TV PAKATAN RAKYAT

The making of "meter"


It is not every day you hear the name Khairy Jamaluddin being mentioned followed by rounds of applause.Then again, today’s event was no ordinary event. It may even have been historic to a certain degree, but one thing's for sure... it was certainly unique. 15Malaysia, a joint effort between 15 independent film-makers and Packet One Networks (P1), a wireless broadband company.

Among the familiar faces present were actor Harith Iskandar, director Amir Muhammad, as well as Batu MP Tian Chua, who is the lead in one of the 15 films. ("One Future" by director Tan Chui Mui.) “The films use us as material and try to put forward issues to the public,” said the PKR parliamentarian. 15Malaysia’s producer Pete Teo told the media that the films in the project deal not only with the issue of race relations but also various social and political issues faced by Malaysians today. However, the question of whether these films will drastically alter people’s perceptions of issues is still uncertain. The one condition the project required was that total "creative freedom" be given to the artistes and the directors, said Michael Lai, CEO of P1.

So how did Umno Youth chief Khairy fit into the picture?.His portrayal of a lamenting taxi driver in "Interview With The Taxi Driver" by Benji Lim and Bahir Yeusuff has earned him lots of praise and applause. A few people who attended the launch went so far as to say that if politics does not work out for Khairy, acting is definitely something he can fall back on. Indeed.

I am not in a position to judge Khairy the politician, but I can judge his performance in this video and I must say it was very good! Kudos to the team – very interesting script and simple direction that helps bring focus to the issues in the video. Regarding the issue of language, it is such a politicized issue. It seems that non-Malays are always targeted for apparently not knowing Malay but I beg to differ. From my experience, at least with SPM, many non-Malays actually do score better results in the language as compared to some native speakers themselves. I do not wish to over generalize here but I only hope that Malays do the same and not over generalize our (non-Malays) supposed handicap at the language.

I do however agree to a certain extent that many non-Malays cannot speak Malay fluently (despite excelling in reading/writing/listening). This is largely due to the lack of practice in speaking the language. This in turn, I feel, is partly due to the fact that Malay exists in many dialects and very few Malaysians actually speak ’standard’ Malay (I think only newscasters). In that light, non-Malays should not be squarely blamed.