AUGUST is here. How time flies. It’s going to be an exciting month with the state elections just around the corner on top of the usual Hari Merdeka celebrations at the end of the month and Malaysia Day next month.

While I have been spending time waxing lyrical about songs – and there are way too many songs in this world and hence, the need for me to curate them for you – let’s turn our attention to two Malaysian films that stirred my national pride upon my return from my overseas sojourn overseas in late 2002 as a rather lost and wind-swept wannabe troubadour looking for some direction home.

For context, this was an interesting period in Malaysia cinema which witnessed the rise of the Malaysian new wave consisting of the quartet of emerging auteurs James Lee, Amir Muhammad, Ho Yuhang, and the late Yasmin Ahmad as the digitalisation of the medium of filmmaking democratized once-marginalized voices onto the big screen.

‘Paloh’ –  Directed by Adman Salleh

I watched this Malay-language historical drama film directed by Adman Salleh when it came out in cinemas back in 2003 at the then-spanking new Mid Valley Mall.

Produced by Filem Negara Malaysia and the National Film Development Corporation Malaysia, the film centres around the relationship between four Malay friends who choose to serve the Japanese Police Force in order to survive in the small town of Paloh, Johor, during the final days of the Japanese occupation in 1944.

Focusing on the confrontation between the Japanese occupying force and the Communist Party of Malaya, the film tries its best to tell the four parallel stories of the four friends in a non-linear form but results in an unfocused storytelling that tries too hard to cram everything in its one hour and fifty-minute run time.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed the film for depicting a side of Malaysian life that I, at least at that age, had seldom seen on the big screen - the interracial love affair between a Malay and Chinese character.

While the affair between Ahmad (played by Nam Ron making his big screen debut) and Siew Lan (played with tragic pathos by Janet Khoo) is doomed to fail from the outset, the film, in my humble opinion, was groundbreaking in its attempts to be historically and socially accurate while also tackling supposedly then controversial” and “taboo” topics like the aforementioned interracial love affair and still “taboo” mention of communists.

Nevertheless, this was my introduction to the charismatic Nam Ron – whom I dub the Malaysian Denzel Washington – in full character aside from his appearance in Amir Muhammad’s “The Big Durian”.

It’s sad to see how this film has been pretty much forgotten by the public despite having a theme song sung by the great Siti Nurhaliza.

‘The Big Durian’ – Directed by Amir Muhammad

The year 2003 was when I got my feet wet for real in the local arts scene (as opposed to reading about it online via mailing lists and articles while overseas) and the hub of activity then was the now-gone Actor’s Studio in Dataran Merdeka where underground gigs, indie film screenings, and theatre shows were held.

I can’t recall where I saw this film for the first time but I keep recalling the Actor’s Studio although this would have been highly improbable due to the film’s rather “thorny” (pun intended as Amir had intended with the film’s title) themes and content.

Maybe I bought a VCD (remember those?) or attended a private screening, but never mind.

This film explores nationhood through the events surrounding the 1987 incident of Private Adam running amok with an M16 in Chow Kit, Kuala Lumpur, which triggered panic and rumours of racial riots in the capital city.

I had a personal experience of this because I lived and went to school just a stone’s throw away in the Jalan Gurney neighbourhood.

I was 10 years old and I recall the streets being eerily empty the day after, wondering what was going on and hearing my family mentioning “May 13”.

Watching this quasi-documentary – it mixes real events with fictional characters recalling the events that happened – helped fill in the gaps and contexts missing from my 10-year-old self’s memory.

Featuring a cast of soon-to-be familiar faces as I got to know the KL arts community better, I loved how the film problematises and celebrates nationhood with equal aplomb with Amir’s trademark dry humour.

Keep an eye on the film’s credits – it features the who’s who of Malaysian new wave cinema, some of whom are still making a name for themselves internationally. – August 4, 2023.

* Azmyl Yunor is a touring underground recording artiste, and an academic in media and cultural studies. He has published articles on pop culture, subcultures and Malaysian cultural politics. He adheres to the three-chords-and-the-truth school of songwriting, and Woody Guthrie’s maxim “All you can write is what you see”. He is @azmyl on Twitter.