One of the pleasures of going for Malaysian Shorts, the Kelab Seni Filem Malaysia’s quarterly, near-institutional anthology of short films, is the opportunity to vote for one’s favourites. Last Tuesday, Akashdeep Singh’s Pintu received the most Xs, having endeared itself to the screening hall: a boy and his brother harass their mother’s door in an attempt to get her to make tea, but get worried to tears when she won’t answer.

Space for notes was thoughtfully provided in the voting chits; ‘Nice cameo by Adibah Noor,’ wrote one anonymous commentator. Responses to the ten shorts ranged from the academic (‘Simplistic in social critique,’ for Ahmad Faris Abdul Hamid’s Azad, Suraya dan Bintang) to the technical (‘The final montage sequence dragged on for too long,’ for Eleanor Low’s Welcome to Kuala Lumpur) to the quizzical (‘Enigmatic,’ for Liew Seng Tat’s Man in Love).

Seng Tat, a Malaysian Video Award winner who recently received a grant from the Hubert Bals Fund of Rotterdam, conceived of his Malaysian Short the day he shot it; Man in Love features a man with three hands and a camera asking a three-legged woman when she will tell her husband about their affair. One shot has the camera tilt to show the titular man staring at his belly; his third arm, useful for scratching the head when taking photographs, appears to have vanished. Where did it go?

“I don’t know,” Seng Tat said.

The 4-minute mystery was filmed during a free afternoon in the Malay annex of South Thailand’s Peace Village; Seng Tat and photographer Danny Lim -- both of whom had painted their toenails to provide the woman with her feet (her torso is never seen) -- were part of documentarian Amir Muhammad’s entourage.

Longmach, another Malaysian Short entry, features a tongue-in-cheek message from President George W Bush to the citizens of ‘Texraq’, subtitled over a Malayan Communist Party radio broadcast; it ends with a millipede marching across the screen. Kawan2 Kampong, the film’s shadowy makers, were described as ‘a non-profit collective that fights against imperialism and fascism everywhere’. ‘Hilarious,’ wrote another anonymous commentator. - Z S

Malaysian Shorts will continue in 2007. The sequel to 2006's controversial documentary Lelaki Komunis Terakhir, Amir Muhammad’s Apa Khabar Orang Kampung, will tell the marginalised histories of a community of retired Malay-Muslim communists in South Thailand, and is upcoming.

~

KataGender
Wed 6, Dec 2006

The days between November 25 and December 10 are collectively known in certain circles as the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence; last Wednesday I joined KataGender, a loose collective of activists who address social issues with public performances of dubious legality, in Desa Sri Hartamas.

The plan was simple. Step one: write a personal testimonial about violence against women on an article of clothing, symbolic of the usually-hidden stories borne by bodies. Step two: don said clothing over one’s own. Step three: invade a crowded space and choreograph a group strip, hanging up our ‘dirty laundry’ for public viewing.

Hartamas at night turned out much quieter than anticipated, so we postponed the stripping for another day and simply hung up what we had in places of high visibility. The possibility of police intervention had slipped my mind until I was told, midway, to look out for uniforms.

Someone climbed a tree and was tying a piece of raffia string to it. I took a more passive role in the night’s guerrilla action. Not fully understanding my own presence with KataGender made me quieter. Through our hanging underwear, I was silently asking the few passersby about what they would do to help stop gender violence -- but I personally lacked answers. I was worried that we might have been fetishising the very violence we were acting against. I observed the T-shirt on which I had written:

My dad keeps the bathroom door locked. I have to let him touch me before he’ll let me use it.

and considered the fact that someone gave me this glimpse into a part of her childhood -- and, along with that, an amount of trust I didn’t know how to handle. I did not know about this bit of my friend’s past, before. How many people remain silent over their own stories, I wondered.

Curious pedestrians and drivers were slowing down to read and stare at the uncommon sight KataGender was making. As we strung up our last line of laundry, a siren in the distance reminded us we had been there awhile. We dispersed. - Lainie Yeoh

KataGender, most-known for protesting the trial of Ooi Kean Thong and Siow Ai Wei (who were issued summonses for allegedly kissing and hugging at the KLCC Park), is coordinating another action soon.

Blogger Lainie Yeoh hopes that there will be an available, attentive audiences the next time around.

Photos by Ezrena Marwan.

~

Jakarta International Puppetry Festival
Thu 16 - Sat 18, Nov 2006

Jakarta, that perennially chaotic and constantly evolving metropolis, was the temporary kampung to eight international puppet theatre companies between November 10 and 18.

Because of the rather last minute-nature of notifications, I was only able to attend the final three days of this festival -- I was sorry, but I was consoled. I had managed to catch Sovanna Phum, Cambodia’s Life of the Wild Animals, a reconstructed ‘traditional’ khmer animal shadow play; Çudamani, Indonesia’s A-Shu, a cinematography-inspired ‘wayang listrik’ (electrical puppetry) performance of a section from the Mahabhrata Epic; and Figurentheater Wilde & Vogel, Germany’s Exit: A Hamlet Fantasy, an electrifying deconstructed-reconstructed performance of Hamlet.

The Puppet Festival was very important to me for a number of reasons:

Since a 2003 UNESCO proclamation recognised Indonesian wayang kulit as one of the ‘Masterpieces of Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity’, it would have been a waste if nothing was done to live up to such international recognition. Here, I reflect on our own Mak Yong tradition, which was recognised by UNESCO last year.

Bringing together 'contemporary' and 'traditional' practitioners (though, again, what do these terms really mean?) in one festival facilitates a sharing of experiences, techniques, and perspectives. My colleague -- who was in a puppet-making residency with Sovanna Phum at the time -- learned that, upon his return, the leader of the Cambodian troupe was wholeheartedly attempting to adopt a hand-puppetry technique he witnessed in the Figurentheater Wilde & Vogel performance. Now that's technology transfer.

The final reason -- and, perhaps, the be most important of all -- is that I was a witness to the sheer will of Teater Utan Kayu, an independent arts body, in rallying the resources needed to make this festival happen in the first place.

Reflecting on our own situation here, I realised that, maybe, we don't need to wait for someone from Putrajaya to jump up and down before we hold our own Kuala Lumpur International Puppetry Festival. All we need is the semangat (and administrative capabilities, realistically) to do it ourselves. And actually, we can lah. - Fahmi Fadzil

The Jakarta International Puppetry Festival 2006, presented by Goenawan Mohamad’s non-profit Teater Utan Kayu, showcased the work of artists exploring the boundaries of puppetry as a medium of expression.

The above missive is belated because Fahmi Fadzil, a writer and theatre practitioner, has also been working on the Wayang Project, an attempt at re-imagining wayang forms that are borne out of the urban context of Kuala Lumpur, under the wing of the Five Arts Centre's Krishen Jit Experimental Workshop Series.