Interview by Joanna, Premo and Rachel Chan.

1. What is your perception of the Indie film industry in Malaysia? Are the films produced by LUCT considered Indie?

In this country, we are stuck to landed property. If we go to the bank, they’ll ask if we have anything to mortgage. But in advanced countries, they have moved on to intellectual property. If you have a very good idea for a film here, chances are it won’t get funded. Venture capitalists are linked to the banks, so the chances for funding are less than in other countries. We need greater access to funding. Indie films have proven their capability despite working with low budgets. Unless they have access to funding, it will be a slow growth. But we’re lucky as there’s a lot of local talents in this university. Perhaps we can do better than the smaller Indie productions. We have to change the mindset from landed to intellectual property, as the latter is mobile.

2. What is the significance of winning the Bangkok International Film Festival’s Special Jury’s Prize for the film, Kurus?

It’s an encouragement. It’s good to know that our quality is competitive enough. We started the project late last year. Next year we will produce a lot more videos and an album.

3. Are there any plans to support Indie music by supporting a production house?

We will fund productions that are promising, with good scripts. If you have a good script, we will be happy to talk to you. Which is why we allow production houses to use our campus as a backdrop and our students as extras. If you have a good idea for a film, we will be happy to see you. We have started to work with a few people.

On building local heroes:

We should admire our own people and build local heroes.

On the Hindi film industry:

I spent a few days in Hyderabad, and thought we could produce at least as good the films if not better. But we never think of exporting our movies there, only importing. We need to change this mindset. There are things which we can do very well, for example, Michelle Yeoh for kungfu.
In India, they have created a huge movie content industry. Very often, they will act first, then rewatch the film, then only create music for it. They’ll launch the album six months before the movie. The music sells the movie. So they have to make sure the music is good in order for people to support the movie. Not songs, but environmental music. They watch the actors, then create music to support it. You see people watching silent movies, but are actually creating music for it.

On Creativity:

Creativity means doing something better. Nothing more.

On Starbucks Coffee:

When Starbucks arrived, it was like magic. But we showed that in the end, all you use is a coffeemaker. We started our own cafe (Wings Cafe), showed that we could do it too.

4. What are your favourite films? Favourite music?

Many things. There’s no particular favourite. Videos of nature on TV seem to be very well done. They’re not entertaining per se, and the script is very well written. I enjoy costume movies because you have to do a fair bit of research to produce one. New Age ambient music—this is my music. Our Malay folk music can be like that and it will become world music. P. Ramlee’s music can become world music. We have the cultural diversity that could make our music unique.