Director's Journal Week 13

     In this week, let's us pay a tribute to one of the greatest directors in Malaysia.
     
     Yasmin Ahmad was born in Kampung Bukit Treh in Muar, Johor on 7 Jan 1958, the oldest of three children of a musician father and theatre director mother. She was graduated in arts majoring in politics and psychology from Newcastle University in England. She worked as a trainee banker in 1982 for two weeks then working for IBM as a marketing representative.  She worked as blues singer and pianist at night. Yasmin started her career in advertising as a copywriter at Ogilvy & Mather and in 1993 she moved to Leo Burnett as joint creative director with Ali Mohammed, eventually rising to executive creative director at the firm's Kuala Lumpur branch. On 23 July 2009, Yasmin suffered a stroke and hemorrhaging in the brain. On 25 July 2009, after more than 48 hours of surgery, she was pronounced dead at 11:25 pm. It is a tragedy that Yasmin Ahmad, one of the few Malaysian directors to make a name on the world stage, has died aged 51.

      Most of her commercials and films have been screened at the Berlin, San Francisco, Singapore international film festivals and the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. Her films were featured in a special retrospective at the 19th Tokyo International Film Festival in October 2006.

      Ahmad was part of a new generation of film-makers who reflected the wide ethnic and cultural diversity of her country and the lives and dreams of its young people. Stylistically, her principal influences were Yasujiro Ozu and Douglas Sirk, although she created her own western and oriental mixture. Her films challenged ethnic stereotypes, and she was openly against any type of fundamentalism and racism, making it her life's work to support minority rights. Her films also explored romance between members of different ethnic groups and religions, touching on the issues of parental abandonment, AIDS and gender discrimination, against the backdrop of Malaysia's ethnic diversity.

      Unsurprisingly, her feature films were disliked by the regime in Malaysia, a conservative, mostly Muslim country, for tackling taboo subjects such as inter-racial relations and teenage angst. In fact, the second, and perhaps most renowned of her six features, Sepet (2004), was banned in Malaysia, until Ahmad agreed to make eight cuts.

      Sepet (which could be translated as "slit eyes"), about a relationship between a Chinese boy and a Malay girl, touched the sensitive nerve of race in Malaysia, where the memory of the terrible 1969 riots between Chinese and Malays is still strong. Ahmad, who was married to a Chinese man, made the film for $400,000 and shot it in Ipoh, where Chinese and Malay communities live in close proximity. The film focused on a 16-year-old student, Orked (Sharifah Amani), the only child of well-off Malay parents (Ida Nerina and Harith Iskander), who falls for Jason (Ng Choo Seong), a slightly older Chinese boy, who sells pirated video tapes at an open-air market but like to read and write poetry. Despite differences in class, race and language, a romance blossoms. The story ends as tragedy. Ahmad followed the characters of Orked and her family in two sequels, Gubra and Mukhsin (both 2006).

       Other than movies, Ahmad also produced ads for Petronas, the national oil and gas company. The stories of these ads are simple but touch the Malaysian people’s heart during festive seasons. Her ads were the one I waited to see during festive seasons, my favourites are the one shoot at 2006 and 2008.

       The first one is about old folks living in nursing home who swagger about the achievements of their children and they seem proud of their children although they are very busy. Different from them, just say that his son is good and he is coming to fetch her. After that, a white car appear and son appear and said that the family is going to Cameron Highland. The other old folks look disappointed and continue to have their meal quietly.

      The other one happened in a primary school, where students are asked to draw what reunion dinner means to them. While everybody is busying drawing, Thiam Hock sits and observes because he does not know what a reunion dinner is. After that, Thiam Hock is waiting for someone at the bus stop alone and he waves as he see persons and cars pass through. An Indian lady then appears and offers her hands to him when all of his friends are gone. Together, they walk to the orphanage.

     Another of my favourite ads is “Tan Hong Ming in Love” which interviews Tan Hong Ming and his girlfriend. The couple is naïve and do not have discrimination which reflects the unity of different races in Malaysia.      

     Yasmin Ahmad is really a talented director and she is irreplaceable. 

     If she was still alive...  

Reference:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1379108/
http://www.thestar.com.my/Lifestyle/Entertainment/Movies/News/2013/12/16/Celebrating-Yasmin-Ahmad.aspx/
http://www.theguardian.com/global/2009/aug/12/obituary-yasmin-ahmad