Not many people outside Malaysia’s Tamil community knew Shanjey Kumar Perumal when he first entered the fiercely competitive world of filmmaking. But Perumal, who started with making television films, was undaunted.
So it was no mean feat when Perumal, 36, became the first Malaysian film director to be invited for a special screening of his Tamil film “Jagat” at the New York Asian Film Festival. Produced in Malaysia, the film depicts the plight of Indian-Malaysian workers on Malaysia’s rubber plantations in the 1990s. When they lost their jobs and livelihood, they had to move out of their traditional abodes to face bitter hardships in big cities where empathy and assistance are rare.
We meet at Au Bon Pain in New York. Perumal turns out in a pair of jeans and a dark sports-jacket over a dark T-shirt, his earring sparkling in the fluorescent lights.
Today, Perumal has gathered 16 years of hands-on experience in the film industry. He has founded the Kuala Lumpur-based company Skyzen (M) Sdn. Bhd with the aim of producing high-quality fictional, documentary and experimental films.
“When I was working in television, I did travelogues and independent short films. One of my short television films, ‘Thaipoosam’, was screened at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2006. That film could be described as short visual poetry,” he says.
His portfolio has an array of films, ranging from documentaries and short films to musicals and children’s programmes. “Thaipoosam” catapulted him to global prominence. In 2009 his short film “Machai” was awarded the Grand Prize at the BMW Shorties Malaysia, and in 2012 he was invited to be a jury member at the event. In 2013, his documentary, “The Day That River Ran Red”, won the Jury Award at The KOMAS Freedom Film Festival Southeast Asia, Kuala Lumpur.
Perumal graduated from one of Malaysia’s leading universities, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) in Penang, in 2003 with a degree in communications and majoring in broadcasting and filmmaking. He believes that the visual medium is the best vehicle to portray facts. “Words can distort facts but visual presentation is accurate. You present facts to the viewer as you see them through the eye of the camera.”
“Jagat” (it was titled “Brutal” at the New York Asian Film Festival) was made in 2015. It is Perumal’s first 85-minute feature film. The central character is a 12-year-old impressionable boy, Appoy, who is torn between three dominating figures — his father who emphasises the value of good education, an uncle who works as a henchman for Chinese gangsters and another uncle who is a former drug addict. In the end, the boy rebels.
This inner conflict, triggered by socio-economic conditions of the Tamil-speaking Indian community, has been sensitively portrayed and avoids the usual slapstick and the song-and-dance clichés designed to entertain the audiences rather than engage them in thought-provoking topical themes.
The biggest challenge was finding the perfect actor to portray the character of Appoy. The search went on for years before Perumal had a “lucky break”. He was shooting a documentary on school dropouts in a rough neighbourhood in Kuala Lumpur and one of the young boys caught his eye. “I spotted this boy in a local school ... he was fighting with some boys, running around displaying such energy. I liked that about him. In acting you need a lot of energy.”
And so, 12-year-old Harvin Raj was cast in the role of Appoy. “There is innocence in his face and yet he can bring out the wild character,” Perumal says.
Perumal also had to work under a tight budget; he knew that the right cast and perfect location were crucial to make his film work. He wanted a village set in a valley surrounded by mountains for “Jagat”. Finally, after a protracted search, he found a suitable location in Klian Intan in Malaysia. “We had about 25 crew members and all the shoots were planned with clockwork precision. With our small budget, we couldn’t afford to waste any time.”
But why make a film in Tamil? “That’s in order to preserve its authenticity and its emotive aspects, which can be best conveyed by the film’s characters in their mother tongue. The film has Malayan subtitles, so Malaysian viewers of all ethnic backgrounds can understand it. People in other countries such as Sri Lanka, India and Singapore, too, can relate to it. At the New York festival, the film had English subtitles,” Perumal says, adding that the unique aspect of his cast is that all of them are non-professional actors.
The other challenge a Malaysian filmmaker faces, Perumal says, is the viewers’ fondness for Bollywood and Hollywood movies. “We need to encourage our own film producers to make quality films which, in turn, can also benefit Malaysia’s economy. Some cinema houses have been closed down because of the lack of audiences, and the poor quality of Malaysian films is to blame for this. On the other hand, there are many good filmmakers but they lack funding and other forms of support.”
Perumal hopes that Malaysia’s National Film Development Corporation (Finas) will help aspiring filmmakers. “Because ‘Jagat’ is a qualitatively good film, it ran for nine weeks at one cinema house in Kuala Lumpur, which is quite impressive. I was encouraged by the excellent response it received in Malaysia, including from the non-Tamil community.”
“Jagat” would have probably gone unnoticed in New York had a fellow Malaysian, Kelunni Menon, who works as an auditor at New York’s Columbia University, not intervened.
“I learnt about the film through a friend. I then viewed the trailer on YouTube and was intrigued by it. I contacted Perumal and asked him to put me in touch with the film’s distributor. I then pitched to the festival organisers in New York. They, too, were impressed by the film. Finally, he was extended a formal invitation to attend the screening of his film,” Menon says.
Perumal believes that despite the difficulties some producers of the new wave films face, Malaysia is actually the best place for funding of films. “I believe that the new wave of films will come to Malaysia.”
Malaysian audiences tend to generalise that all films produced there are poor quality. “That does not do justice to the aspiring young generation of filmmakers who want to produce off-beat, thought-provoking and good quality films.”
But making “Jagat” was, as Perumal puts it, “an intensive labour of love. Seeing this film become a reality is something I dreamt of for so many years. I felt as if I can’t do anything else until I’ve completed this project.”
Manik Mehta is a writer based in New York.
