Archive for the 'Film & TV' Category

We continue our Fusion Stories series with the first Fusion View podcast where I interview Dishad Husain, the British-Asian director, about making his award-winning short film “Holly Bolly”.

You can listen to the podcast by clicking on the embedded player below.

Alternatively, you can listen to this and other Fusion View podcasts by clicking here.

The links to Dishad’s films and projects mentioned in the podcast are:

• www.imotion.com
• BBC Film Network, “Holly Bolly” page

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To read or listen to more Fusion Stories, go to the sidebar in the far right of the Fusion View homepage and click on the Category “Fusion Stories”.

Do you have a fusion story to tell? Do you have cross-cultural experiences in your life you would like to share? Find out how you can tell your story on Fusion View by going to the Announcements section in the middle sidebar of the Fusion View homepage and clicking on “Tell Us Your Fusion Story.”

A quirky musical film has been banned in Malaysia. The Last Communist by Malaysian filmmaker Amir Muhammed tells the story of Chin Peng, a key Communist leader during the period in post-war Malaya known as "the Emergency". It was initially passed by the Board of Censors but after some concerned reporting from the Malay-language newspaper Berita Harian, the government decided to ban the film because of fears that it glorifies Chin Peng and Communism.

There has been a lot of outcry and open debate in the press and on Malaysian blogs about this decision. The older generation of Malaysians lived through a traumatic time in Malaysian history and understandably, have residual fears of the destabilizing influence of Communist ideology. The younger generation feel that they can make up their own minds about what to think and want the opportunity to see the movie and decide for themselves.

I haven’t seen the movie but will be queuing up for tickets when it is screened at the London Film Festival in Oct/ Nov later this year.

Personally, I don’t think the older generation have anything to worry about. From what I’ve read, the film is an off beat documentary with musical interludes, which include a girl singing about the importance of the identity card and not a rousing polemic to rise up and revolt.

Anyway, Communism is a hard-line angry political ideology of want and Malaysians are generally warm, friendly and well off. There are opportunities to improve one’s lot through work and perseverance. The economy is stable and Malaysia is at a stage of development where they can afford to have migrant workers do the less desirable jobs. Many people are - enterprisingly - driving across the causeway to catch the film and I hear that cinemas there have extended the runs of the film to keep up with demand. These don’t sound to me like people who will be rioting in the streets demanding the redistribution of property just because of a semi-musical documentary.

Useful links:

The Star, a Malaysian daily paper at http://www.thestar.com.my - go to the Archives section and search "last communist"

The director, Amir Muhammed’s blog at http://lastcommunist.blogspot.com/.

The Official Site for the film where you can watch the trailer at http://www.redfilms.com.my/lelakikomunis.htm.

Wong Kar-Wei, the Hong Kong director of Chungking Express and In the Mood for Love, has been elected the president of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival. This is the first time that a Chinese director has taken on this prestigious and influential role. On the jury with him, among an international array of actors and directors, is another Chinese artist, Zhang Zhe Yi who played the lead in Memoirs of A Geisha.

Film commentators say that this is a critical moment in world cinema as it signposts the rising influence and reach of Chinese film. Interviewed on BBC News 24, Wong said that in the next few years, we will be seeing a lot of great movies coming out of China.

See also http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4581522.stm

Jesus is among us. Or rather, Jesus is among us through his living heirs. That is the premise of the Da Vinci Code and I think that is one of the reasons for its sensational appeal.

In a post 9/11, secular and questioning world where the Church is in decline and fragmented with internal arguments about
sexuality and AIDs, among other things, the myth offered up by the Code resonates at many levels.

Jesus - The Human Story

The hallmark of modern Christianity is its questioning and seeking, ever since the days of Martin Luther. In the Anglo
Saxon Anglican countries, our modern emphasis on individuality and personal choice is a direct evolution out of the spiritual (an sometimes political) strugges that resulted in the Church of England itself and subsequently, denominations such as the Quakers, Methodists, Presbyterians and non-Conformists where the personal relationship with God is a strong focus. We in the West in
the 3rd millenium have now questioned ourselves out of a faith but the pull of spirituality is strong - many people may not go to church but they believe in "something out there" and some look to Buddhism, other religions and New Age
practices to fill the gap.

Then this myth comes along that Jesus the man fathered a child with Mary Magdalene, who, after his death on the cross and
bearing his child, was spirited away to a secret location in Provence. Here is a recognisable real man with his recognisable human desires for love and family. Here is a tragic human story of loss and survival that we can all relate to at a human level. And as for running away to start a new life in Provence - well, we can connect with that completely.

In today’s world, it is also easier to believe those events could have happened than to believe in the "rose from the dead and ascended into heaven" thing.

Euro-Jesus

For a myth to be successful like this one, it has to fall within the realms of plausibility - and if the events narrated also
could have been possible, that is even better. So far, so plausible and so possible. Add on a theme that picks up on the current zeitgeist and you have a true zinger.

So, let’s take the location. In this post 9/11 world, it is significant that the myth places Jesus’s bloodline in Europe and
away from the Middle East. He - through his purported descendants - become French: still foreign and exotic enough for English speakers and the rest of the world but not as foreign and unsettling as being Israeli or Arab. In the present climate, it claims Jesus for Europeans - and by extension for Western civilisation.

And fortunately, the French don’t have an official royalty any more so this myth comfortably blends with the other haunting legends of secret princes living among us. You can test the power of this construct by asking yourself this question: Would the myth work if Mary had run away to live in the Home Counties and it is revealed that Prince Charles is the Holy Blood incarnate?

Blood

In a time of HIV and AIDS and anxiety about disease, a secret founded around blood - royal and holy blood, no less - has a
contemporary resonance that builds on our primordial response to blood as family, sacrifice, honour and death. Against all our instincts, the Christian story tells us letting of blood brings life, not death and the duality for us in modern times is hauntingly hopeful.

Pilgrim Tours

Medieval pilgrims made their way to Jerusalem to seek expiation of their sins, collecting holy tokens and relics at significant
way stations along the route - here is the finger of St. Someone or Other; here, so-and-so saw a vision of the Virgin. Pilgrims today travel by Easyjet and bring home tokens of David Beckham from the World Cup. So the cult of Jesus that became Christianity comes full circle. We need to see for ourselves, touch for ourselves, come within the lingering aura - whether it is a celebrity’s sweaty football shirt or a holy bone of a saint or the shroud that wrapped Jesus himself. We can now travel around England and France and do the Da Vinci tour, seeking out the glamour of the book and the movie and at some level, reaching
out to the aura of Jesus himself.

Easyfaith

It is so much more beautiful and safe, picturing a nice European great-great grandson of God in France that one might bump into while sipping espresso at a lovely cafe. He might truly be one of us, a man yet God, that suave Frenchman at the next table. It’s easier for the Western world to connect with that than to think of Jesus, the icon of love and forgiveness, (with or without descendants) as part of the troubled and wartorn Jerusalem and rooted in the Middle East. A trip to France is so much more do-able than a visit to Israel. Playing puzzles and codes is so much safer than having any true faith. The myth gives us this short cut to Jesus, if only we can be clever enough to solve the riddles. In some ways, it’s salvation by Sudoku.

pic from flickr by rk catch; non commercial use; no derivations

Poseidon, the recently released remake of the 1970s shipwreck disaster movie, is being dubbed "Only the Whites Survive". Out of a multiracial cast, only the white characters survive by the end of the film as the others are killed off one by one in the fashion of disaster films. Wolfgang Peterson, the film’s German director, was interviewed on BBC News 24 and challenged about this. he said that it was a coincidence and thaty they (he and the producers etc) did not think about it.

In multicultural Britain and multiracial US, it takes effort selectively to exclude non-whites from your thought. The mix of races and cultures is present almost everywhere - it’s difficult to miss.

When writing my books, which are set in Malaysia, I thought carefully about how to portray the mix of Malays, Indians and Chinese that make up Malaysia. It was important to me to show all the races represented in the book with some good characters and some bad characters in each of the groups. That is reality in a multiracial and multicultural society. In Mindgame, we start out trusting the white American Carson Dean but then we find out more about his agenda…and the issue of race and expectations based on race become part of the story.

Wolfgang Peterson got more defensive when pressed by the BBC interviewer and tried to dismiss the criticism as "political correctness". That phrase is easy to trot out when cornered. What Peterson was really being asked is: what do you think it feels like to be a non-white watching all the non-whites in a movie not have a chance at survival, merely because they are not white and you didn’t think about saving them? Unfortunately, his answer seems to have been: I don’t care.

[Summary: Are films and shows colour blind at last?]

I was intrigued by the recent furore over the casting of Chinese actors in Memoirs of a Geisha. The argument went something like this: the story is about a geisha in Japan and a geisha is a particularly Japanese construct so the actors should be Japanese. Our very own Malaysian superstar, Michelle Yeoh was grilled in many interviews about this. Her response, quoted in many publications, was that no-one complains when Americans play Germans or Brits play Italians. Indeed, Meryl Streep has played just about every Caucasion nationality under the sun. Though, to be fair to those who criticised Geisha, Meryl never has tried to play an Oriental. (Fortunately, the custom of white actors "blacking" up to play black or other non-white characters is now very much unacceptable.)

A website that’s been around for awhile came to prominence during this controversy. Set up by Dyske Suematsu, an Asian-American, it asks: do all Japanese, Chinese and Koreans look the same - as some Westerners might say. You can do an online quiz and see your results instantaneously. I thought I would be pretty good at telling each of these groups apart but scored only about half! It’s fun and challenges one to really look at one’s preconceptions about racial stereotypes. Have a look at it at www.alllooksame.com.

Looking beyond stereotypes in the movies, it has been heartening to see Oriental actors taking on more and more mainstream roles where the emphasis has not been on kung-fu high kicks or hard-done-by bound-feet woman. Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan have been significant in raising the profile of Chinese actors on the international screen. But Chow Yan-Fat has taken things to the next level, playing in thrillers where he’s more comfortable wielding a gun than high-kicking (The Replacement Killer) and in romantic movies as the male lead (Anna and the King). He is tall for a Chinese man and that probably helps get him into the A-list! Ling in the Ally MacBeal series, as played by Lucy Liu, is fascinating and charismatic for being tough, sexy, and smart - not for being Chinese. The role had been written as a minor part without race in mind and when Liu auditioned, she was so good, they hired her long term and expanded the character.

In Under a Tuscan Sun, we notice Sandra Oh as the heroine’s best friend - it’s great to see an Oriental in a regular role in a regular drama where all the characters could just as easily be Caucasian. And oh yes, her character is also lesbian. The beauty of this subtle film is that it just takes all that in its stride and what shines through is the friendship between the characters. On her website www.sandraoh.com, the Canadian actress is quoted as saying, "If there’s another f@*#^*g show or movie about New York and everyone’s white, I’m gonna f*#@!*g die. That is so unacceptable."

On the UK stage recently, a young Chinese lad, Matthew Koon made history as the first Chinese Billy Elliot. An Asian and a black boy have also got the lead role in this musical, based on the film. The director of the show is quoted as saying that it was important to him to be colour blind in casting for the role - what mattered was the talent of the boys. In Malaysia, of course, stage productions of Western dramsa have always had a mix of races in the cast, reflecting the ethnic mix of the country so this news may not be such a big deal in that context. But in the UK, I feel that this is a huge leap forward for a Britain moving towards an acceptance of itself as a multi-cultural country.

And to really befuddle us all, the recent movie TransAmerica has a woman, Felicity Huffman, playing a man who wants to be a woman. In a now infamous scene, the actress wears prosthetic male genitals in her role as the man who would rather not have those genitals. Now how confusing is that?

But all this just goes to show that we really all look the same - Caucasian or Asian/ Oriental; male or female. What looks the same under all the stereotyping and outward accessories of gender is a common humanity and these films and shows challenge us to go beyond first impressions to look at the person before us. So in years to come, when my hair goes completely white, I shall not wear purple - as the poem goes - but I shall become blonde and no-one had better dare say that I look weird.

Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus: A documentary that is "a spiritual journey (which) explores the "Soul of the South" and a world of marginalised white people and their unique and intense home-grown culture (BBC Four summary)

The landscape of Louisiana in this film is a desolate junkyard of swamps and trailer parks, truck stops on empty roads and burnt out cars left to rust. It’s the flip side of America that we do not usually see. Alt country musician Jim White is our guide through this soul destroying world. Here, in Pentecostal country Jesus Saves from the corrugated iron roofs of warehouses and the preacher is an ex-junkie that plays country rock while his congregation weeps and speaks in tongues. It is a place of suffering and pain, murder and violence where the only hope of escape is into the next life.

And yet, there is a poetry bursting out from the people of this place - in their voices and in their music. The music, part country, part blue-grass, transcends the poverty and hopelessness of their surroundings. There is an old coal miner who plays the banjo with delicate beauty, telling us how his daddy had his hands blown off with dynamite one day in the mines. Singer Johnny Dowd, pale-faced and grim, sings of armed robbery and hanging. The language and lilt of the South has a lyricism of its own, playing with the words and images as if they were song. Harry Crews, the novelist, explains in his gravelly voice that the stories that these people tell give them a sense of themselves - when they have nothing and the world has forgotten them, their stories make them known to themselves.

Jim White drives us through a vast trailer park of dreary trailers. The trailer trash are sitting out in folding chairs, passing the time of day. He speaks our thoughts - this is the sort of place that we may snigger about. But, in every trailer, there is a person with a story.

When a person tells you their story, they become human - real. No longer just "that rapist", "that trailer trash" - or even "that rich banker". That’s one of the reasons I love listening to people’s stories and telling mine. The joy out of our daily struggles is the heart and passion that makes us create music and write poetry or even just simply tell the stories of our lives over a cup of tea. It’s like touching the light inside another person.

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