Yasmin and Malaysian cinema, now in French & Portuguese!

Recently, two different countries hosted screenings of Malaysian cinema. The first was France (which also included Singaporean movies) and the second Brazil.

I attended both to represent my documentaries The Big Durian and Malaysian Gods, and I wrote essays for both catalogues about Yasmin Ahmad, whose films were, of course, also shown. These are how they look, scanned:




Both events were actually initiated and curated entirely by the cultural workers (to use a nicely Marxist term) in both countries, with very little help from Malaysian associations. I heard from both places: "We sent emails to [insert name of relevant government agency tasked with film promotion here] but, after a while, no one replied." And no one from the Malaysian embassy in Brazil even bothered to turn up for any of the events.

But why dwell on the idiocy of Malaysian bureaucracy? Dozens of Malaysian films were shown in places where no one had ever seen any of our films before. So that must count as a good thing.

And my huge thanks to the hard-working organisers and hosts who made the events proceed with nary a hitch: Jeremy Segay and Eva Markovitz in Paris; and Tati Leite and Arndt Roskens in Rio.

P.S. Brazil was a magical place!