The Story of Southern Islet – Julian Ross

Chong Keat Aun’s bold use of decentred framing might evoke the grand modernist gestures of Michelangelo Antonioni or Yoshida Kiju. But rather than calling attention to cinematic form, Chong strives for something altogether different – namely, the possibility of a presence not always detectable by human sight. The existence of spirits among us is not only suggested through the ‘empty’ area of the cinematic image but also the camera’s perspective, which observes human action from an intimate distance. Cinema, here, is a means to awaken our senses to be more attentive.

Chong, who bases his film on his own childhood experiences in the 1980s, grew up among the paddy fields of Kedah in northwestern Malaysia near the border with Thailand. The Malaysian Siamese culture of the region forms the framework/skin for the film. Chong is clearly invested in holding onto local traditions: his previous project, ‘The Classic Accents’, sought to preserve local dialects through hundreds of interviews for radio broadcasting. Curiously, it was this celebration of local traditions in The Story of Southern Islet that caught the eyes of the country’s film censors: the scenes with Malay shadow-puppet theatre, ‘wayang kulit gedek’, weren’t cut but initially silenced, until pressures from his industry peers led to the lifting of restrictions. The small, translucent figures moving against the light remind us that the evocation of a presence through light and sound far pre-exists the invention of cinema.

Written by Julian Ross