FOR Red Communications Sdn Bhd managing director Lina Tan (pix, left), making the movie Gol & Gincu stemmed from a desire to make a film about women and sports that would challenge the stereotypical images of women in Malaysian film.

She also wanted a movie that would have social issues as an underlying theme while at the same time be entertaining and appealing to the mass audience.

"I think entertainment moves people a lot more than intellectual discourse," she says, arguing that a story about a little girl who survives incest with the help of her friends would provide a better platform for discussion among young people than a group of doctors and psychologists talking around a table.

"It's a tried and tested way of getting social issues across a mass audience," Tan, who is Gol & Gincu executive producer, notes.

Co-executive producer Datin Paduka Marina Mahathir (pix, right) agrees, saying: "We have also tried to put issues on the (cinematic) table in a non-judgmental way. We're not trying to tell the audiences what to think, we want to let them think for themselves."

Movie critic and writer Kam Raslan says he is doubtful if any single film, book or TV show can or should necessarily even attempt to contribute to people's understanding of issues within our democracy. 

"I used to imagine that a single movie could change the world but now I think that movies can, at best, only ever be middle-brow, commercial entertainment," he says.

"A movie must entertain and captivate an audience for its entire length and the vast majority of people will never ever be interested in social issues so don't trouble them if you want your investment back," he adds.

Still, Kam cites three locally-made movies that "got people excited about the medium and about the country because they showed a truth" - Hishamuddin Rais's Dari Jemapoh ke Manchester, Amir Muhammad's The Big Durian and Yasmin Ahmad's Sepet.

"These movies' subject matters would have been very threatening to many people but the audience saw honesty, insight, bravery, naturalism, a different perspective and exceptional technical skills. Films like these suddenly make Malaysia seem bigger and more interesting," he adds.

He says it is a good thing that movies are getting cheaper and easier to make. "It's good to see young Malaysians expressing themselves, making movies and winning international awards. The problem is that nobody ever gets to see these movies because they are rarely shown at the big cinema chains or, much more importantly, on TV," he notes.

Film-maker Amir says his next two movies, Ada Apa Dengan Indonesia? and Lelaki Komunis Terakhir are intended for commercial release in Malaysia.

"The first has already been sent to the Film Censorship Board while the second will be completed at the end of the year. If for some reason they get banned then I won't show them in Malaysia," he says in an e-mail from south Thailand where he is shooting.

He argues that semi-private screenings merely end up flattering the system by making it seem more tolerant than it actually is.

"In order to work, these films and videos need a more public profile. In order for this to happen, the mechanics of censorship and how we negotiate with power needs to be exposed," he says.

Said Kam: "The diversity of expression is out there but if they are not heard then our country will be a poorer and, quite honestly, a more boring place. Also exhibitors and advertisers are missing out on a potential income stream."

Says Gol & Gincu's Tan, digital technology has enabled people to communicate in a way never possible a few years ago.

"However, once technology becomes accessible to everyone, it is also open to abuse, so in line with the advancement of equipment, we need the advancement of analytical thinking so that we don't just swallow lock, stock and barrel every single image or film that is shown to us.

"I think getting people to think analytically is a challenge to Malaysia," she stresses.

"We have a literal society rather than a literate one. I think it's important for film-makers to have a point of view but it shouldn't be forced on people as 'this is the only way it is'. I think we should respect audiences as intelligent people. All they need is a stimulus to make them think," Marina adds.

Kam believes there is a need for an abundance of different types of movies but all made with honesty, good technical skill and a sense of realism.

"If we can take our movies away from a narrow Malay nationalist agenda, or Malay male fantasies, or trashy horror flicks and persuade the guy who is queuing-up to see War of the Worlds (and who might not speak Malay as a first language) to watch a Malaysian movie instead, then film-makers would be playing their part in increasing the Malaysian audience's sense of engagement with their own country," he says.

"Buying a cinema ticket or choosing a TV channel is a form of democracy and 99% of the non-Malay audience consistently vote for the foreign product. I don't blame them," Kam adds.

Digital film-makers making waves
by Zan Azlee

MALAYSIA'S film history began in 1930 when film-makers from India came to then Malaya to produce adaptations of popular Indian movies. This eventually led to the emergence of talents like P. Ramlee, Siput Sarawak, Datuk L. Krishnan and Datuk Jin Shamsuddin.

As the years went by, the industry mellowed considerably.

The tide is changing though, with the independent film revolution. What we are seeing is the emergence of young filmmakers who source their own funding and organise everything themselves without any backing from the government or production companies.

They even do it without any assurance that their films will ever be screened in cinemas. They do it for the love of the art and the passion of storytelling. The most amazing thing is, they aren't even making "real" films.

Conventionally, a film is shot on 35 mm film stock. This is an extremely expensive process because a reel of film (approximately three minutes in length) would cost about RM300. Imagine what a whole feature length movie of 90 minutes would cost.

Today, with digital technology, all that's needed to produce a movie is a digital camcorder and several one-hour DV (digital video) tapes that cost RM15 each.

Editing is a cinch too using your own home computer.

A slew of independent digital film-makers have been making waves locally and independently.

We have Amir Muhammad, 34, who made the first Malaysian digital film entitled Lips to Lips in 2000. He also produced The Big Durian, a socio-political documentary, which has won several international awards and is the first Malaysian film ever to be invited to the prestigious Sundance Film Festival in the US.

Next, we have Ho Yuhang, 32. His first feature length digital film, Min, was selected for competition at the 2004 Festival of Three Continents in France. It won the Special Jury Prize. Ho's latest work, Sanctuary, won the highest award at the 2004 Pusan International Film Festival and the Rotterdam International Film Festival.

James Lee, another independent film-maker, has been making short films on his analogue video camera since the 1990s. His latest feature film, The Beautiful Washing Machine made on digital video and costing only RM50,000, came in as the Best Asean Film at the recent Bangkok International Film Festival beating another local contender, the RM20 million conventional film, Puteri Gunung Ledang.

Lee says film and arts students in Japan have long chosen digital technology to create films and video art due to its accessibility and affordability.

Lee shot The Beautiful Washing Machine in DV for exactly the same reason.

"It would not have been possible for me to shoot it on film because it would cost at least half a million ringgit. It would be tough to raise such an exorbitant amount. DV allowed me to shoot very cheaply. Besides, I like working intimately with a small crew and DV allows me to do that," he explains.

Deepak Kumaran Menon is another local independent filmmaker who has taken advantage of DV technology. Chemman Chaalai, his debut feature length film, is Malaysia's first Tamil digital film. It tells the story of a young Indian growing up in a rubber estate and her quest for education.

"Of course budget and money were major factors in the making of this film. But the cheap and effective technology made it possible for us to pour more into developing the content as that is the most important element of a film," states the 26-year-old.

Chemman Chaalai has been screened at the Rotterdam International Film Festival and the San Francisco International Film Festival. It even had a run in the Golden Screen Cinemas (GSC) e-cinemas.

"Our e-Cinemas provide a platform for these alternative film-makers who shoot in DV to come out of the underground and display their work to a wider audience," says GSC general manager Irving Chee.

But do these films pull in the crowds?

GSC's e-Cinema has screened several local digital films including Chemman Chaalai and The Beautiful Washing Machine.

Digital film also provides mobility. Requiring only a small crew to handle the equipment, it makes it easy to use guerilla tactics.

"Independent filmmakers may not be able to afford to pay for certain locations. With small DV cameras, we just go in, shoot, and run out," says Woo Ming Jin who directed Monday Morning Glory. Based on the recent terrorist bombings in South East Asia, the film had its international premiere at the San Francisco International Film Festival last April.

Digital technology also gives filmmakers the courage to experiment.

Imagine experimenting with thousands of dollars worth of 35mm film stock only to have everything come out wrong once it is developed.

With digital video, the tape is cheap and better still, reusable. You can also view something immediately on screen with video and if you don't like what you see, just rewind and shoot again.

The power in film activism
by Sharon Kam

LAST month's Freedom Film Festival (FFF) brought to the fore budding talents in not just film-making but in advocacy.

More than film-making skills, the FFF aims to promote social and community films that are committed to the ideals of human rights, social justice and equality.

With Freedom of Information as this year's theme, there were no holds barred on the topics and issues chosen by the film-makers. The subjects ranged from squatters, government policies, environmental concerns and HIV/AIDS.

The amateur category was especially heartening as young film-makers used  minimum resources and basic skills to raise public consciousness about issues that affect Malaysians.

It was not surprising that the top two winners in the amateur section were journalists.

The winner was Ong Ju Lin's Clean Shit which has since been renamed as Alice Lives Here. A documentary about how residents in Broga responded when they found out that a waste incinerator will be built near their village, it Ong's and her team Reel Power's maiden foray into film-making and film activism.

First runner-up was 18? by Danny Lim, a documentary on the effectiveness of street art in initiating discussion of public issues, followed by Yee Yuen Lai and Teresa Wong's chronicle of an abused girl, Suri.

The alternative film fest is organised by the Pusat Komunikasi Masyarakat (Komas) or the Community Communications Centre and supported by the Konrad Adeneur Foundation.

Komas is a non-governmental organisation (NGO) founded in 1993 to help catalyse social change through multimedia. It provides creative media support services and training (including video-making and community theatre) to marginalised communities such as indigenous peoples and the urban poor in and outside Malaysia.

"A few years ago, Komas seems to be the only ones filming such documentaries or films with social themes, using them as tools for creating greater public awareness and support towards a social issue.

"Now we hope to make them the desired genre among young independent film-makers," says one of Komas's directors Anna Har.

This is made easier with greater accessibility to technology namely digital video cameras.

"We want to tell people, apart from taking the family wedding or other family videos, why not make a short film? Why not think of making changes or raise an issue?

"There is power in the tool depending on how you use it and for what? Is it just for entertainment or to express things in your, your family's or your community's everyday life?" she asks.

There are lots of issues out there that needs to be talked about and which the ordinary person can tell, she adds.

During the FFF screenings, experts or persons who are involved in the issue were invited to facilitate discussions among the audience about the issues raised in the film.

"Video is a powerful tool for social awareness and change and many of the established documentary or social film-makers in Indonesia and Philippines are social activists themselves," she adds.

Documentary film-makers in those countries are highly respected and they are ahead of Malaysia in terms of content.

"In terms of technical skills we may be up there and we get rave reviews for that but we need to think more about content, more about the issues, to be more critical and analytical," she concurs.

Nevertheless, the talents revealed in the FFF were rather encouraging.

There were a number of entries from first-time film-makers, some who had to learn how to use a video camera from scratch and filmed their films using basic techniques.

"Like Ju Lin, the amateur category winner, she has never held a camera before. Now, after her experience, she saw the impact of film and has turned really passionate about it," says Har.

Those who need guidance or tips to help them along in making their first documentary can contact Komas at (03) 7968 5415.

How 'Broga' changed her life

First prize winner in this year's Freedom Film Fest in the amateur category was Clean Shit, renamed Alice Lives Here by its creators for obvious reasons. The 20-minute documentary by Ong Ju Lin and her crew of four other women - Loh Yin San as production manager, Wong Yuen Mei (lecturer in gender studies), journalist Hillary Chiew and Leow Mei Chern, an upcoming singer/ songwriter who com-posed the soundtrack.

Calling themselves Reel Power, the novice film-makers  knew little about what they were getting into.

Ong wrote the script, directed and was the main cameraman. She is a photo-journalist with a degree in biology and a masters in social anthropology. She also had stints with Mercy Malaysia.

The Penangite did not think of making films until she was inspired by Alice Lee, a resident of Broga, the site where the largest waste incinerator in Asia is going to be located.

Coincidentally, a friend had given Ong a video camera as a gift. "I didn't know what to do with it. She knew I've always wanted to try filming but I just did not know how to start."

And then one day she and her friend Loh were invited to attend a forum on the Broga incinerator where Lee was among the speakers.

Ong who had just returned from completing her Masters overseas early this year, knew little about the issue brewing in Broga. But when Lee spoke, she was blown away.

"Alice spoke with such passion. She is just a simple, person talking about the incinerator and how it is going to affect her village. She was speaking as a civil person but it was so powerful it moved the entire audience. When we asked, she said she was just a clerk at a furniture company," she recalls.

Ong and her friend sympathised and felt something should be done. Her journalistic instincts also saw the story that had to be told there - as a video documentary.

"The first time I held the camera, I treated it like a still camera but gradually realised just how different it is. My first shot was so shaky someone said it looked like the Blair Witch Project.

An experienced film-maker, while watching the film kept asking where the tripod was. The whole film was shot without a tripod simply because they were not experienced enough to use it.

There were hilarious moments too. "Once we forgot to switch on the microphone and went home with an entire half-hour interview with the person talking, with no sound coming out of him. So we had to go back and re-shoot," recalls the 34-year-old.

The documentary was completed in four months. Winning the FFF award has become a turning point in her career.

"Before, as a journalist, I used words, but this is really more exciting. Film is very powerful and it is very immediate. People can sit through a 20-minute documentary and you could see the emotions eating at them. But you can write 2,000 words and how many people would read it until the end? Film opens up a person's imagination and make the person more aware of the issues and think about what they can do," she explains.

And one can be sure that Alice Lives Here will not be put on the shelf after this as plans are being made for more screenings to as many audiences as possible including international audiences.

Now that her passion for film-making and film activism has been ignited, Ong would like to one day, do a film about Malaysia as a country of migrants.

"As my family's fourth generation in Malaysia, I would like to show my life and my roots, and show how we are all migrants. I also want to show how arbitrary the bumiputra status is. As our former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad said, we should be aiming for Bangsa Malaysia now."

However, film activism, like other forms of activism in Malaysia, are often seen as anti-government.

The truth is, for Ong at least, "I love this country and its people. Even though we sometimes criticise the government, it is because we are people who care about our country. We can move away to another country but because we care, we stay. I am the rakyat," she says with conviction.

Putting journalistic experience to good use
by Danny Lim

IN the short documentary video 18?, there is a scene where artist Yee I-Lann was being interviewed at Valentine Willie Fine Art Gallery. Yee was asked to give her opinion on a brand of graffiti that has popped up around Kuala Lumpur, idiosyncratic in the manner it expounds certain ideologies (Legalise Ganja, Pertahankan Hak Asasi) and casts certain national political icons in both comic and Orwellian perspectives.

The first of which I had laid eyes on - a giant stencilled spray paint of a girl in a tudung with the words "Ada apa dengan National Service" at the Ampang Park LRT station.

Further appearances of more risque themes inspired a couple of articles for me to write, inquisitive of whoever it was that dared to place their own politically-charged messages alongside the barrage of advertising banners and billboards in our urban sightlines.

Clearly visible behind Yee was an artwork, priced at RM650, which consisted only of a pencilled-in graffiti-like statement on blank white, which said: "I WANT TO SLEEP WITH YOU".

While never directly alluded to, the juxtaposition was deliberate and, more importantly, subtly drew attention even as Yee proved to be quite the eloquent interviewee.

The very issue of agitpop graffiti works in the same surreptitious vein of invading our peripheral vision and tickling the edges of our consciousness,  appropriating - or reclaiming as some one would say - public spaces for expression.

For a journalist venturing into documentary-making, these contrasts warmed the cockles of my heart. Journalism on video changes the way people communicate. Some are shy and circumspect of the camera, others play to the gallery.

In text, the journalist is the camera, and its subjects - interviewees - need only relate to that one person. On camera, a persona emerges that panders in the same way a person making a public speech would.

No mere pretensions were made into creating 18? with production values that were anything above amateur - as a complete novice in film-making techniques, I'd be foolish to attempt that, especially having witnessed first-hand (as a still photographer and reporter covering the scene) what goes into making award-winning indie films.

Ong Ju Lin, director of Clean Shit!, which won the first prize in the amateur category at the Freedom Film Fest (18? won the second prize), also admitted to being a virtual novice in film-making.

What me and Ong (a former journalist) put into our maiden video efforts were essentially our experience in reporting - looking for angles in a story, researching the issue, providing information, interviewing the right people, editing for brevity and impact and crafting a story communicable to a large audience.

18? revolved around the elusiveness of the personality behind the graffiti, and the pursuit of this person.

18? was made with a borrowed digital video camera, and  ... that's about it really.

Workings certain nights and weekends, and video editing help from a friend, the financing was negligible.

If hacks like me could do it, so can you.

What struck me in the aftermath of making and screening the documentary was the attention that it received. While the thinking and crafting that went into making the documentary was similar to that of print journalism, the response couldn't be further apart.

Far more substantial investigative pieces and news-breaking reports on print have been too easily discarded as tomorrow's kitty litter. Any one of Citizen Nades' columns are of greater pertinence to people's every day lives than my 21-minute documentary.

Likewise, Clean Shit! owes a debt to the wealth of reporting done by various news sources on the Broga incinerator issue. Yet almost a year since its making, 18? has been screened at three local and international film festivals, and been the subject of numerous reviews and articles.

Both Ong and I have been interviewed on print and on television, and invited to a morning talk show - not to mention given awards for our works. And nearly a year on since its making, I'm still writing here about 18?.

Which is not to temper enthusiasm for documentary film-making, but rather to underline the indefatigable impact of the audio-visual presentation.

Few films can match the mass reach of major newspapers, but a documentary film can create a lingering impact on hearts and minds.

18? can be downloaded for free from http://danlim.twofishy.net/18

Danny Lim is a writer with lifestyle magazine Off The Edge whose documentary entitled 18? took second prize in the amateur category of this year's Freedom Film Fest.

Godfather of independent film movement in M'sia

James Lee is a name synonymous with the independent film scene in Malaysia. Many regard him as the godfather of the country's independent film movement. Having started making short films on his home Hi-8 video camera in the 1990s, his films have gone on to screen in many international film festivals.

His most recent film, The Beautiful Washing Machine, went on to win the Best Asean Film award at this year's Bangkok International Film Festival. It was shot on DV (digital video) at a cost of RM50,000.

Lee has always shot his films in video format due to its affordability.

He started out with analogue Hi-8 video and later crossed over to DV when the technology emerged. He happens to be one of the most prolific and consistent filmmakers in the country because of it. Lee's filmography lists 12 short films and four feature films to date.

Lee says the low-cost digital medium allows him to experiment. The different brands of digital cameras with its various features actually make experimenting even more exciting for a film-maker.

Editing on a PC also opens up a whole range of new possibilities of effects and image control.

So is he going to stick with digital technology for all his films or would he one day want to try his hand at shooting on 35mm film? He is still a bit of a purist.

"I think that true film is beautiful and of course I would want the opportunity to shoot on film if I have a story that would be worthwhile," he says. "But at the moment, most of my stories work well on the digital format."

For more information on the film or about digital film-making, visit Lee's website at www.doghouse73pictures.com

Lee's latest short film is entitled Sometimes Love is Beautiful and is planning for his next feature length film to be shot later this year.