"When I wrote 120 Malay Movies I tried to watch all of the 34 movies that P Ramlee directed. I almost succeeded." Amir Muhammad (The Last Communist, Malaysian Gods) would eventually see 33; Sitora Harimau Jadian (1964) seems to have been lost. He tells us the story of how he came upon what amounts to P Ramlee's own novelization of Sitora Harimau Jadian, "describing what happens in his movie, scene by scene. The book is slim, only 124 pages, and I'm glad it was also fleshed out with pictures from the movie (which might be the only chance we will ever get to 'see' it)." He gives us a sample and then announces that he's republishing the book, which will be out next month and already has a fan page.
Another book. Today's review of Geoff Dyer's Zona comes from Nathan Rogers-Hancock at Cinespect.
Reading. Alex Ross Perry (The Color Wheel) once managed a...
Another book. Today's review of Geoff Dyer's Zona comes from Nathan Rogers-Hancock at Cinespect.
Reading. Alex Ross Perry (The Color Wheel) once managed a...
- 3/30/2012
- MUBI
Kill them with kindness—a rare approach and quality for political cinema, usually so bristling and over-eager. Amir Muhammad’s Malaysian Gods takes an instructive and benign attitude. The video traces the outskirts of Malaysia’s tumultuous politics in the late 90s and early 00s, dense with demonstrations and police action, with an emphasis on the role Malaysian Tamils have had in the country. But the video does this all with a chuckling humor through playful explanative title cards (assuming most are deficient in their knowledge of the situation in Malaysia), and more thoroughly by inverting a principle and well-tired documentary convention. Rather than interviewing historically important people in generic talking-heads settings, abstract and without context, Muhammad shot his video at locations with rich history and featuring what might be called historically relevant people. That is, normal people, those who live, or work, or were passing through these places now,...
- 2/5/2010
- MUBI
During the mini-seminar session, director Amir Muhammad mentioned that Malaysian Gods had been passed without cuts back home, but also not permitted to be publicly screened. It’s no surprise to this as he admitted, given the buzz the authorities had unwittingly created because of their banning of his earlier film The Last Communist. Strategy-wise, Malaysian Gods had adopted the same approach as Amir’s earlier documentaries, which consists of visiting the actual sites where the movement had began and demonstrations had occurred, and interviewing people in talking heads fashion in a more natural setting. There’s a slight departure here though, where interviews are not with figures directly involved in the events presented here.
- 4/25/2009
- by Stefan
- Screen Anarchy
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