(MPH) Quill Magazine October 2008

Expat Magazine November 2008

Reel Malay

Aaron Siskind, the American abstract expressionist photographer, is quoted as saying “Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever...it remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything.”

The same could be said for film/cinema. There is a truism that a country’s character is revealed in the films it makes about itself, leaving residue of reality and permanent reminders of those “little things” which makes a culture unique, none more so than in films made by Malays.

From P.Ramlee’s golden age of Malay popular films, to neo-documentaries by Amir Muhammad, aspects of Malay culture and Malay lives are constantly being revealed and re-defined through films made in Malaysia.

A golden age of Malaysian cinema was truly encapsulated by the films of P.Ramlee. For many, the films of Teuku Nyak Puteh bin Teuku Karim (aka P.Ramlee) were the epitome of Malay cinema, from nasib (1949) right through to his last film laksamana do re mi made in 1972, he died in 1973.

Rumbustious, funny, endearing, romantic, P.Ramlee’s films opened up Malay kampungs (villages) like never before. Malays identified with representations of their culture/personal lives characterised by P.Ramlee the writer/actor/director, from the bumbling and bungling bachelor to the smooth singing Casanova.

Many films were made after the Ramlee era, but none were to get as close to the Malay heart as P.Ramlee’s endearing romps and romances, as he captured both the earnestness and playfulness of the Malay character.

Later, Yasmin Ahmad began to stir the collective unconscious with films like Sepet (2004), Gubra (2006), Mukhsin (2007) and more recently Muallaf (2008). Although critics might consider these works ‘filmy’, or popularist, Ahmad’s films provide an artistic link between Ramlee’s pure entertainment and the documentary style realism which was to come later.

Malay films had already begun to adopt new realism with Ahmad’s critically popular films, concentrating on Malay social issues like romances between a Malay Muslims and Chinese non-Muslims (Sepet), or converts to Islam, in Muallaf. Much of Ahmad’s work, ultimately, is about relationships, revealing the “feeling...touching...loving” which Siskind talked about. While Ahmad’s films are about culture and responses to culture, they are also, primarily, about people.

Yasmin Ahmad’s films breech the gap between popularist and ‘Art’ cinema in Malaysia, while other Malay film makers steer off in directions of their own. It is no surprise that Malay film makers, like Amir Muhammad, should start portraying socially relevant issues in films and documentaries, within both Malay and Malaysian contexts.

While Muhammad’s films, like The Big Durian (2003), question the official line in recent historical events and made authentic attempts to shed new light on Malaysian social traumas, there is no doubt that he is also searches for fresh ways of fusing concepts of documentary with modern popular cinema.

The Big Durian enquires into a real incident of a soldier running amok, in the infamous Chow Kit area of Kuala Lumpur, with a M16 rifle, and questions reasons and reactions about this incident, and its effects on lives of real people.

The voice of the people and countering the official line, seem to have become themes in Muhammad’s films such as lelaki kommunis terakhir (The Last Communist - 2006) and apa khabar orang kampung (Village People Radio Show - 2007). Both were both banned by the Malaysian government, for, perhaps, dealing too honestly with the issues of Communism and alternate histories in Malaysia, and have not been officially shown there.

At times it may be difficult to discern pseudo-documentary from documentary, in Muhammad’s films, and, frequently, aspects of Woody Allen type intellectual playfulness emerges, as with song and dance in The Last Communist. It would be unfair to compare The Last Communist with Bollywood cinema, or even with those song and dance numbers in many of the P.Ramlee films, but aspects of this, intentionally, slip into The Last Communist. This film, according to the official blurb, is a fiction/fact hybrid as it “...combines testimony with song.”

Again, regarding real Malaysian history, Muhammad made Village People Radio Show in a documentary style, interviewing retired Communist Party of Malaya 10th Regiment members now living in Thailand. But, as with the previous films, nothing is quite that straight-forward with an Amir Muhammad movie, and the audience is treated to a Thai play amidst the interviews displayed in this moving film.

P.Ramlee’s playfulness and desire to present Malay culture to the world continues to reside in films made three decades after his demise, whether they are the more popularist films of Yasmin Ahmad, or the fact/fiction films of Amir Muhammad, they all capture those little things, which are remembered long after we all have gone, and this is the beauty of these Malay films.