Yasmin Ahmad [July 1, 1958 - July 25, 2009]

A few days ago, I went to Audrey's blog and I saw a tribute posted by her for the late Yasmin Ahmad. There were a few videos and as usual, I clicked " play " on all the videos so that they can start loading. Unfortunately, I was sidetracked by the "Up" movie video and I closed Audrey's tab on Firefox, forgetting to watch the Youtube videos' by Yasmin Ahmad.

Today, I woke up and began my daily ritual for checking and reading blogs. I went to Audrey's blog again and loaded the videos. But this time, I was waiting for the videos to load completely.

And I watched.

I'm not ashamed to say that I cried while watching those heart-touching videos.

I remembered watching " Sepet " on one of those Astro channels with chat texts scrolling down constantly. I loved the movie but couldn't understand why the chat texts were saying that the movie is ridiculous and boring. Sure, the ending is a little... shall we say, unique but the way each and every characters managed to touch our heart is truly endearing. Every time, when we go to the movie, we only saw those Action Packed, 3D Animated ( Pixars, excluded ) and Horror movies. Those movies are exciting with lots of smokes, flashes and booms and not to mention, blood, gore and sexual content. They are what I call, instant gratification movie. You get what you want. Excellent graphic and sound effects ( including sexy women with impossibly large boobs, why oh people HAVE to focus so much on boobs ) but little to none thinking and feeling-ish. " Sepet " is a refreshing breath of clean air among those kind of movies. I really want to watch Gubra and Mukhsin but maybe later on.

After watching the videos, I went Wikipedia to search more about her. And I noticed this :

Family (2008) for the Singaporean Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports
Funeral (2009) for the Singaporean Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports

Family and Funeral are two of the titles to the videos. My favorite is Funeral. BUT Singaporean Ministry ?

And one of her movies were censored by the " Malaysian censorship authorities ". This is a quote from Wikipedia.

As Yasmin's second feature film, Sepet, Muallaf was first screened in Singapore instead of Malaysia, where it was shot. However, unlike the former, Muallaf may not be screened in Malaysian cinemas after all since the Malaysian censorship authorities had requested key scenes to be cut, thus rendering the story meaningless.

I'm sure you know what am I thinking. Singapore is more supportive of Yasmin Ahmad than Malaysia, her country of birth. This is extremely shameful ( not really an appropriate word ) to me as a Malaysian.

Rest in peace, Yasmin Ahmad.