An Other Vivid Voice

Today we came here to talk with Mr. Aziz, who gave us this opportunity to share some of his memories with us. Mr. Aziz and his wife own and manage 3 kindergartens.

Me: Hello Mr. Aziz

Mr. Aziz: Hello, and welcome here.

Me: So how’s business, is it ok?

Mr. Aziz: Alhamdo Lellah, it’s good, as long as there are kids out there and we do our jobs in a good manner our business would go ahead smoothly.

Me: It’s seems that in Malaysia families are willing to have more child comparing to people in western countries, is it like that?

Mr. Aziz: Yes, I almost agree with that. Let me tell you what one of my western friends has said about having children…

Me: Yes, please.

Mr. Aziz: He told me “having kids, in his opinion, can never be a rational decision; it has to be a totally emotional one. Anyone who’s had kids can promise that having kids can totally disturb parents’ life.”

Me: ha, ha, it’s funny!

Mr. Aziz: I don’t know but my friend whose name was Mark continued that “When you have children, you can’t go pubbing every night, you can’t work like a dog till late hours every day, so there can be no social reasons to have kids. Even though these little monsters are expensive, so it can’t be a financial decision”

Me: ha, ha, It’s kind of mixture of facts and fiction,

Mr. Aziz: Yeh, and then Mark added “and more than that, there is no guarantee that they’ll take care of the parents when they grew, so it can’t be even a sure investing in the future.”

Me: So, may here every body are emotional? Ha, ha.

Mr. Aziz: Yes, may be.

Me: Tell us a little about your kindergarten please.

Mr. Aziz: it’s a little bit hard for me to explain about everything here for you as I didn’t prepare myself for a professional session but friendly speaking I can say that we provide a balanced, complete and interesting preschool curriculum trying to develop children’s potentials. We have programs in Music, Computer, Religion, Health and Fitness.

Me: How many children do you have in your facilities?

Mr. Aziz: By now, I think they add up to more than 250.

Me: OK, as you told me you prefer not to talk work, tell us about one you latest enjoyable experiences these days.

Mr. Aziz: Meee, ok, o, have you ever tried fish spa?

Me: No, Never, I saw it somewhere but what is it exactly?

Mr. Aziz: O, in fact it’s made of hundreds of tiny fish rushed to costumers’ feet and legs, hungrily eating the flesh; it’s the latest craze in spa treatments, Fish Therapy!

Me: It’s sounds interesting; maybe I have to try it.

Mr. Aziz: My family and I were also too curious so last week we decided to try it.  We walked into the spa and it had a gorgeous peaceful atmosphere. Quiet music played in the background, candles were lit, beautiful water fountains flowed and lovely art hung on the walls.

Me: How much you paid for it?

Mr. Aziz: We paid RM 38.00 for a thirty minute session.

Me: What happened there so?

Mr. Aziz: We washed our legs and sat on the lavish cushions beside the wooden pools lined with lilies and candles. I plunged my feet in the water and I remember had to refrain from squealing as hundreds of fish rushed at my legs and toes! It was the strangest sensation yet I had, but quite pleasant.

Me: Wasn’t it painful?

Mr. Aziz: Not really, It felt just like leaving your legs in front of Jacuzzi jets. We were able to relax after a few minutes and at the end of the thirty minutes my legs felt soft and rejuvenated! I can feel the line where my legs were not submerged in the water!

Me: Do you know what kind of fish they use there?

Mr. Aziz: They told me that they call it Garra fish and it’s interesting that they said that one countries that those fishes are originate in the river is Iran. Haven’t you heared about them?

Me: No, not really, but maybe it’s because I’m not so familiar with this kind of activities. So it seems you really enjoyed it.

Mr. Aziz: Yes, my wife, my son and I all loved it, but my daughter took her feet out within 5 minutes. She could not tolerate the tickly feeling. But I have gone back again and enjoyed it as much as the first time. I highly recommend it. This is one spa treatment you will never forget!

Me: Ha, ha, they have to pay you for your good advertisement Mr. Aziz, you really made me decided to go and try.

Mr. Aziz: Yeh, they have to do, because I’ve already sent them some of my friends.

Me: Ok, Mr. Aziz, it was a pleasure seeing you again, I don’t want to waste your time any more.

Mr. Aziz: No, no, it was very good, come see me whenever you had time.

Me: Sure, thank you for today, Goodbye.

Mr. Aziz: Take care, Bye.

When I’ve searched about Amir Muhammad, I found that he was a kind of movie director which didn’t liked to be an ordinary one before he stops his activities in film industry. More or less, his turn from motion picture to written drama is based on mixture of different reasons, politically and personally.

The big Durian is Amir Muhammad’s second long film which using documentary and fictional techniques let us to travel within time back to the night of 18 October 1987 in Chowkit Kuala lumpur. In that night a Malaysian army soldier got into an uncontrollable rage with an M16. Because of sociopolitical climate of that period of Malaysian history that triggered a citywide panic and rumor of racial riots.

A few days later, the government of Dr. Mahathir Mohamad began nationwide arrests by detaining over 100 opposition leaders and members of civil society organizations that some called it Operation Lalang.

In The Big Durian Amir Muhammad speaks to 23 Malaysians which are some real and some played, to elaborate more about that event’s happenings. He recalls, recounts and replay different plot’s and interviews that draw on both reality and rumor. Using fact and fiction, the film tries clean up stains to perception and memory.

While Amir Muhammad helps viewers to remind real history (Based on his opinions) and urge them have more attention to political history, he insists that this event and it’s after mass made a basic change in political and cultural landscape of Malaysia.

“Slum dog Millionaire” is a British picture about a young man from the slums of Mumbai, who seeks to rise from misery to happiness by winning an Indian television game show.

Slumdog Millionaire is simply the most refreshing movie of the year. The depiction of modern life in India and the emotional character backgrounds of the story merge to produce the number one film of 2008. The directing of Danny Boyle and the film’s incredible cinematography clearly shine as cultural, upbeat tunes. 18-year-old Jamal Malik, played by Dev Patel, is one question away from winning 20 million rupee on India’s version of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire.” His story is told using flashbacks as a critical, suspenseful tool to fully illustrate the characters and their motivations. The acting was not the highlight of the film; however, Dev Patel and Frieda Pinto, who played Latika, put on performances in their debut roles that were far from disappointing. It is truly a movie that everyone should to watch. It is thrilling and a source of inspiration that deserves every ounce of high praise.

Heralded by critics as one of the best films of 2008, director Danny Boyle’s marathon is a joyful romance. The first few minutes of the film make this a difficult claim to believe, as it begins in the depths of a police station, where a prisoner is being tortured with electrodes. How the film moves from such a dark tone to one that is truly magical is a feat that moviegoers will just have to see to understand. Boyle, a British director, has set his film in modern-day India (with much Hindi dialogue in the first half hour or so, subtitled in a rather creative way), but somehow captured the colorful sensibility of Bollywood musicals without making that type of film. Jamal Malik (Dev Patel) is the victim of the aforementioned interrogation, because the police can’t believe an uneducated kid can answer all these questions correctly without cheating.

The film shows, in part, exactly how Jamal is able to answer those questions—not through traditional classroom education, but through the practical school of life. Like a smorgasbord of everything that Hollywood in its Golden Age once put into movies—and what those audiences came to movies to see—Slumdog Millionaire has everything: music, adventure, tragedy, love at first sight, unbelievable coincidences, rags to riches, and the bond between disparate brothers (wide-eyed dreamer Jamal and the more cynical Salim, played by Madhur Mittal). It could have emerged a frivolous mess but somehow it works, thanks to Boyle and screenwriter Simon Beaufoy (of The Full Monty fame, adapting the novel by Vikas Swarup).

Slumdog Millionaire

Director: Danny Boyle

Stars: Dev Patel, Freida Pinto, Anil Kapoor

Running time: 120 minutes

First of all I have to say that watching this movie for only one time is not enough. In fact I and some of my friends in our class couldn’t understand lots of its deep point of views and I think, at least, it has to be watched once more. In the other hand this movie made a good start and forced me to think about its story more and even do some brief researches on Burma, Burma’s people and their recent history. I’ve read articles about wars, recent happenings and their culture. But, yet, I have to learn more about them first and watch the movie again.

By the way I want to talk about what I’ve understood from the movie while I want to watch it again to complete my understanding about this movie, its story and its producer’s ideas. Main story of this documentary was based on a middle aged woman who was so firm on rejecting her nationality and when ever anybody would ask her that if she is a Burmese, she insists that she is not.

Every time she was playing around the answer and she was trying not to answer directly to those questions of her nationality. In some part when she was in a gathering or a group of people and everybody would refer to her as a Burmese, she’s hated that and get ashamed and has tried to escape from the situation.

At the background, the movie mentioned to her difficult childhood and violated hard times that she had back in her childhood and teen ages that would lead her to got emotional and intellectual problems. In the movie, it was clear that in most of the times her speaking tone and body movements were all indicating all those troubles she has faced. Whenever she spokes, her voice was full of stress and irregularities in tone.

Her face had signs of some kind of innocence with a childish fear. In a part of this documentary she get in to a car with 3 other girls that they were joking and laughing and they had a happy time, then they asked each other of their nationality and the other three replied that they are Burmese but even in that conversation she refused her identity and she claimed that she is from United Kingdom.

If we wanted to talk about this documentary’s structure and artistic narration, I don’t think that it is a successful product. It’s not grabbing viewer’s attention enough and it may make people bored. Also the music composition and choice of songs isn’t in a good style and in a documentary which rarely special effects or other artificial would be used, it is a big harm to the effectiveness of the movie.

The director was trying to keep all episodes in natural conditions and despite this might be good in some part but in overall it has made the movie somehow boring and out of necessary artworks. I have to ask you to be patient and have a deep view if you are going to see “Burmese”.

When I saw Persepolis, lot’s of my life’s angers and bitterness comes up again. I’ve never wrote them anywhere before as they were so painful, but tonight, I wanted them out.

Persepolis was not my story. My family and my really conservative parents had not a place in this story. Afshin Nazem, our good looking Sharif (university) student neighbor who was killed in 8 years’ war had not a place in Persepolis. Even Kaveh, my seventeen years old cousin that his body is still missing after twenty years had not a place in this story.

Sixties (In Persian calendar) for me, remembers shredded locally made shoes, long queues for milk, meat and cooking oil, our poor neighbors nightly fights out of poverty, mothers who were singing with loud voice in shelters to cover up bombs and anti-aircraft guns noises, cheap clothes and homemade masks out of medical bandages to avoid chemical attacks that we always plays with them to panic each other. In the same time sixties remembers me my wealthy auntie’s life that was an unknown world and an unreachable dream for me.

But in another way, Persepolis was my story, story of a girl who was deeply confused and unaware that why she has to sleep with panics, caused by adults’ world happenings every night. It is tales of a girl, which slowly has learned the living rules and how to say lies in cold blood. Persepolis is a story of some parts of our country’s untold history that with the help of our closed education system has always been denied. It’s a story of those Iranians that in search of new horizons for their lives, migrated from Iran and after a while when they passed the borders, they felt alone and found out that they no longer belong to anywhere.

Persepolis was a story that I must to be heard to realize why some of my exiled countrymen are full of hatred and see everything with an Islamic or secular perspective and why they consider whatever related to the government miserable. Persepolis is a story for our generation that in a creative way a woman has tried to not let to be buried by its beholders.

Its dark atmosphere is definitely not so lovely. Even it’s possible that Persepolis concerns are not ours, or we might be sad that why they didn’t told our story. But the most important point about this film is that this is a real story of some of our people. Marjane Satrapi like anybody else has the right to tell her story and she never claimed that this is every body’s story. Satrapi is talking about some of her most personal happenings in her life and we don’t have to blame her if it’s give us a dark picture. In fact she never experienced our dreams of reform and openings from last 12 years.

Persepolis is not the entire story, but certainly is a true part of a long story. Persepolis has to be reminded and makes us to think, to think how to make a bright future.

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