YASMIN AHMAD

The female film director/screenwriter that I chose to discuss is Yasmin Ahmad. Yasmin Ahmad’s movies are popular worldwide, but are most well known in Malaysia. Her films are most well known for its love, family ties, interracial couples, and breaking cultural norms that she brings out. In class we have discussed the auteur theory and how it applies to female filmmakers specifically. According to Maggie Humm in “Author/Auteur: Feminist Literary Theory and Feminist Film,” the auteur theory is based around the idea that, “…although social contexts shape film processes, it was the director who authored a film” (96).

In an interview with Star World, Ahmad was asked if her movies start with ideas, she responded, “It never starts with an idea, it starts with a feeling.” She approaches her film work with a feeling she has, for example her first movie was about her feeling about two people who stay in love till they get older (Rabun), which turned out to be about her parents, and her second movie was about interracial marriage (Sepet). For Ahmad, it was already controversial enough that she was a woman and Malaysian as a female director, so for her to be creating such movies that go against the culture norm for Malaysia, she was highly scrutinized. However controversial her films were, that’s what I believe made them that much more powerful. One of her films, Muallaf, is about three young people finding solace in religion. It was screened in Singapore and wasn’t shown in Malaysia until a year later because of censorship, so it was ordered to cut scenes out, making the film meaningless.

Her role as an auteur is greatly shown in her films; she looked past the social problems and focused on the people themselves. In “Making Movie Magic” by Bell Hooks, she states that movies “…provide a shared experience, a common starting point from which diverse audiences can dialogue about these charged issues” (2). I believe this greatly summarizes Ahmad’s movies, she gives her audience a story about people who, even though are different from the social norm, are just like everybody else, with the same feelings that everybody else feels.

Yasmin Ahmad has made television commercials and films, one film includes Rabun, which is about an older couple who decide to move to the country because they are tired of living in the city, but soon find out to be cheated by a distant family member. It turns out that this film was about her parents and their struggles. In a post that she wrote for the Center for Southeast Asian Studies for the University of Hawaii at Manoa, she discusses why she filmed Rabun super still, with rarely any camera movement. Her explanation was because she, “…was curious to see if the full emotions of a scene could come through, without having too many emotion-heightening tricks such as close-ups…” Her reasoning behind why she filmed Rabun super still shows that she herself is an auteur because she took a story and purposely conveyed it in a way so that viewers could see “full emotion.”

One commercial that I found to be the most powerful is called “Funeral” launched by the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports, which is about a woman at the funeral of her late husband giving a moving speech. This commercial highlights Ahmad’s work as an auteur because she took all of her beliefs of life and put it in a commercial within 3 minutes. She conveys messages about the success of interracial marriages, love, and family bonds.

All in all, the only way to describe Yasmin Ahmad is inspiring. She looks at everybody as one, not by color or race or religious beliefs. Wished there were more people like her.

WORKS CITED

Humm, Maggie. Author/Auteur: Feminist Literary Theory and Feminist Film. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1997. 96. Print.

Hooks, Bell. Making Movie Magic.

Rinaz (Marina Rinaz). “Meeting Yasmin Ahmad- Award Winning Director.” Marina’s Bloggariffic. 23 June 2008. Web. 18 Nov 2011.

Yasmin (Yasmin Ahmad). “RABUN- Notes From the Writer/Director.” The Storyteller. 8 Aug 2004. Web. 18 Nov 2011.