5 posts tagged “film”
Four years of living abroad and soon I graduate. Soon I graduate and moving back to KK (even if temporarily) is all I can think about because I'm tired of not having a home. I love to travel but travelers have their homes and I'm borderline nomadic which is so not what I want to pursue. Of course, I'm grateful. A lot of people I know are griping about having not left their own countries, wanting to pursue something better and I keep telling people - the rest of the world isn't better. It's just the rest of the world. I've accumulated a lot of wisdom but never enough. The test of me surviving on home ground seems far more difficult. We're talking Kota Kinabalu here and I'm plagued by the fact that so many young people have to be torn between staying and pursuing better careers and lives elsewhere... like one day we grew up and realised Sabah wasn't good enough. Trust me to have a Peter Pan complex.
Maybe it's that we don't want it to ever turn into a metropolis so we don't stay to fix things. Even if we were the ones to build it to that we'd feel guilty but it's us or the politicians who do. People are so weak and silly sometimes. They don't realise that when there's nothing but raw, fertile soil, they can be the pioneers. As in, don't search for an industry, start one and you'll be legendary. Roger Wang's made a good start already. I just want to film us before we all lose our culture to the west, West Malaysia, Koreans, pilaks and Christians. Damn those missionaries are sprouting churches like mushrooms and I kid you not. I still attest to the emphasis of religion before education because how else are you going to comprehend religion? Tangent.
Okay, plans. Again with my big plans. Little girl, big plans. People say that they look at me and they see spark, talent, success. Nice to know but I get paranoid thinking that they're picturing me - red carpet, lots of moolah and doing a Michelle Yeoh. Hell no I'm selling my soul to fucking Spielberg. My definition of success is to capture our culture and people on film in order to remind us who we are. Culture is what counts, it is what makes us unique. It's what makes friends stronger, beer taste better, the days shine brighter and the coldest nights, warmer. Without it, we have no umbilical cord. And take it from someone who has somehow developed an American accent and can hardly speak Malay for shit. Adapting is surviving but preservation is fighting. It's paying your respects to what you love. And then people gripe about censorship... of course Malaysians are conservative when it comes to how we define ourselves, it's because they don't see enough variety, they don't see enough of what they do. We're living in the age of youtube and pirated editing software. We really don't have much excuse to fail. It's not a financially secure career but it's a worthy pursuit.
I watched Shawshank Redemption the other day. I could relate to Andy Dufresne, making do with unfortunate circumstances. My circumstances aren't terrible but I am at a disadvantage with what I want to do but I know I'll have the support of friends, family and people who love Sabah as much as I do. I'm trying to figure something out and last as long as I can and I'll tell you to mind tuttering at me. Pfft. I'm young. I might as well do something before my youthful optimism runs out. So long as some good comes out of my naivety, "youth is for revolution." Mine will not be wasted. What the hell do I know about what I'm up against but I'll find out and that's more than what most people have done so far.
Even better, I got treated to it because I was modeling for a friend's Turkish t-shirt line. I want to do more modeling. I've some experience and I'd say I understand the camera's mise-en-scene quite well by now so if I'm ever in your vicinity or vice versa, look me up.
Now onto something less savoury. The Oscars was a travesty. Double standard bullshit. Foreign film as a category when Atonement and La Vie en Rose are not American films. It's not a foreign film nomination unless it's depressing and has to do with a war of some sort especially the holocaust? Miley Cyrus and Jessica Alba presenting awards? And I knew they'd have one animated character hocking up puns - Jerry Seinfeld from Bee Movie which I will never touch in a million years. It looks like cliche tripe. The Oscars have been put on a pedestal long after they lost their integrity. I refused to watch last year's because Ellen Degenres was hosting and true enough, Scorsese won an Oscar for The Departed which was an adaptation of a "Japanese film". Quote wrong quote. If I was Andy Lau I'd be angry too. The Departed was a horrible movie the only reason why Scorsese got the Oscar was because they felt indebted to him. Well if you gave him best film instead of Rocky that year he wouldn't have won for The Departed. What about films like 'A Scanner Darkly'? And why did CLINT EASTWOOD win best foreign film for Letters to Iwo Jima when he's America's most famous cowboy? Doink. I'm surprise Chuck Norris hasn't gotten an Oscar yet.
I am especially concerned about Hollywood's new wave in distribution. To cut down on costs for distribution, Hollywood is now putting a lot of big budget productions straight to dvd. That means less premiers, less movie shows, more money for them and production. Hollywood already produces so many films they're going to flood us all. Imagine Bollywood amounts of production but with a Hollywood budget. 20 million films were made in 2007, this includes independent films. And don't forget, there's also Nollywood. The only people who are going to be making money is Hollywood because they still have the big names attached.
Film making is capitalist ground. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. With the rich gaining more access to the public through television, dvds and the internet, the rest of us can't compete. Watching a film will be equivalent to looking at a still photograph. This mass production is not only going to affect people's salaries but it will also further devalue art. As if Hollywood hasn't done that already. Out of all the films in the world, the ones nominated for Oscars were only notable ones attached to production houses who have solid alliances with the Oscar committee. And it's not only that, the cinema is communal ground. If things go straight to dvd, that means we don't get to choose what we want to see on the large screen. Going to the movies is traditional, it's a treat, a culture. We're going to be desensitised further, how evil. And I've met a big time New York distributor before. He was a cocky asshole and it makes me sink inside, thinking that someone like him would be so comfortable upsetting this fragile balance as long as he still gets his money. The fool. I bet he's a huge Warhol fan. How is it that you can get PEOPLE whose designs are so unintentionally Dadaist it makes you want to puke?
Film making will reduce in its stature as a trade and more as a hobby for the masses. It already feels like that in South East Asia. Maybe I was right about it being safer there. But maybe that's a wave that's meant to be. Maybe this insane surplus will act as a sporing mushroom and the easiness of film making will birth little pieces of art across the globe all the more. Soon we will need visual libraries when films become as commonplace as books and the written word.
I guess I could live with that but oh damn. If I'm gonna be out of a job I better start looking for a sugar daddy quick.
Went on a shoot yesterday. My internship from last semester's over but my boss and I are very fond of each other so she let me come along. If I don't manage to find an internship with a narrative feature/short film maybe I'll just continue with her. It's my final year so I thought I'd try my hand at narrative but it's not easy, finding these things. Either way it's interesting stuff, what she does, freelancing for a science documentary for public TV. It's about 15 minutes long, standard stuff and my favourite thing to do is sit through interviews. Sometimes I get to call up professors from Ivy League universities and we interview them. So far I've been on a shoot at Columbia University and yesterday was at Cornell. Yeah, shoots in Manhattan. I'm a pretty lucky girl.
The subect of yesterday's documentary was one I helped research. It's on zebra finches and how scientists use them to research auditory learning in humans by using FMRIs. Fascinating stuff, really. So at the end of the interview I asked the professor if stimulating the birds using audio while they were unconscious would give them a more accurate reading than when the birds are conscious. He told me actually they get stronger readings on the MRI while the birds are unconscious and I went "oh! That's because birds sleep with half their brains, don't they?" then started dribbling out all this (what I once thought was) useless information which actually came in handy. My boss was pretty impressed and ask me how I knew all this and I said "TV documentaries."
All this while I never thought much about documentaries. I watch them sometimes but other times they don't hold my attention as well as narrative. The one that I'm working on only airs for 15 minutes but it gets around and affects people because even this old lady I was sitting on the bus with brought up something she saw on the show. I realised then the power of good documentaries. You get a lot of bad, boring ones out there or ridiculous hyped up ones like Michael Moore or Morgan Spurlock beating off onto the camera lens. But documentaries can be so amazing in how they just are. I still don't quite understand the concept of 'audience ratings' because it feels so unrequited. Yet, it wasn't till last night that I realised how much they contribute to people's everyday conversations and not just any conversation, SUBSTANTIAL conversations which are rare. It's the rare occasion that people would actually think about something and that's just beautiful. I like what I'm doing. Between documentaries and narrative, I'd say I like them both.
Okay now I sound like a real fangirl. Royston Tan posted this on his blog and I've been listening to it over and over again. I found a copy of 15. Love, loved, loves it to death. I love movies where I just can't picture how they shot it. 15 must have been so hard to make. It would have taken a lot of courage and belief to go through with. It's hard to find people that are that headstrong who still know their shit after bargaining so hard with their can and can't dos. At this moment, Royston is my favourite director ever. Yes yes. I don't know why my mind compares him to Kubrick. Possibly because I heard he can be a meticulous pain to work with. I still would.
If anyone's wondering, yes, I will be coming back to Asia to work. No doubt about it. It's what I understand and what makes sense to me. I'm not limiting myself, I've done my traveling (although I'll never be done with traveling). It's just that I know where my heart lies and that is with Asian culture. I got into film because I love a good story and I learnt that film is about keeping a culture. After spending my life torturing myself about not being Malay, Chinese, Muslim or having a cultural identity in general, I'm intending on taking on the heavy responsibility of archiving and preserving culture using the second most accessible medium available. Eat that, Puan Marinah.
Once again, Royston Tan has pulled off another delightfully entertaining masterpiece. I know, that sounds so lame but the movie really is that good. I haven't seen 15 but I've seen 4:30 and a couple of his short films and he has to be one of the best directors I've seen in a long time. His style is always refreshing, always innovative and for a 32 year old, he seems to be a natural on set which is remarkable. How he does it? I don't know but I'm jealous.
I only discovered Asian films at the beginning of last year and I'm in love. It's love I tell you and here's a list of 11 contemporary Asian films that I highly recommend:
- Perhaps Love / Peter Chan (Taiwan/Hong Kong)
- Berbagi Suami / Nia Dinita (Indonesia)
- I'm a Cyborg but That's Okay / Park Chan-Wook (Korea)
- The Host / Bong Joon-Ho (Korea)
- 4:30 / Royston Tan (Singapore)
- Time / Kim Ki-Duk (Korea)
- 881 Papaya Sisters / Royston Tan (Singapore)
- In the Mood for Love / Wong Kar Wai (Hong Kong)
- Shutter / Parkpoom Wongpoom and Banjong Pisanthanakun (Thailand)
- Cinta / Kabir Bhatia (Malaysia)
- Mukhsin / Yasmin Ahmad (Malaysia)
Yes, Mukhsin. Because the woman finally got some sense and a damn editor. Rain Dogs, which is a Malaysia production, would have been good too if it didn't drag on for way too long. I like long movies. If it tests even my patience, I think it says something. At least now that I know I love Asian films I'm closer to finding my niche. Who knows if I stick strictly to film making. Even I don't see that future for myself, I think I'm much more versatile but we'll see. I graduate this year. There go the strings, there goes my leash. There I go, world, run for cover. You have been warned.
