“Tan Chui Mui, what do you know?”
So said the Beautiful Loser (Pete Teo) to his silent adolescent muse as they waited at a bus stop, in the middle of the night, for either day to break or for dream to set in.
For Tan Chui Mui, of course, the dream had set in in quite a big way. Her film ‘A Tree In Tanjung Malim,’ from which that scene was taken, won the Principal Prize at the 51st Oberhausen International Short Film Festival last May. According to the statement given by members of the International Jury, “the film was a simple story told with a strong sense of sculpting time that puts forward a universal condition.” (Mui, though, felt that it was Pete’s strong and grounded performance that helped pull the short together.)
For me, I was first introduced to Mui’s work over a late cup of coffee with some friends. We had just completed a long meeting, and a friend suggested watching a compilation disc of short films.
One of the shorts really made me sit up and pay attention. It was Mui’s ‘Hometown,’ a poignant piece about growing up in a seaside village that was slowly being washed away by the effects of time and urban wanderlust.
Fastforward to the present, I called up Mui, who was finally introduced to me by James Lee only a few months back, to see if she had a bit of time to talk about her work and what the next few frames in her life look like. It turned out that time was something she had plenty to spare right now.
We met at a sparse little apartment that she had moved into only a month ago in bustling Brickfields. I learnt that the space doubles as an office for a number of filmmakers and triples as a gathering place to watch movies and just chill out. The prize money from the Oberhausen outing is helping finance much of this, thankfully.
Hailing from a small fishing village in Kuantan, it was Mui’s second sister who made her think very consciously about making films.
“My sister had an idea to make a film about our family or about our village. We had been talking about that for years, she must have been 17 and I was 14, but we never had a video camera and we never knew how to make films. She could even describe to me how the movie would begin!”
Mui related to me, almost shot-by-shot, how the movie opens with fishermen returning from the sea. They were greeted by a grandmother riding a bullock-cart on a children-flocked beach. After the trade, as she carted the fish away, the grandmother snapped at some children who freeloaded on the cart and were slowing it down as it made its way to the fish drying factory.
To me, it sounded like Mui could easily have been one of those children.
“My sister and I knew that our childhood experiences were very different. We grew up in this fishing village and we were the only chinese family there. We realized that this was something interesting and that we could make it into a movie.”
Upon completing her SPM (9A1s, don’t play-play), Mui whisked herself away to Multimedia University (MMU, then Telekom University) in Melaka to study animation. There, she watched influential and seminal films in the university library (Wong Kar Wai’s ‘Chungking Express’, Francois Truffaut’s ‘The 400 Blows’, and Wim Wender’s ‘Wings of Desire’), found out that her favorite hang-out spot was a gangster haven, and spent many, many hours in the university film studio with her coursemates.
And met Amir Muhammad and James Lee.
“I was always thinking about making films, but I didn’t know how to do it. I met Amir and James at a film screening. At that time, I was tutoring in MMU, so I invited them and others such as and many more to my university. At that time, Amir had just finished making ‘Lips-to-Lips’ and a few other shorts, and James had done a few, so because of that I started a series of weekly indie film screenings and talks.”
This linked up her students with the movers in the indie film scene then, including Hassan Muthalib, Ho Yu Hang, Patrick Lim, and many more.
I wanted to know her thoughts on how the indie film scene developed.
“People say it’s because of the technology, DV, that came in at that time that started the independent film movement in Malaysia, but I think it all started because of Amir and James. Amir proved to us that it can be done, by ‘Lips-to-Lips’ and by ‘6horts.’ I think ‘6horts’ is more inspiring to a lot of people because after they watched it, they thought, ‘I think I can do better than this!’ [laughs] At that time, that was what I really thought, but after I made a few short films, I think Amir is still better.”
A number of shorts later and we’re back at Mui’s ‘A Tree in Tanjung Malim.’ Apparently, this was her first effort at breaking away from her own conventions of working, which up until then was mostly do-it-myself (as with ‘Hometown’ where she shot, narrated, edited, produced… everything lah), a trait that was etched during her years of doing animation.
What did Mui think of the days ahead?
“It’s a very important period for me now, to think about what I want and the other possibilities in my life. It’s like, what type of films do I really want to make? Or do I really need to make films? It’s really thinking, why am I making films?”
So how?
“For now, I like making films and making that a part of my life. I want to live like this, just do nothing, or just write scripts to make films, and meet up with all these funny friends like Yu Hang, (Woo) Ming Jin, and (Liew) Seng Tat. I think I want to live it slowly. And just enjoy the moment.”
Faster, Mui, we want to watch your movies.
Tan Chui Mui was born in 1978 in Sungai Ular, a small fishing village in Kuantan, Pahang. Her father hails from Kinmen, Taiwan, and came to Malaysia with Mui’s grandmother in 1955 when he was 8 years old. One of six children, Mui started writing for chinese magazine in secondary school. Later on she studied Film and Animation in Multimedia University and became a tutor there after her graduation.
Mui has made 7 shorts till now and has edited Ng Tian Hann's "First Take, Final Cut" and Ho Yu Hang's "Sanctuary," wrote the script of James Lee’s "Hungry Ghost : Waiting for Them" and produced Deepak Kumaran Menon’s “Chemman Chaalai.”
Mui’s blog, in chinese, is at http://www.got1mag.com/blogs/chuimui.php
Mui wants to acknowledge that other than those already mentioned, Amir, James, Yasmin Ahmad, Deepak Kumaran Menon, and Albert Hue are all geng kaki lepak at her Brickfields’ home.
3 things Mui would wish for more of:
i. 3 wishes every month (or at least every year!) – “So from now on will I have three wishes every month? [laughs]”
ii. Some money some time – “Once a month, I’d wish for money.”
iii. “Near the end of my life, I’d like a house by the seaside with a table outside where I can drink coffee, and friends would sometimes come and visit me.”
3 things Mui would wish to have less of:
i. Result- and exam-oriented education system – “When I look at my youngest sister [and her friends], their life now is just homework, exam, homework, exam. I think there is something very wrong with the whole value of our society [on education].”
ii. Bills
iii. Dependence on government and external funding for independent filmmaking – “To be independent, we have to depend less.”
first appeared in 3rd July edition of Starmag Magazine in The Star newspaper
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