By Batrisyia Jay
Malaysia has not one, but two national days to commemorate the country’s independence from the British empire. Malaysia day is celebrated to commemorate 16 September 1963, a time when the former British colony of Singapore and the East Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak, came together to be united as the Federation of Malaya to create the Malaysian Federation.
Unity was what made the formation of the Malaysian Federation achievable, and once again, as proven by the May 9th 2018, elections the 14th Malaysian General Election (GE14), once again triumphed against all odds. Ergo, unity is the very essence of a latest Malaysian film called “Rise: Ini Kalilah”, a film that was inspired by events of the GE14 that is set to be released on September 13, 2018, in conjunction with Malaysia Day.
“Rise: Ini Kalilah” follows the lives of six Malaysians on the days leading up to the GE14 on May 9. Its multi-racial cast includes Remy Ishak, Mira Filzah and Sangeeta Krishnasamy. Directed by Saw Teong Hin, Nik Amir Mustapha and Prem Nath, the production for the RM2, 000, 000 film was completed in just three months and was shot in various locations across Malaysia, Singapore and Britain.
The film is the brainchild of executive producer Fred Chong, who was driven by the stories of how Malaysians came together for GE14. Intrigued by the story behind this inspirational film, the Selangor Journal team paid a visit to the man of the hour to gain a better insight of the inner workings of “Rise: Ini Kalilah”.
“We are blurring the reality of the actual events and the story, thus giving you a combination of the true workings of GE14 and something which is fictional,” says Fred while explaining the conceptualization of the film. “Rise: Ini Kalilah” follows the pattern of blockbuster films such as “Titanic” and “Pearl Harbour”, which were based on the event itself, yet had characters that were fictional. “The movie is fictional, but at the same time it is inspired by all the social media postings, videos, and particularly the documentaries on how Malaysians on Facebook were trying to come up with a campaign called ‘Carry your vote home’ ” says the established songwriter, music producer and multi-genre creator.
First Spark
The idea for the film first sparked within Fred after hearing of an Indian producer who was keen to produce an epic story of Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad after the Pakatan Harapan victory on May 9. “I thought it was a good idea, but I personally felt that the story should be about the people instead.”
Fred was still toying with the idea of having a GE14 inspired story that featured the rakyat when he came across the Astro Awani’s documentary called “Amazing Race”. “I saw how people in Hong Kong, London, Australia, and even Dubai were talking about how they had to bring their votes back, and the way they had grouped together and used social media to stay connected motivated me to have a story that highlighted how the people had fought and stayed together using digital and social media.”
Being the Group Chief Executive Officer of WebTVAsia Sdn. Bhd., a local digital media company, Fred had wanted the story to revolve around how people are connected in a digital world and how social media played a very important role in the access of information to the people. “Through the access of information on social media, we are informed, and when we are informed we tend to make wise decisions,” says Fred.
Character Development
Despite being the first time a change of government is seen in the country, this election had showed no bloodshed and has had a very peaceful transition. “It had made my story less dramatic, but I had never wanted to dramatize it in the first place,” he says. The main reason for this peaceful transition was due to the army and police force, which was why Fred had created a policeman character, played by actor Remy Ishak, as one of the main characters of the film.
Apart from a policeman, the film features the stories of a student in London rushing to deliver postal votes as well as a businessman in turmoil over politically-motivated criminal charges. Fred had thought that it would have been too straight forward if the character of the student in London were to be too fixated on bringing the votes back, as was shown in the documentary that he had watched. “So I twisted it a bit and created a character that is young and unpatriotic, someone who is not interested in the elections, which was half of the population of Malaysia at the time,” he says. However, witnessing the struggles of the people and friends around her who are upholding their rights and gathering the votes, the character, played by actress Mira Filzah, was pushed to become the person who had in the end, championed the whole process of bringing the votes home. The film also features actress Sangeeta Krishnasamy, who takes on the role of a teacher at a school struggling for funding as well as Jack Tan, who stars as a Malaysian working in Singapore who is finding a way to come home to vote. “I saw footages on the news of how hundreds of thousands of Malaysians who’s living in Singapore trying to come back and how they were told that they didn’t have to come back as it’s not important and such, so I thought that’s an important element to include in the story and come up with the character,” he says.
Being a Sabahan, Fred had also wanted to include a representation of a Sabah story to the film, and thus created a character, played by Jen Chiah, who is a struggling reporter fixated on documenting the events leading to May 9.
United Team
“Rise: Ini Kalilah” had three leading directors in the country on board, Saw Teong Hin (Puteri Gunung Ledang), Nik Amir Mustapha (Terbaik Dari Langit) and Prem Nath (Vere Vazhi Ille). The film specially features dialogues in English, Malay, Mandarin and Tamil as it revolves around the perspectives of three Malaysians of Malay, Chinese and Indian descent.
All three directors despite being committed to other projects somehow found time to take this on. Fred required three directors of different ethnicities as he wanted the movie to be a multi-lingual movie that features conversations in different mother tongues “I wanted real-life conversations between a husband and wife, father and son in their own home using their own language,” says Fred.
The filming of “Rise: Ini Kalilah” had started in early July of this year. Within three weeks the team had completed shooting in London, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. Two weeks later, the trailer for the film was launched at a press conference, and within one month, the film was completed and has been set to be released on September 16, 2018. “It’s the fastest turn around project for all of us, but at the same time, we never wanted to compromise the quality, that’s why we made sure we had experienced directors and crews, from pre-production to principal shooting to post-production, so we were really happy with the outcome. We pulled together a really dedicated team that had made everything possible.”
Challenges
Having only a period of three weeks to film an entire movie is a challenge in itself, but the Executive Producer admitted that one of the main challenges of “Rise: Ini Kalilah” was facing the Film Censorship Board of Malaysia. Fred had taken the safest route to ensure the film comes out with the least bit of controversy as possible. “That and the fact that our timing was limited made me not take as many chances as I would’ve wanted to and had to self-censor myself, so I feel that a lot of the things the audiences wanted to see wasn’t in the film,” he says.
Having had a bad experience with the board over his previous film, “Banglasia”, a film directed by Namewee and scheduled for release on 30 January 2014 had been banned as the film dealt with Malaysian politics; Fred had no intention for history to repeat itself.
Filming a movie based on the events of GE14, the team consulted various legal bodies to ensure that lines had not been stepped on, “Our lawyers said that if we were to portray a political flag in the movie, we can be sued among many other things, so you don’t see those logos or flags in the film,” says Fred. “We however got permission from the media to show real footages and videos of the event, footages that have been uploaded to YouTube, so the artistic choice of the film was that during the shooting a different flag was portrayed, but in the real live footages and news, the actual flag of the political parties are shown,” he says. “Hence, it wasn’t as perfect as I would’ve wanted it.”
Despite the setbacks, Fred and his team still pushed some boundaries for the film. “We went ahead and pushed a few boundaries and it had passed through the board. Some of it were police corruption, irregularities on the election day itself and other electoral issues,” he says, admitting that he would have pushed more boundaries had he been given the time.
Tribute to the people
The title theme song is a cover of “Sejahtera Malaysia” and is sung by Malaysian songbird Dato’ Sheila Majid. “Music is a very important element of the movie, and we were very fortunate to have Dato’ Sheila Majid sing the soundtrack,” expressed Fred. The patriotic soundtrack was originally performed by Mohammad Rauzan Alwi.
“This film is a tribute to the real heroes who had made May 9 possible; I wanted them to witness these and invited them for the premiere.” Fred feels fortunate to have had Maria Chin, Ambiga, Marina Mahathir, Hannah Yeoh who all came as well including Gobind Singh Deo and Syed Saddiq who were present for the premiere launch.
Set to be released on September 13, 2018, “Rise: Ini Kalilah” tells the journey of six individuals crossing paths on the eventful day that was May 9. Be sure to catch it in the cinema to relive the moments of how Malaysians of various ages and from around the world had struggled and come together to vote for a new Malaysia.
