KARAOKE
(Malaysia/Canada 2009, feature film fiction, HD/35mm, sound, 75min, Malay with Eng subs)
The home has changed. The palm oil trees have grown in endless symmetry. The landscape rusts and the nostalgia turns. KARAOKE is a homecoming story. BETIK returns to his village to help his mother with the karaoke a few years after the death of his father. During the day, he has also taken a job with his uncle making karaoke videos. KARAOKE is a story that takes you back home yet reminds you to go back where you came from.
KARAOKE is a debut feature film about home and deception in a karaoke club within a palm oil plantation in Malaysia. The narrative is shaped around a Malaysian term for homecoming, ‘balik kampung’, which is a romantic and nostalgic ideal of comfort in unconditional family love. Within this conventional storyline, the subtitles of the karaoke songs become another narrative that is weaved throughout in order to guide an alternative sentiment to an already sentimental ideal.
Festivals:
2009 Cannes' Directors' Fortnight, France [World premiere]
2009 Toronto Int'l Film Festival, Canada [VISIONS]
2009 Calgary Int'l Film Festival, Canada [MAVERICKS] [Best film prize]
2009 Vancouver Int'l Film Festival, Canada [Dragons & Tigers competition]
2009 London Int'l Film Festival, U.K.
2009 Pusan Int'l Film Festival, South Korea
2009 Viennale Int'l Film Festival, Austria
2009 Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival, Taiwan
2010 Jan Centre Pompidou, France
2010 Jan Feb Centre Pompidou, Paris, France
2010 Hong Kong Int'l Film Festival, Hong Kong, [Asian Film Awards WINNER-Best Editor Lee Chatametikool]
"One of the most beautiful discoveries of this year's Cannes … A filmmaker is born." - Les Inrockuptibles, Paris
"The best of the more rapidly moving films are from Asia, one (film) of a gentle tempo bears mentioning... a poignant fusion of Eastern sensitivity with Western technical proficiency. The nearly doc-like shots of trees and factory interiors, studied in the best way, are seductive."- Howard Feinstein, Filmmaker Magazine, US
"Freshness of vision and creation of its cinematic language, for vitality of its expression and the reward it offers to viewers who rise to its challenges; embodying the spirit of fearless originality and trailblazing optimism, it defines the essence of the Maverick spirit." (Writer and Critic Geoff Pevere)