Swifty had invited me to the second Filmmakers Anonymous gathering over at Annexe @ Central Market, as it would feature the premiere of his short movie, Girl Disconnected. And so I went, with Abel tagging along (more like I tagged along, since Abel was the one driving).

Filmmakers Anonymous is basically a gathering where local independent movie makers showcase their movies. And FA2’s list of movies showcased were these:

1. Girl Disconnected by Edmund Yeo (a.k.a Swifty)
2. Taking Precautions by Audrie Yeo (no connections with Edmund)
3. Hello Goodbye by Chi Too
4. Lost and Found by Roy Vimalan
5. The Blind Girl and the Thief by Johan Arif Mazlan
6. Aunty Wahid by Umi Salwana Omar
7. This Sweet Refrain by Fairuz Sulaiman
8. Red Drawing by Margaret Bong
9. Kg. Chubadak by Mokhtaruddin Lasso

After the showing of the movies, the respective filmmakers would be there to answer a few questions from the audience. But first, I shall begin my review of each short!

Girl Disconnected was easily the best short I watched last night. And I’m not saying this because Swifty’s my friend. It was stuff with good quality. I had actually seen parts of Girl Disconnected last year (he sent clips to me via MSN), but this is the first time I’ve seen it as a complete piece. It’s a surreal romance story of sorts, involving rabbit fairies, a Moon Goddess, trains to the Moon and so on and so forth. The best thing about this short movie, is that unlike other Malaysian “artsy-fartsy” shorts, IT HAS A STORYLINE! It’s less focused on the pseudo-deep meanings, but it has a good, followable storyline. It is unpretentious (a growing number of Malaysian shorts are extremely pretentious), and the scripting is good. I especially loved it when the couple were talking to the Moon Garderner. The only gripe I have about this short is that the colors doesn’t seem to be well graded. Compared to Swifty’s previous movie, Vertical Distance, this one is poor in its coloration and lighting, being overexposed in some parts. There is a balance between the mix of drama and humor, and surrealism too. All in all, I’d say this was the best short I watched last night.
8/10 for Girl Disconnected

Taking Precautions is set in a rather peculiar setting - namely, a public toilet. If anything, it felt like an advertisement (probably Audrey meant for it to be an ad too), for women to take precaution in public toilets. It concerns the current ability of people using spy cameras to spy on females in the toilets. Audrey’s take on taking precautions is a humorous but effective one, nonetheless. Being only 1.5 minutes long, nothing can be said much about it, except that the resolution of the video might be a little small. It finally links back to TakeBacktheTech.com, a feminist women’s right site.
5/10 for Taking Precautions

Hello Goodbye was a WTF????? (with 5 question marks) short film. The synopsis says it is “a study of mobility of time and space”. Granted, I hardly saw anything involving Max Planck or Einstein, but all the study of mobility of time was that I probably wasted 6 minutes on that short. It was a movie that showed nothing but rail tracks from inside a LRT (Light Rail Transit train) carriage. In a split screen, the video to the left was the original, while the video on the right was a reverse version of the video on the right. It had not slip my notice and I noted it to Abel during a later time. That said, being dumbfounded by the meaningless and senseless film, I must however comment that the quality of the video is superb. And that’s all about it. Hello Goodbye was just weird, but seeing Chi Too’s While You Were Eating, I feel Hello Goodbye is a LAME LAME LAME short for someone who has so much potential.
2.5/10 for Hello Goodbye

Lost and Found was cool in its own ways. It explores a more serious subject under the guise of a story of a student from China’s anguish from a pair of stolen shoes. This pseudo-documentary explores, amongst others, the Broken Window Theory, put up by James Q. Wilson and George Kelling. Generally, the audience (and I) did find it funny, especially when the Chinese student was venting his anguish at getting his shoes stolen, found in a night market, and not being able to do anything about it. It explores the inability of people to avenge their losses when the law isn’t concerned about them. If a simple case as a shoe theft is not investigated, would these shoe thieves perhaps one day commit bigger and bolder crimes? That is the question asked. I do have some gripes against Lost and Found though. I noticed the makers didn’t bother with film color correction or color grading, leaving much of the film to be extremely poor in color. Hello! At least do some brightness/contrast balancing! And also, editing was a little choppy, with cuts not being too clear.
6/10 for Lost and Found

The Blind Girl and the Thief was an interesting movie in the sense that it wasn’t all film. It was something like Sin City, but a poor man’s version, making it look a little cartoony (the scenes were painted, not 3D). The entire movie was shot on a matte-colored screen (blue/green screen). Storywise, it too had some semblance of a plot - starting off with the premise on how a break-in thief needed the blind girl’s co-operation to keep quiet while the girl needed the thief to make some milk (because the girl who was blind, mistook the thief for her mother); and cumulating with a classic Empire Strikes Back-ish twist. Though the story premise and the technological difference of this show makes it interesting, the cuts were made rather poorly. It made the film feel rather rushed, without proper development of characters.
5/10 for The Blind Girl and the Thief

Aunty Wahid, I am sure, if shown in public, will ruffle a few feathers. Scratch that, it will ruffle LOTS of feathers. Aunty Wahid is a documentary about the life of an unconventional transvestite, and how (s)he overcomes prejudices of society against her him. It is a thought provoking documentary, and I see now, the reason why it had won awards. This documentary explores Wahid’s life with him, and her ups and downs; how he faces up to the prejudices of society; and finally to her current state, as a lecturer in a local college. It was comedic (stereotyping of gays), tragedic (how he went into drugs) and dramatic (her life story and interviews with his friends and families), all rolled into one neat little documentary. It gives rise to many moral question, where the boundary between right and wrong is not only blurred, but chopped and diced to a million pieces, and the viewer is left wondering if anything is right or not. Again, color correction is not very present, but much better quality than Lost and Found.
8/10 for Aunty Wahid

This Sweet Refrain was listed on the itinerary as a music video, but what I surmised from watching the first 30 seconds of the video is that it’s a karaoke video. I was like “WTF????” when watching it, because it was too bizzare. Not only does it look and feel like a karaoke video, there are certainly some very fishy things going around in the video - inclusive of a male french kissing a fish headed character. The male character is played by Chi Too, who made Hello Goodbye. ZOMG…. and the quality is sub VCD quality. The horrors!!!
2/10 for This Sweet Refrain

Red Drawing was weird in the sense that there isn’t a known story plot to follow. Maybe it’s too symbolic, or too deep (har har, Malaysian filmmakers always use the “deep meaning” as an excuse for meaningless things). A boy watches Teochew opera on TV, and spots his teacher. He calls her, and she shuns him. Then the teacher goes home to grade the students’ homework, and a long and unnecessary scene follows, involving the spill of Nescafe on the boy’s book. WTF? Personally, I don’t think it had any meaning at all. Until the last part, where the teacher spots the drawing of the red curtain to a Teochew opera. Then it ended. There were lots of unnecessary scenes in the movie, making it too long for it’s time. Pacing was not good, and quality isn’t either. But there was a certain lightness to the movie, brought in by the child and his pranks. Also, I felt that the movie did touch a bit on Asian (especially Chinese) strictness and discipline, where the teacher taught the students what color to color their drawings. It is this strictness and discipline that Asians have lost their creativity.
4/10 for Red Drawing

Kg. Chubadak is one movie with a political agenda. It begins with a voice-over, and a video of the tearing down of a village by the local city council. As the movie progresses on, it becomes clearer and clearer that it was made with a political agenda in mind. The voice-over is talking about political and economical stability, while the video shows the hardcore poor in the city, seeing their houses torn down by the local city council. The voice over talks about hope and the future, while the video shows the bleakness of the people. I thought that the movie was one of extreme bias towards the ruling party in Malaysia, until the end, where it is revealed that the voice-over was actually the Prime Minister’s new year speech. Now that I come to think about it, I realise that the PM’s new year speech is extremely biased, and not to mention slightly racist too. Kg. Chubadak is a directionless film attempting to display the fate of the urban poor in the name of development. I suppose there was a message sent by the director - that being we shouldn’t forget the urban poor; but that message is hidden too deep within Pak Lah’s extremely political speech as a voice over. However, the movie did manage to provoke responses from the audience too, to which, I feel, is encouraging.
4/10 for Kg. Chubadak

Right, after the shows are shown, the filmmakers themselves line up in front and answer questions from the audience. Nothing remotely interesting there, except Swifty hogging the limelight (as he usually does, lol). So here are a few pictures, before I end the entry.

L-R (Sitting): Margaret Bong, Mokhtaruddin Lasso, Johan Arif Mazlan, Fairuz Sulaiman, Edmund Yeo, Chi Too

Here’s Swifty (aka Edmund Yeo) answering a question (or as he calls it, hogging the limelight)

And not to mention, the most powerful decider if a film is successful - the Audience

And thus, I end this entry. I want to hear what you have to say, so please do comment. Anyone wishing to critique my criticisms, and challenge me to make a better short movie can do so in the comment box below.

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