian officials have continuously cited suspicion over communist activities but no specific reason has been given for denying entry to the ex-guerrillas.

Chin Peng's appeal to be allowed to return home so that he could spend his remaining days here was expected to be heard by a federal court sometime in April, although no date has been fixed.

"He is hopeful," said his lawyer, Darshan Singh. "Why shouldn't he be allowed to return? The peace treaty allows for that. His home is here. His parents are buried here."

From Today (Singapore)

2006-04-27T13:10:00.000+08:00

On the edge

By Yong Shu Chiang

Today. 27 April

GROWING up in Malaysia, independent film-maker Amir Muhammad learned to be afraid of ghosts and evil spirits — and communists.

"Yes, communists were the big bogeymen, next to Hantu Kumkum (a legendary blood-thirsty ghost)," Muhammad told Today in an email interview.

His latest film, The Last Communist (Lelaki Komunis Terakhir), which plays at the Singapore International Film Festival tonight, is a documentary loosely based on the life of Chin Peng, the 84-year-old former Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) leader now living in exile in Thailand.

The colourful history of Chin Peng and the CPM, and how they've become marginalised in public perception, prompted Muhammad to make his film.

"There are about 30 people who lived in Malaysia whose lives interest me because something about them — either the whole track of their lives, or one specific act — put them outside the mainstream of lived experience. Chin Peng happens to be one of them," said Muhammad.

"The CPM is similarly interesting because it was such a small movement that everyone knew about. You can always find out more about a society from people who live on its periphery rather than its centre, no?"

Trained as a lawyer before he became a film-maker, Muhammad described himself as political, but said he doesn't make movies just to make political statements.

"I make movies for a whole host of reasons, not all of them polemical. Party politics per se bore me, though. So, I will never join a party."

And what are Muhammad's thoughts on communism?

"It is the most beautiful political ideology because it assumes that, given a choice, people will want to share. But in practice it has almost always descended into tyranny.

"There's also this leadership cult that I would find pernicious in any political system."

Last month, Muhammad's film was surprisingly passed without cuts — ahead of its May 18 theatrical release — by normally ultra-conservative censors in Malaysia, where Chin Peng is still persona non grata.

This is especially astonishing in light of criticism last month from Malaysian politicians who expressed distaste that a film had been made about a "communist bandit".

During World War II, Chin Peng led ethnic Chinese Malaysians in a guerrilla resistance movement against the Japanese invaders.

He later retreated to the jungles where he led a bloody insurrection in the 1960s that claimed an estimated 7,000 victims, mainly Malay policemen and civilian home guards, before surrendering in 1989.

The Last Communist, which premiered at February's Berlin International Film Festival, where critic Tony Rayns heaped praise on it, is described by Muhammad as a "semi-musical" documentary because it has several tongue-in-cheek musical interludes.

"The roots of documentary in Malaya were propaganda films made by the Malayan Film Unit in the 1940s and these often had songs. So, I'm paying an ironic tribute to them," Muhammad said.

Apart from its focus on Chin Peng, and interviews with his former comrades and fellow exiles, the film is also an affectionate look at the quirky side of contemporary Malaysia and an examination of "Malaysian-ness".

Muhammad's next movie will be a co-directed horror film, Susuk, about a Malay beauty ritual that uses black magic, with a sequel of sorts to The Last Communist also planned.

"I intend to go to all four of the 'communist villages' in southern Thailand (where Malaysian exiles live). We only managed to go to one last August during the shoot, due to the security situation at the time.

"If this happens, maybe a new, different sort of documentary can emerge."

Charity screening: 19 May, Ipoh

2006-04-25T12:56:00.000+08:00

One of the organisations that helped us when making Lelaki Komunis Terakhir was the Perak Heritage Society. The Society does not have a website but you can read more about its president here. He took me, Hardesh and Albert on a tour of Papan and even though that sequence has been cut out of the movie (what to do?) it was a very interesting day for us. So it's apposite that we do something in return. Here are the details. If you know people in Ipoh who might be interested, do spread the word.

Film will not be shown in Ipoh

The Star. 25 April.

IPOH: The semi-musical documentary Lelaki Komunis Terakhir (The Last Communist) may be a Perak story but it will not be screened in cinemas here.

However, there is still a chance to catch the film, as the Perak Heritage Society will be holding a special screening at the Syuen Hotel here on May 19 to raise funds.

Amir Muhammad, the director of the 90-minute film, said cinemas in the city here did not have the projection facilities needed to screen the documentary.

“It is a Perak story but it is a shame that cinemas in Ipoh are not equipped to screen it,” he said at a press conference here yesterday.

He said the film, which had received the nod from the Film Censorship Board, would only be screened at the Golden Screen Cinemas in Kuala Lumpur and Penang, beginning May 18.

“It would be good if we could screen it at places where we shot the film like Sitiawan or even in Betong (South Thailand),” Amir said.

“Most of the locations are in Perak such as Bidor, Gopeng, Chemor, and Sungai Siput.”

He added that the film also involved interviews conducted with former members of the defunct Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) at the Peace Village at Betong.

The film, which has drawn opposition from Umno Youth, documents the life of Chin Peng, exiled leader of the banned CPM, from 1924 to 1957.

Amir noted that the film, which cost some RM80,000 to make, had already been shown at the Berlin Film Festival in February.

“The film will also be seen at film festivals in Hong Kong, Singapore, Los Angeles and Toronto,” he said.

Those interested in the special screening can contact Su Win at 012-2886888 or Siak Hong at 012-2976517.

From The Bangkok Post (Thailand)

2006-04-21T12:23:00.000+08:00

Seeing red

By Kong Rithdee

The Bangkok Post. 21 April.

Partly shot in Betong, Yala province, Amir Muhammad's latest documentary is as humanly sociological as it is sharply political, and as refreshing in its historical re-examination as it is whimsical in its colours. It is as much a loose-limbed travelogue as it is a tight-assed historiography. It plays for and against leftists and rightists, royalists and jacobins, communists and capitalists, pro-and anti-colonialists. It dallies with controversies, indulges in good-humoured diversions, yet manages to maintain the heft worthy of an academic discussion.

And the most unexpected thing: this Malaysian documentary with a contentious title, The Last Communist, has passed the censor's board and will open in three Kuala Lumpur theatres in May.

"I submitted the film to the censor just for the fun of it," Amir told us when we caught up with him at Hong Kong International Film Festival last week. "I didn't expect it, but they let it pass and we're now releasing it. It's a big surprise."

A pleasant surprise, that is, given the conservative rigour the Malaysian board is known for. Bangkok cinephiles should keep their fingers-crossed since local film-fest organisers (smaller ones, not the government-backed one) have expressed strong interest in bringing The Last Communist across the border, not simply because the doc features a section that concerns Thailand's South, but mainly because Amir's work observes the virtues of film as a political gesture - something that's sorely lacking among Thai filmmakers despite the stinking swamp of politics into which we've now sunk.

Simply put, The Last Communist (Lelaki Komunis Terakhir) is a loose biography of Chen Peng, former leader of Malaysia's Communist Party in the 1950s who later fled, along with his comrades, to Betong, the southernmost district of Thailand, after the government's crackdown (it's believed that Chen Peng is now living in Bangkok). But Amir's essayistic approach is less concerned with detailing the episodes in Chen Peng's life than with using this last communist's journey as a springboard to look at the post-war social history of the country. Crisscrossing Malaysia's backwaters and talking to dozens of ordinary folks - not necessarily about Chen Peng, but about their lives, their work, their well-being, their ideas of a country - Amir sketches a luminous portrait of Malaysia's political, cultural and racial identities formed after the 1957 Independence.

So we hear a Malay farm worker lament about the poor economy of her region and a Chinese merchant who gives us a tour of his charcoal factory. All this, by the way, is intercut with cheeky musical sequences scored to mock-propaganda numbers whose lyrics contrast the "official" image of Malaysia with the complex, even difficult actuality faced by the inhabitants of the peninsula.

"If there's a word that describes this movie, it's 'landscape'," says Amir, a 34-year-old law graduate who's pioneered digital filmmaking in Malaysia since the late 1990s. "But I'm not just talking about a geographical landscape, but a historical one, too. In making The Last Communist, I was just curious about what this landscape called Malaysia actually is."

No easy answer emerges from the movie, but that's a trifling matter since the point of good documentaries is all about asking questions. Amir, a Malaysian of Indian descent, faced tough ethnic questions himself when doubts were raised as to why a non-Chinese would want to discuss the life of a Chinese communist. Like everywhere else, politics is racial in Malaysia: the pre-war communist movement in Malaya was strictly a Chinese activity, as the Chinese migrant workers identified themselves with "their people" in China rather than the Malay majority, especially more so since Japan began their notorious invasion of the Mainland.

"My previous film [The Year of Living Vicariously] dealt with political dissensions in Indonesia, and that inspired me to do something about Malaysian politics," says Amir. "And it happened that Chen Peng has just published a book about his life, called My Side of History, which became like a basis that I developed into the movie.

"Since no Chinese filmmaker is interested in the subject, there should be nothing wrong with me wanting to do it. I believe that there are two types of films we should make: films about things that we know about, and films about things that we don't know. With The Last Communist, I had to do a lot of research and travelling; as a Malaysian, there are still many things about Malaysia - so many places and peoples - that I'm not familiar with, and this film gave me the opportunity to get to know more about my own country."

In a section that shows how a national history can slip across physical borders, Amir's doc visits a village in Betong where Chin Peng and his members from the Communist Party of Malaya retreated to in the 1960s. There we meet a group of elders - they don't exactly identify themselves with Malaysia, but they aren't entirely Thai either - who speak eloquently about their present existence and past ideologies. They talk about their sporadic attacks along the borders in the old days and their choices of either going "home" or staying here after they were granted asylum by the Thai authorities.

But above all, Amir believes, what these ex-communists want to say is that they have their place firmly fixed in the history of Malaya, of its struggle for independence. "They want us to know," adds Amir, "that nobody can take that away from them."

As our own southern discomfort grows, Malaysia is sometimes cited as a model on how a sharply multi-ethnic country can maintain its social harmony. But in a way, The Last Communist shows us that harmony might only be a national myth that needs plenty of hard work to nurture, and that Malaysia's quest to find its real identity still goes on half a century after colonial rule.

"In Malaysia, we've racialised the way we think - we make bread this way because the Malay like it, or we make it the other way because the Chinese like it. When times are good, people don't ask questions, but when times are tough, when there aren't enough jobs, then what we think didn't matter starts to matter, like why the Chinese control most of the economy, or why the Malays enjoy more privileges from the government.

"Malaysian people have a short-term memory," he continues. "We can't remember things that happened many decades ago. So if certain things are repeated frequently enough, they will become true in the people's minds - like we can repeat to ourselves that we're living in perfect harmony, or the other way round. Some Malay schools may repeat to their students that they need to work hard if they don't want the Chinese to take over the country. But of course there is tension, like everywhere else.

"In fact, Thailand is different, at least you speak the same language, right?"

Yes we do, though perhaps we, too, need a constant reminder. And it would be nice if we had a few filmmakers with the political consciousness, the will to express their view on the state of nation, like those in our southern neighbour do.

Stutter and shoot

2006-04-20T10:48:00.000+08:00

(I wrote this article for the April issue of Plan B, a pretty fine Malaysian magazine for blokes. It was to introduce the Cool Gadgets supplement, of all things. I normally would refuse but the editor who asked over the phone had the sexiest voice. So I present it here as a kind of modest manifesto).

The Indonesians, with their love of shorthand, have a word, gatek, which stands for gagap teknologi. That’s me, always stuttering when it comes to technological gadgets.

But as Fate, that impertinent slip of a thing, wouldhave it, I am sometimes asked to comment on digital technology and the like. This is because in 2000 I wrote and directed what became Malaysia’s first DV (digital video) movie. It’s called Lips to Lips and you haven’t seen it, but that’s OK.

The decision to use digital video rather than film was a deep, considered one that was taken the moment my financier checked his bank balance. I had used 16mm film before when I took a film course (in New York, now that you asked). Our first day of shoot (in New York, that is) had us all excited until we discovered that we had loaded the film in the wrong way, and so what came back from the lab was a perfect expanse of exposed black. We were the only group in the class that had made such an elementary mistake. Looking back, it was the most apposite start, since we had nowhere else to go but up.

When making Lips to Lips I relied very much on our Technical Director, Zalee who is what the Indonesians would call a cowok gondrong (long-haired bloke), who was and is able to wax extensively of CCDs, FireWire, interlacing. These were things I didn’t want to know about. As Katharine Hepburn said, when exasperatedly quitting a tedious Method Acting workshop: "To hell with all that -- I just want to be a movie star!"

The arguments in favour of digital video (as opposed to film) has been made many times in back issues of Independent Filmmaker magazine and its ilk. The democratising potential of consumer-level machinery has been demonstrated time and again, as seen even in the nude ear-squat controversy that royally embarrassed the Malaysian police.

In a society such as ours, it has hitherto not been easy for stories outside the market-driven hegemony to be told. This presence outside the discursive norm can be something as basic as linguistic, since stories not in KL Malay (sometimes sprinkled with English) are not thought to be very commercial.

Digital video has enabled stories like Chemman Chaalai (The Gravel Road), Mei Li De Xi Yi Ji (The Beautiful Washing Machine), Mu (Sanctuary) and Gedebe (Thug) to be told. This sort of linguistic plurality, otherwise trumpeted in our tourism ads, has caused some self-appointed defenders of National Film Culture to start squealing like stuck pigs, if you can forgive the non-halal simile. "This isn’t the sort of image we want to show to outsiders!" they thunder. Well, tough. The ease and availability of video has moved beyond the realm of the technological to the epistemological. "Permission to narrate" was a phrase of Edward Said’s, but that restrictive need has been blitzed in the neat blur of binary codes,

The Iranian filmmaker Samira Makhmalbaf likens the availability of digital cameras to the onset of cheap ballpoint pens. Great literature can now be written by anyone, but the number of great new books remains small. It’s the same with films. Most DV quickies will be gone with the wind of the next big fad, but that also is fine because ephemerality carries its own pathos and beauty.

Almost all my movies have been made with digital video. I am a bricoleur; I make do with what I have. Sometimes shortcuts imposed by limitations create a feel that’s more urgent and somehow transcendent. Working with a narrower range can create wonders if the soul’s in the right place; this is why Edith Piaf is a better singer than Mariah. B-movies, made on the cheap and the fly, are more imperishably entertaining than the glossy blockbusters of their time. This somehow relates to the motto I adopted at the time: "Other people can do it better, but I can do it cheaper."

Using video to 'look like film' is a goal of many upstarts but I’ve always preferred to use its inherent mobility and unassuming sneakiness for an aesthetic that’s different from celluloid. Embedded with an Indonesian film crew during their elections 2 years ago, I shot over 80 video tapes which were edited into The Year of Living Vicariously (2005). I was similarly generous when shooting Lelaki Komunis Terakhir (2006), a semi-musical documentary inspired by the life of the communist leader Chin Peng. (On 18 May the latter becomes the first local documentary to get a commercial release in Malaysia. So even if a hundred people see it, it will still become the highest-grossing Malaysian documentary ever, so there!)

Having said all that, I am also this year co-directing a film on good old 35mm Kodak film. I am co-directing because the budget is so big (by my standards) that if Susuk flops I can always share the blame. For the first time phrases like "check the gate" and "how many feet do we have left in this mag?" are bandied around me. An actor’s flubbed line will now cost a few hundred RM in film stock and processing. Even so, non-linear editing is now digital and can solve a few problems. When the bomba failed to materialise during a scene of pathetic fallacy, we decided to just CGI in the raindrops.

The bottom line when it comes to filmmaking or any kind of creative endeavour was articulated by the screenwriter William Goldman: "Nobody knows anything." That is a source of anxiety to investors but a source of excitement for the rest of us, I think that Malaysian cinema is the most exciting in the world simply because there are so many stories we have not yet told, All these electronic manufacturers competing for your moolah creates an atmosphere of enlightened self-interest, if you will only permit yourself to narrate. The very last quote of this article (I promise) comes from Hermann Hesse: "Poor is the man whose pleasures depend on the permission of another."

From South China Morning Post (Hong Kong)

2006-04-16T20:59:00.000+08:00

Director isn't shy about the big picture

by Clarence Tsui

South China Morning Post, 13 April.

Amir Muhammad was more surprised than anyone when his documentary The Last Communist passed Malaysia's film censors without cuts last month.

Given that its subject matter, former communist leader Chin Peng, is still persona non grata in the country, it was an achievement that the film made it to general release. The 90-minute documentary, which will be screened tomorrow as part of the Hong Kong International Film Festival, tells the story of the man who led ethnic Chinese Malaysians in a guerrilla resistance against the Japanese invaders during the second world war.

Despite the decades that have passed, attitudes towards both him and the struggle remain complex to this day, Muhammad said.

"People's attitudes towards Chin Peng varied, of course, according to how close they were to the events of that era," he said, referring to the period from 1948 to 1960 when authorities wielded power to arrest dissidents in the face of what they saw as a communist-led uprising. "But it's safe to say that there was actually a sneaking sense of pride that their town or their family had been somehow involved in such a dramatic struggle."

What sets The Last Communist apart from other documentaries is the way it unravels Mr Chin's story. It traces his travels across Malaysia, interviewing people from places where he lived, worked and fought, while also offering glimpses into the struggles of their lives today.

In what is billed as a "semi-musical documentary", The Last Communist weaves interviews with performances of revolutionary songs, from Bollywood to ballads.

It ends with the filmmaker taking the camera across the border into Thailand, where Mr Chin and his fellow members of the Communist Party of Malaya have lived since the 1950s, when talks between the communists and the dominant party in the ruling coalition, the United Malay National Organisation party, broke down.

"They are hale and hearty, and had far greater energy than our own film crew, who were each about half their age." Muhammad said. "They still have their ideals but they have reconciled themselves to their place in history. I didn't sense any great bitterness that Malaysia didn't go the socialist path.

"Quite a few wanted to go back, if just to see their old towns, but the Malaysian government will not allow them."

A filmmaker who has never shied from tackling political issues, Muhammad has examined social discontent in Malaysia with The Big Durian and political reformation in Indonesia with The Year of Living Vicariously - but The Last Communist, shot on digital video for less than US$15,000, is his most controversial.

Rather than simply paying homage to Mr Chin, Muhammad said it was the "landscape" he was interested in examining and the lingering social problems that could have served as the driving force for Mr Chin's struggle in the 1950s and 60s.

Sight & Sound, April 2006

2006-04-12T00:13:00.000+08:00

The current issue of the British film magazine Sight & Sound has an article by Tony Rayns on the Berlin Film Festival and includes the following words and of course I am right chuffed:

"The Forum...[had] a scattering of engaging titles. The smartest and wittiest was Amir Muhammad's The Last Communist, a sort-of documentary about Chin Peng, the leader of the long-banned Communist Party of Malaya, who remains on Malaysia's 'wanted' list. The film explores the mainly rural locales in which Chin Peng grew up and began his struggle and winds up in Baytong, just across the border in Thailand, which is home to a small community of Malay communist exiles. Along the way, it pauses to interview present-day residents of those places - and to feature a series of newly composed songs performed by the rotund Zalila Lee, parodying propaganda anthems ancient and modern. Chin Peng himself is conspicuous by his absence. As usual, Amir's real subject is Malaysia now, a site of evasions, contradictions, repressions and forbidden desires; this essayistic delight confirms him as the only visible heir to the Chris Marker tradition."

The Big Durian: 29 April

2006-04-11T01:47:00.000+08:00

The Big Durian screens at the end of the month in the hallowed environs of FINAS (The National Film Development Corporation). If you haven't seen it yet and are too cheap to buy the American DVD, do come along lah.

THE BIG DURIAN: Screening & Discussion

Saturday, 29 April, 3:30 pm.

Auditorium P. Ramlee, FINAS, Jalan Hulu Kelang (next to Zoo Negara).

Admission: Free

Discussion between myself and cultural anthropologist Wan Zawawi Ibrahim will commence after the 75-minute screening.

Further enquiries: kaki.kino@yahoo.com | 012–225 1179 (Gareth A. Richards).

There's bound to be some interesting questions afterwards. And the answer to the most urgent one for the moment: Yes, food will be served.

Buenos Aires

2006-04-10T21:25:00.001+08:00

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.

In parliament

2006-03-28T10:04:00.000+08:00

Parliament in brief:
Chin Peng film raises questions

The New Straits Times. 28 March

Why a documentary on Chin Peng? This poser was raised by Datuk Dr Wan Hashim Wan Teh (BN-Gerik) who lamented on the absence of war memorials or documentaries on Malaysians who had served the country during times of war and strife. A 90-minute semi-musical documentary Lelaki Komunis Terakhir (The Last Communist) will be screened in theatres in May after it received the nod from the Film Censorship Board. It is about the life of Chin Peng, the exiled leader of the Communist Party of Malaya, and includes interviews with former guerrillas in Thailand. Wan Hashim said it was sad Malaysian heroes were not given such recognition. "We have had many heroes from 1511 when the Portugese invaded Malacca. Why The Last Communist when we have our own heroes?"

The Big Durian DVD

2006-03-27T14:07:00.000+08:00

My earlier docu-drama thing The Big Durian is now released on DVD in North America. It can be purchased here for US$29.95 excluding shipping.

This is of course way more than Malaysians are used to paying for DVDs but the trouble is no local distributor wants to touch it. So if someone (not me) were to suggest that a person (not you) will buy the American DVD and then sell it to your friendly neighbourhood pirate ... You will make a profit and then ensure that other, more cheapskate, Malaysians can watch it too. So how?

MStar article

2006-03-26T10:31:00.000+08:00

Lelaki Komunis Terakhir in cinemas this May

by Fathi Aris Omar

25 March 2006

The film that once caused controversy, Lelaki Komunis Terakhir directed by Amir Muhammad was passed early this month by the Film Censorship Board (LPF) with no cuts and is slated to meet audiences in three cinemas this May.

"I am happy it got through with no cuts." the independent director said to MStar Online today. "This is the first time a local documentary will be screened in our cinemas."

The 90-minute documentary features the life journey of Chin Peng, leader of the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM), from youth to the present. It also has a 20-minute segment featuring interviews with former guerilla fighters in their current village in South Thailand.

Last year UMNO Youth was reported to be "against any attempt to film the struggle of Chin Peng" who is considered "a traitor to the populace and government of Malaysia."

Datuk Azimi Daim, the movement's Information Chief, was quoted as saying: "Instances of murder, violence and cruelty by Chin Peng and CPM members towards the public in Gerik, Bentong, Gua Musang and the Thai border are still fresh in the minds of Malaysians, including ethnic Chinese and Indians."

He came out with the statement as a reaction to Amir's plans to make this film.

The film itself does not contain interviews with its protagonist Chin Peng even though over 80 people were spoken to during its making.

During interviews, the former CPM guerillas raised the issue of the government's refusal to allow them to return to their homeland, and also described the experiences and ideological fervour they went through.

"I sort of assumed (if there had been any cuts) some lines in (these interviews) would be censored." Amir says, describing a few segments that initially were feared to be 'problemmatic' with the authorities.

This film is scheduled to be screened from the end of May in the Golden Screen Cinemas chain in Mid-Valley, 1 Utama and Penang's Gurney Plaza.

* Translated from the original article here.

2 US fests in May

2006-03-14T10:50:00.000+08:00

Lelaki Komunis Terakhir will screen in freedom's land and bravery's home in two cities in May. The Seattle International Film Festival is the largest festival in the US (it runs for 3 weeks whereas others would typically run for 10 days). I think it's the first Malaysian work to screen there.

The SIFF has an entry fee but the programmer saw it in Berlin and thus invited it for free. Thou shalt never pay to enter festivals.

It will also screen in the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival. This isn't a big festival at all; in fact, it's downright cosy. Many Asian-Americans will gather there to natter about "diversity" and "empowerment." Since it's in the City of Quartz they will also ask questions like "Do you have an agent yet?"

I will be going to LA (straight from Toronto) but the Seattle screenings will be unrepresented.

The last time I had an American screening, I had questions like "What's a durian?" But everyone had such nice teeth.

* Synopses and ticket details should be on the festival websites by early May.

Hot Docs & Herzog

2006-03-06T08:16:00.000+08:00

Lelaki Komunis Terakhir will make its North American premiere in competition in Toronto's Hot Docs , the largest documentary festival and market on that continent. I look forward to visiting Toronto for the first time in late April not only to present the screening and take in a few films, but also to meet with one of my filmmaking heroes. Yes, Werner Herzog will be getting a special award and giving a talk. Will he be as drolly strange and wondrous as his films? Only time and a very long flight can tell.

The only drawback will be the painful process of getting a Canadian visa. The locals who man the process here in Kuala Lumpur are total jerks. It's a truth nationally acknowledged that the biggest assholes in Western-owned organisations here are not the mat salleh themselves but the uppity Malaysians in them. I had to deal with them when applying to attend another festival 2 years ago and the resultant hassle was of the kind that inspires suicide bombing as a career option.

But as Herzog once said: "The world is not easily accepting of filmmaking. There will always be some sort of an obstacle, and the worst of all obstacles is the spirit of bureaucracy. You have to find your way to battle bureaucracy. You have to outsmart it, to outgut it, to outnumber it, to outfilm them -- that's what you have to do."

But then again, he also once said, of the ending of one of his films: "When I saw the dancing chicken, I knew I would create a grand metaphor -- for what, I don't know."

So in that spirit, it will be off to Toronto I go.

Uncut

2006-03-02T12:45:00.000+08:00

I am pleased to announce that Lelaki Komunis Terakhir has been passed without cuts by the Malaysian Film Censorship Board! It was submitted 2 weeks ago and the confirmation came yesterday.

This paves the way for the commercial release I was hoping for all along, which can now take place hopefully in May. Making it the first local documentary to get a cinema release in Malaysia. (Only three other foreign ones have ever screened here, too: Fahrenheit 911, Spellbound and March of the Penguins, all in the past 2 years). This could be the start of something, no?

Die Tageszeitung review

2006-02-20T12:41:00.000+08:00

Another review in German, this time by the critic Ekkehard Knörer, can be read here. And this is an English translation by Siegfried Ertl, who lives in KL and works in tourism:

Coals instead of communism

Thai Pop rhymes to Agit Prop: Amir Muhammad from Malaysia breaks the rules of documentary films, to save its heart and soul. “The Last Communist” on the Forum.

Amir Muhammad is a young film director from Malaysia, who recently caused a sensation at film festivals around the world with his comic and experimental movies. His work cannot be categorised or defined as one particular genre. ´The Last Communist´ now showing at the Forum attempts to entangle what seems to be incompatible. Muhammad recalls life in Malaysia from the 1930s to present day. In true expressionist fashion, he intersperses this with colourful Thai pop-style video clips.

The story is related in the third person of communist resistance fighter Chin Peng. Born in 1924, Peng now lives in exile. He has been separated from his comrades who have been granted amnesty for their past crimes. Muhammad depicts Peng´s life yet does not grant any screen time to the character central the story.

This is not the movie’s only anomaly. The first principle of "The Last Communist" is digression. It shows places at which his hero (Peng) lived and houses in which he negotiated. The movie jumps back in time through Malaysian history revisiting Peng´s old haunts whilst showing footage of present day activities in these neighbourhoods. While some characters have something in common with Chin Peng, others do not.

Where Peng once lived now stands a charcoal production plant. Whilst reliving the past, the viewer is taken on a tour of the production process of charcoal. Muhammad draws the movie to a climax by drawing attention to life now in the 21st century in small towns and villages in Malaysia. He draws the viewer’s attention to the daily chores and routine of village life.

The larger, more astonishing and often enough stunning anomaly of his film is portrayed through the juxtaposition of Thai pop-style music and a kind of agitprop texts. On first viewing its´ camp- aesthetics overwhelm, with a female singer in front of a waterfall. However, the movie is quite professionally produced. The result is unexpected, yet nevertheless a welcomed interruption and break from the norm.

Clearly, Muhammad does not want to adopt traditional mainstream production values with this film. Consciously, he undermines the traditional values of sequential storytelling and adopts a new twist. ´The Last Communist´ is not an experimental movie for the sake of experimental movies. The movie detracts from the mainstream documentary formula yet remains faithful to its original intention.

The Last Communist assumes a Monty Python approach to storytelling, recalling factual events with amusing graphic forms and images. In the words of Monty Python ´The Last Communist´ is ´something completely different´.

Ekkehard Knörer

filmkritiken.org review

2006-02-18T23:51:00.000+08:00

A review entirely in German! And it can be read here. This translation is by Sven Alexander Schottmann who works in KL as a lecturer:

Amusing communism

Certain follies can only be recognized when one is able to observe them in others and laugh about them. If European intellectual history forms the background and the folly is the story of communism, then the mere thought of the failed “workers’ and peasants’ states” of Eastern Europe is enough to produce a giggle. If on the other hand, one would rather take in the larger view to appreciate the comical impact of how a simple idea spread across the world, Lelaki Komunis Terakhir by Amir Muhammad is recommended viewing.

Malaysia’s last communist is Chin Peng. In the 1920s, he rose to prominence as the leader of the Chinese [sic] Communist Party (CPM) against foreign occupation: first against the British, then against the Japanese and after World War II against the British again. In fact, Malayan guerrilla warfare between 1948 and 1960 represents some of the bloodiest conflict in British colonial history. Chin Peng quickly became one of the most wanted men in the Empire. After decolonization, the independent Malaysian government continued its pro-western oriented policy. This included the prohibition of the CPM and denying its leader a return into his homeland, who is thought to remain in hiding in the Thai jungle to this day.

In Lelaki Komunis Terakhir Amir Muhammad traces the biographical stations of the last communist. He visits the house of his birth, his parents’ bicycle shop and the informer who almost had him imprisoned. The backdrop to all of this is contemporary Malaysia and only text boards re-connect the present with the history of these various locations. Chin Peng, the subject of the documentary, does not even appear even once. Amir Muhammad’s explains that it was intention to document a “landscape,” or somewhat more complex, “contested terrains.” What is shown is not a Malaysia bleeding in the anti-colonial struggle or the Malaysia of the Cold War, but rather the new, multilingual and plural Malaysia. The label “history” is always misleading when one adopts a narrow definition of history meaning past events without a bearing of the present, which is always the outcome of history.

The use of songs is quite strange, but authentically Malaysian. British propaganda itself was often pepped up and spread through the use of these popular songs. Laden with irony, these songs poke fun at the sometimes abstruse history of communism in Malaysia. When the fathers of communism are praised and the typical revolutionary slogans in laughable nursery rhymes, then the partly amused, partly ashamed old European must ask himself how a number of crude ideas meant for a few industrial nations could have reached the last jungle and produced so much evil.

Thomas Hajduk

Signandsight.com review

2006-02-18T12:43:00.000+08:00

This here review appears in the eminently readable English-language German site Sign and Sight, which has been keeping a watching brief on the Berlinale. At first I thought the website's name was a take on Sight & Sound, that venerable British film magazine, until I saw that it didn't just write about films. Then I just like it because it sounds like my favourite Vladimir Nabokov short story, "Signs and Symbols," that most sly and humane of fictions, which always opens up a whole raft of associations.

A factual error in the first paragraph: Sitiawan used to be known as Gajah Mati (Dead Elephant), but its current name does not refer to any animal being harmed.

The end of history: Amir Muhammad's "The Last Communist"

It's clear from the start that "The Last Communist" is not your average history lesson. In Sitiawan in Malaysia, the birthplace of communist leader Chin Peng (more here), a street seller talks about how business is doing, who his customers are, and why this is a good place for selling drinks. You also learn that the city was called Sitiawan or "dead elephant" because it was here that long ago, two of the giant beasts collided so heavily that the both died on the spot.

Gradually Amir Muhammad acks down the legendary leader of the Malaysian Communist Party, city by city, person by person, from the past to present and his exile in Thailand. He talked to over 80 people on the way. But Chin Peng was not one of them. "Politicians are boring", the director explains cheekily, he prefers to concentrate on what really matters, the ordinary people. Like the communist fighter who lost an arm and a leg and is determined not to be a burden on anybody. Or the one-time sympathiser who still raves about the beautiful communist and about the reward he received from the British chief of police for turning her in. The communists in Malaysia have never stopped fighting: first the British, then the Japanese, then the British again and finally their own independent government. The few of them who survived to see the peace agreement, now live in exile in villages in Thailand, clearly segregated according to creed and ethnicity.

As the retired communists sing the old propaganda songs in broken voices, you sense how thoroughly the ideology failed because of the people; how total, total failure is. The end of history, here is it, right up close. The flame of the revolution is just strong enough to cook the rice for the day. One of the bloodiest battles in the British Commonwealth frays off into individual biographies, trickles down into everyday problems and gout. And Amir Muhammad takes all his protagonists seriously. He lets them talk and simply hears out their explanations of why they sacrificed their entire lives for a socialist Malaysia which no one seemed to want after a while.

Apart from that Amir Muhammad respects nothing and no one. And particularly not the propaganda songs that were deployed by the English and the communists alike to educate and indoctrinate the illiterate rural population. Muhammad turns them into little slapstick musical interludes where the Grim Reaper sings about the dangers of malaria or four merry women dance around Communism all dressed in red. Despite the hilarious hodge-podge of material, the film is never in danger of being ridiculous. And this is not only a result of its courage but also its tremendous sensitivity. I mean imagine the German equivalent: a young documentary film maker describes the terror of the German Autumn, by getting fidgety policemen to sing texts by Ulrike Meinhof. It's a recipe for disaster.

But Amir Muhammad pulls it off. It must be the mixture of grand Utopian designs and the everyday banality, deadly serious belief and oblivious silliness. Which is about as contradictory and distorted as the decades of fighting against colonialism, nationalism and communism must seem in eyes of rural Malays.

Christoph Mayer

Variety review

2006-02-17T12:33:00.000+08:00

I am unable to attend the Berlin Film Festival personally as I am shooting something else in KL, but Hardesh Singh is representing it there. The first public screening is in a few hours! As someone from The Importance of Being Earnest (my favourite play, now that you asked) said, "The suspense is terrible; I hope it will last."

This is a review that just already appeared in the Hollywood bible Variety, based on the Berlin press screening two days ago. The first-ever review it is, then.

The Last Communist (Malaysia) A Red Films production. (International sales: Red Films, Petaling Jaya.) Produced by Amir Muhammad. Co-producers, Naeim Ghalili, Dhojee. Directed, screenplay by Amir Muhammad.

By RUSSELL EDWARDS

Humor, humanism and sleight of hand are blended to create something out of virtually nothing in helmer Amir Muhammad's shoestring docu "The Last Communist." A kind of bio of Chin Peng, the exiled leader of the banned Communist Party of Malaya, pic eschews interviews with or archive footage of its subject, instead opting for catchy songs and chatty vox pops with those who have inhabited Chin's world. Fests with a political bent will snap this up

Chronologically charting Chin's life, pic begins by interviewing a street vendor who lives in Sitiawan, the town where Chin was raised and follows suit with other "non-entities" such as rubber tree workers. With moments divulging Chin's rise as a thorn in the side of the Japanese, the British and Malay government, the historical is smartly juxtaposed with the environment that spawned it. Helmer spices the mix with pop songs containing propagandist lyrics. One number parodying the multiculturalism of Malaysian tourism advertisements is particularly amusing. Tech credits are poverty row, but content is as rich as can be.

Camera (color MiniDV to DigiBeta), Albert Hue; editor, Azharr Rudin; music, Hardesh Singh with lyrics by Jerome Kugan; production designer. Reviewed at Berlin Film Festival Film Festival (Forum), Feb. 15, 2006. Original title: Lelaki komunis terakhir. Running time: 90 MIN.(Malay, Cantonese, Hokkien, English, Tamil dialogue)

2 Asian fests in April

2006-02-02T02:04:00.000+08:00

It behoooves me to announce that Lelaki Komunis Terakhir will screen virtually back-to-back in April, first at the Hong Kong International Film Festival and then at the Singapore International Film Festival.

I've screened at both festivals several times before, which is not to say I take it for granted that they will always accept my movies. Each time is like the first time, honest.

HKIFF attracts more foreign guests and journalists as it's better-funded. Plus, it's attached to a film market and also the local film awards, so the money and glam factors are present and accounted for. Given a choice, people just prefer going to Hong Kong than Singapore. I don't blame them; Hong Kong is indeed the most beautiful Asian city I've seen (not that I've seen many).

SIFF, on the other hand, has no local movie stars. The Singapore government also keeps slashing its grant to the festival, making its future look decidedly uncertain. The shame is that SIFF is the most vibrantly programmed annual film event in South-East Asia and deserves more support than it has been getting. This was the festival where I first saw films by people like Lino Brocka, Mario O'Hara, Lav Diaz, Garin Nuhrogo and Riri Riza, to mention just a few. It had early retrospectives of Apichatpong Weerasethakul and James Lee before the rest of the world had even heard of them. Its strength isn't just in regional cinema as there's always an interesting array of films, including documentaries, that would otherwise never get a theatrical release. I first attended SIFF in 1998 where (I'm ashamed to say) I only saw the two Malaysian films, Jogho and Dari Jemapoh ke Manchestee. I did the subtitles for both films and just wanted to check on them! Since 2001 I have been a better and more adventurous festival-goer.

I first attended HKIFF in 2001 where my DV camera promptly got stolen during a screening. It wasn't even mine; I'd borrowed it. Since then my experiences in Hong Kong have been much happier, thankyouverymuch.

I hope to attend both festivals again this year. Audiences in each city should, in theory, have some sort of relationship with the subject-matter. Singapore and Malaya went through the same historical trajectory during the Emergency Era (1948-60) and its first Chief Minister David Marshall is represented in the movie, albeit in cartoon form. (He took part in the 1955 Baling talks between the Malayan Communist Party led by Chin Peng and the incoming Alliance government led by Tunku Abdul Rahman). Hong Kong, meanwhile, is beginning to feel the effects of being handed back to the Chinese communist motherland.

It would therefore be interesting to see who will turn up at the screenings and how they will respond. Reports will be posted after the event. In the meantime, if you know anyone in those fine cities, tell them to turn up lah. Screening details should be announced on the websites by mid-March.

Poster

2006-01-12T00:16:00.000+08:00

Well, it's like this:

As the birthplace of Chin Peng, and the place where he spent most of his early life, Perak is the most prominently featured Malaysian state in Lelaki Komunis Terakhir. From a tender age, if you were to ask me to name a single thing that I would link with Perak, it would be the pomelo fruit. So I knew right off the bat that our poster needed a pomelo ... or more.

The fact that the pomeloes have eyes can be attributed (or blamed) to the designer Deepak Kumaran Menon. I cunningly got him to do this for very little money by choosing his movie Chemman Chaalai as one of my 5 favourites in one of those celebrity year-end polls . The Men At Work signs were the inspiration of our composer Hardesh Singh.

And it's a cartoon because no live pomeloes were willing to pose for us.

Berlin

2006-01-06T09:13:00.000+08:00

Got an email this morning confirming that Lelaki Komunis Terakhir will make its world premiere next month at the 56th Berlin Film Festival.

It will screen in the section known as International Forum of New Cinema, described as "the most daring section of the [festival] programme."

Berlin is of course one of the Big 3 film festivals in Europe, together with Cannes and Venice. What makes this selection special is that another Malaysian movie - Monday Morning Glory, directed by Woo Ming Jin - will also screen in the same section this year.

The only two other Malaysian movies to ever be presented here were the 16mm Iban-language feature Bejalai (in 1989, directed by Stephen Teoh) and Kaki Bakar (1996; directed by U-Wei Haji Saari).

How on earth do films get selected for festivals anyway? Well, it depends on the film and it depends on the festival.

In this case, I will have to thank the indefatigable Wong Tuck Cheong, president of Kelab Seni Filem Malaysia. He brought with him a colour leaflet promoting New Malaysian Cinema (the leaflet was sponsored by the Multimedia Development Corridor) to last year's Pusan Film Festival.

Among the synopses of Upcoming Movies, the one for Lelaki K0munis Terakhir must have caught the eye of the Forum programmer Christoph Terhechte. Just for the record, this was the synopsis:

A semi-musical documentary road movie about the life and legacy of the former leader of the banned Communist Party of Malaya, who now lives in exile in Thailand. Pre-production funding from The Jan Vrijman Fund of the International Documentary Festival of Amsterdam IDFA).

He emailed me in November asking for a preview tape, so I sent a rough-cut with incomplete subtitles, which was all we had at that point.

The invite to Berlin was received today.

Alhamdulillah!

News report: 14 April 2005

2006-01-04T23:13:00.000+08:00

UMNO Youth objects to filming Chin Peng's activities

Utusan Malaysia. 14 April 2005

KUALA LUMPUR - The Malaysian UMNO Youth movement opposes any attempts to film the struggle of Chin Peng, the former Secretary-General of the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM), who is considered a traitor to the government and entire population of Malaysia.

Its Information Chief Datuk Azimi Daim said, the struggle of the CPM was a crime of treason committed when Malaysia was beginning to develop after Independence.

"Instances of killing, torture and cruelty by Chin Peng and CPM members towards the public in Gerik, Bentong, Gua Musang and the Thai border are still fresh in the memory of the Malaysian people, including Chinese and Indians," he said in a statement today.

He opposes the plans of independent filmmaker Amir Muhammad who wants to make a documentary about Chin Peng, whose real name is Ong Boon Hua.

Amir admits he has already come up with a title for the documentary: Lelaki Komunis Terakhir.

Azimi stresses, any attempt to produce material about Chin Peng and the CPM, whether directly or subtly, is clearly intended to spread communist propaganda with the aim of overthrowing the democratic government of Malaysia.

"National warriors, army and security force personnel and their families are sure to be offended when there are attempts to popularise the former communist leader," he adds.

A translation of the original article here

The first documentary I liked

2006-01-03T22:48:00.000+08:00

It's a truth universally acknowledged that watching documentaries used to be considered one of the least exciting things you could do with your clothes on. So I especially remember the very first time I enjoyed one.

This especial remembrance does not, however, extend to recalling the exact date I saw it. But it must have been in the early 1990s at the Australian High Commission in KL. The title was (and still is) Cane Toads: An Unnatural History.

These creatures were imported to north-eastern Australia from Hawaii to combat pests in the cane-fields, but not only did they fail to do so, they turned out to be an even bigger menace themselves. They multiplied at an alarming rate, caused in large part by their nasty habit of humping everything in sight. They had no natural predators due to their poisonous skin ... but this same skin when licked can produce an effect close to LSD, as a sombre testimony by a former addict (complete with privacy-ensuring blacked-out face) reveals.

It's 47 minutes long but contains more joy, absurdity and pathos than any CGI-fed 3-hour extravaganza. The Australians interviewed are all very serious, which of course ups the hilarity quotient ever more. (There's no unsexier English-speaking accent than the Australian one, just as there's no sexier accent than the Irish). Among the people I remember are a girl who dresses up cane toads in dresses; and a man who makes it a point to run over as many of these creatures as he can, with the requisite sound effects that are not for PETA or the prickly.

I love how the documentary had such affection for its interviewees, even the really weird ones, without being condescending. Contrast this with the way Michael Moore gets laughs out of embarrassing the poor secretaries, receptionists and security guards of CEOs he has a beef with; you know, those workers who make less in a year than our blue-collar hero does in a braying day. Along the way, and without undue signposting about Serious Issues, it also becomes an analogy about Australian attitudes to immigration. And their resilience, as when the cane toads foster a perverse but deeply felt civic pride: Sure they're ugly and useless, but they're ours!

Movie-watching is a community experience several times over. The primary act of sharing comes from being in the dark with a bunch of (mainly) strangers. Then there's the discussion with your own friends afterwards. And then comes the point, years later, when you talk about a movie to someone who, it turns out, had also seen it somehow - and felt the same way about it. The connection is instantaneous and multi-levelled. I remember mentioning Cane Toads: An Unnatural History to a friend during supper just last year, and he immediately started quoting lines from it, laughing so hard that he almost chocked, literally almost falling off his chair. People started to stare.

Now that's entertainment.

Opening credits

2006-01-02T22:43:00.000+08:00

The best thing about being a director is getting to take credit for other people's work.

Let us ponder the example of Psycho. The world of course knows it as "Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho." But honestly, what would the film be without the brilliantly eerie soundtrack by Bernard Herrmann? (Using only one instrument somemore). Or the source novel by Robert Bloch, where the entire story was taken from? Or the acting turn by Anthony Perkins which became so emblematic that it marked, for better or for worse, his entire subsequent career?

Then of course there's Saul Bass.

Saul who? Well, sit your butts down and find out.

Saul Bass (1920-1996) was the most reknown title designer there ever was. He created the look for the opening credits for dozens of Hollywood films, including three Hitchcock ones: the gorgeously disturbing colour swirls of Vertigo, the playfully iconographic North by Northwest, and of course the starkly fractured look for Psycho. The credit sequence didn't just become a way for the audience to find out who the main crew members were, but gave a big fat hint to the style and themes of the film as a whole. If you notice, the notion of Norman Bates' split personality is right there in the way the words arrange themselves, and that's before "the story" has even "started."

The opening credit sequence for Lelaki Komunis Terakhir was not my idea. I did not tell the director of photography Albert Hue to hang out of my car in that way and record the road. I just assumed he'd had a few too many beers. When I gave all the footages to the editor Azharr Rudin, I didn't tell him to start with that image. But that's what he did.

And it works.

This is a road movie, so it's apposite to start with a road. The dusty look to my green Iswara isn't just a testament to slovenly car-keeping, it gives a nice, albeit shabby, personal touch. Since the whole movie is very talky, the fact that no words are heard now is also a good calm-before-the-wordstorm. All the better to concentrate on the only words on screen, which is where the credits come on. All the names of the main crew are on the road, since we are all workers, literally down to earth, while the title gets the sky, a consuming idea above all. It was also the editor's idea to have the word "Komunis" blink red for a while. It's a wink, a sign that some parts of this movie shouldn't be taken so seriously. Let's not even start on the choice of font; who do I look like, Saul Bass?

Perhaps in a Q & A session somewhere I could cite the opening road journey of one of them Abbas Kiarostami films as the reason for this opening shot. But if you read this and then attend that screening, you'll know I'll be untrue. But some other people might buy it. After all, they had just seen "Amir Muhammad's Lelaki Komunis Terakhir."

Greetings

2006-01-01T22:03:00.000+08:00

Everyone's got a blog nowadays and far be it for me to buck a trend. But in contrast to the blogs by certain Malaysian celebrities, this isn't a promotional tool disguised as personal musings. This is a promotional tool that isn't disguised as anything else.

I spent a few weeks last year shooting Lelaki Komunis Terakhir. It's mostly a documentary, and we interviewed over 80 people in various locations in Malaysia and Thailand. Now that the thing is almost done I want to record, for posterity or its cyber equivalent, some of the people we met, places we saw, and things we experienced, most of which did not even make it to the final cut of the movie. (We shot over 50 hours, after all).

I also plan to have the movie released in Malaysian cinemas this year, so will take you through the process of how movies are distributed in this our fair country.

So, Gentle Surfers, take this blog as a mixture of snapshot recollections of some weeks in 2005, as well as a record of a distribution process that will begin in early 2006. There will be some thoughts on documentaries too. And maybe some other movies. And maybe even more. So let's get it on.

Disclaimer: I am what the English would call a Luddite and the Indonesians gatek (gagap teknologi) so you will have to excuse a certain bare-bonedness to this presentation. But there shall be pictures aplenty if it kills me.