doNt RoCk tHe bOaT

dear jess,

i went into the treasure of a chest bookstore, silverfish books, the only one place in this country where you can find malaysian books, scripts and films by theatre practitioners, activist and the independent, non popular and forever controversial works of such people.

my aim and idealisation, like everything else in my life was to acquire a malaysian film so that i can be the first to show an independent malaysian film to my students and perhaps inspire them. i brought home amir's dvd instead of james lee's and watched six shorts. i had to cancel out two of those short film because they had bad words, and still include one with a prior "kids theres an f word in there, once" and hope to death i don get fired. and then out of the few that i pick. and as i watch i wonder what will a person of this race think if he watched. will he get upset and claim that im putting this up as a way to cause some form of uprising and brain washing? i decide to take that risk.

as i watch some more i find it brilliant in the simplest way. you know why? because someone is telling the truth. ill be damned, it isnt me. as i watch i think about several people who will appreciate it, the discussion of the identity card, amongst others.

iam apparently on my way to being a postgraduate in performing arts. this is my first time i am watching an amir muhammad film. his latest, lelaki komunis terakhir has been banned here, but not in our neighbouring country. the dvd i have includes an interesting excerpt of the post discussion of community leaders on the film, and the issue of it being banned.

you see.

someone has made films just by telling the truth.

i am simply showing some of those to a bunch of my kids so that i hope that someone will in turn try to make things better by telling the truth.

so how come its not me?

fear is power,

jess

i reckon that we live in denial. me included. we live here and yet we dont count ourselves as being here. how many local literature, tapes, cd, dvd do we own? we are so quick to say that nothing good can come out of our own country. and then quickly complain about our neighbours and how they rely on us for water.