Mass/Mess/Hit and Miss communication

i had an interesting teacher in my form sx class Father Steven,a roman catholic priest who before he entered religious life studied film and movie making in the US.Many techniques used to narrate a novel cant be applied to a movie as one was in the written form whilst film studies has a visual and audio angle to it. then there is the music,the costumes and the cultural baggages. i like movies melding our heritage with modern day plots.One local playwright is kee thuan chyes the swordfish and the concubine uses annals from sejarah melayu to tell a timeless tale of political intrigue and how powerful people handle those who may threaten their position Malaysians who use a local context to tell a message can appeal to international audience.A case is directors Chong keat aun The Story of southern islet which mixes the natural and supernatural especially diseases which are seen as due to not medical cause alone but interference by supernatural forces beyond rational control.so Mass communication hinges on creative storytelling as bhutanese directors kyentse norbu movies has universal appeal especially travellers and magicians which shows conflict between tradition and modernity .its great that director Chong uses local dialects like kedah malay,siamese and hokkien in his movie the story of southern islet.he can contextualise the humanity of his character by setting them in a tumultous period of Malaysian history like May 13 which saw ethnic Chinese victimised by institutionalised violence with the burial place of those missing unidentified and descendents unable to find closure in their lives.so its like the MH 370 missing aeroplane and the mystery leaves the grieving unable to heal. Two black marks stain in our nations history that impacted the Chinese psyche and stamps on the generational memory is the Japanese occupation of Malaya ,the suffering inflicted,the communist insurgency of the Emergency and the May 13 incidents .It is a mirror that is a murky past.courageous of director Chpng Keat Aun to reopen old wounds that has left a scar on our collective memory.i like the inclusion of Malay tale like Raja Bersiong in his movie snow in midsummer as well as the use of classical chinese opera to tell his story.i know the censorboard will never give a permit for screening this movie as it is deemed too sensitive but im looking at the issue from a detached academic angle so i got kua kia soongs May 13 incident book and yesterday bought the book Life After an oral history of the May 13 victims and the survivors .i want to delve into the past because if we dont learn from it.as the saying goes history will repeat itself.i was 9 years old when May 13 occured.i remember the curfew,stockpiles n constant fear as our dads n chinese n indian friends form a patrol to safeguard the family n protect the property.we dared not play outside,there was no school and our family business was badly affected.we heard of bloodshed in kuala lumpur as relatives reported neighbours being slashed.my uncles family migrated to Singapore and dad asked my uncle to take along his only son, my younger brother to live in Singapore. the ethnic Chinese suffering is creatively retold as novelists like tan twan engs the gift of rain and the garden of evening mist recollects the memories of the Japanese mistreatment of the Chinese in Malaya.Sybil Karthigesu an Eurasian doctor wife,a nurse and her family were tortured by the japanese secret police the kempetai and her small daughter tortured by being hung upside down over an open fire the same memory of suffering during the second world war is seen in Vanessa Chans debut novel The storm we made it mirrors the biography of Sybil Karthigesu book No dram of mercy in which the brave Eurasian nurse was tortured by Japanese secret police and she succumbed to her injuries after the war ended .i found an extract from times magazine dated 1948 about her life. Another creative writer Dr Han Su Yin wrote about those who resisted the Japanese and started a guerilla warfare in the jungle in her novel And the rain my drink the resistance of Malayan Peoples Anti Japanese army hid in jungles which led to the declaration of the Emergency so i think politicians now should stop playing with fire by asking UNESCO that it declare Chinese new villages as heritage sites it is not a past we wanna commemorate as it evokes bitter memory of concentration camps .under Briggs plan chinese villages were resettled behind guarded entrances n exits n freedom of movement curtailed n food rationing imposed .Now its like the Jews asking that Auchwitz concentration camps be glorified as tourist hotspot! Politician should focus on our present predicament like rising inflation,falling ringgit,increase of all kinds of taxes and relieve our cost of living instead of digging up a past thats irrelevant to our living condition now.understand the history before starting to make use of it to gain political mileage.we dont need Jaguh Kampungs now im rereading some old books that are still relevant to our current affairs like the plays of kee thuan chye We could f@#$ you Mr Birch and the Big Purge.our drama scene had seen the loss of some brilliant people like Krishnan Jit and Huzir Sulaiman who migrated to Singapore.luckily Jo Kukanthas has remained a local theatre stalwart