Conversation with the family of Yasmin Ahmad

Today is Hari Raya Aidilfitri (Eid al-Fitr), and most of our brethren in the country are celebrating.

Aside from being a public holiday, Hari Raya is about seeking forgiveness from family and friends.

These beautiful values of familial love, friendship, forgiveness and compassion are reflected very much from the films of the late filmmaker Yasmin Ahmad.

Last week, for a documentary that Ming Jin's directing (I'm executive producing), we had the pleasure of interviewing Yasmin's parents, Pak Atan and Mak Inom, and sister, Orked. (yup, she's the namesake of the protagonist in the "Orked trilogy")

Rest in peace, Yasmin Ahmad

(photo from Yasmin's flickr account)

Yasmin Ahmad has passed away.

Yasmin Ahmad's heartwarming and wonderfully-acted 'Mukhsin'

Saw yesterday with Kannan Thiagarajan (director of the telemovie I'm working on as assistant director... to make things simpler, he's my current boss) and award-winning filmmaker Woo Ming Jin. Sorry, I just need to name drop :D MUKHSIN is the latest movie of Malaysian filmmaker Yasmin Ahmad's semi-autobiographical series that feature the character Orked. Basically, what she's doing now is rather similar to what Francois Truffaut did back then with the Antoine Doinel character. However, while Antoine Doinel was played only by the actor Jean-Pierre Léaud, from a child in 400 BLOWS to an adult on the verge of middle age in LOVE ON THE RUN, Orked, who was played by Sharifah Amani in the first two films, is played by Sharifah Aryana (Sharifah Amani's younger sister) this time. And this movie is about young 10-year-old Orked's prepubescent first romance during her school holidays with Mukhsin, a boy two years older than her.

(Quick recap to the uninitiated:

Alternative Ending To Sepet

Well, not really MY alternative ending, it's really my friend's, who told me this when we were in a bus few days ago. But I couldn't help but share it with you all here.

SEPET by Yasmin Ahmad, an important film in the Malaysian New Wave

One of the movies I heard most of when I returned to Malaysia had, strangely, been a local film, which is something unheard of considering that at this time of the year, summer Hollywood blockbusters are the ones that rule the box-office. This local film is Yasmin Ahmad's 'Sepet' which had been making waves at some foreign film festivals, and became quite a subject of discussion among Malaysians, not just the Malays, but also many of the Chinese I know. Finally got to watch it during my flight from Malaysia to Perth.

'Sepet' depicts an interracial romance between a Chinese guy and a Malay gal. And being an interracial romance, it obviously shows the complications involved in interracial romance, like the clashing of cultures, the condemnation of narrow-minded friends, the inability of acceptance by parents. Can true love transcend all these barriers?