'Karaoke' and the Purity of Not Knowing

I've been cutting Chris Chong Chan Fui's first feature 'Karaoke'. Set in Malaysia and with dialogue in Malay and Tamil, I've discovered a sort of purity in editing a film shot in a language that I don't understand. To date, I've understood pretty much all the dialogue in the films I've cut. Except for a few snippets of the Northeastern or Southern Thai dialects here and there.

Normally, after watching full takes with the sound turned on, I tend to edit entire scenes with the sound muted. But working on a film in a non-native language is different from muting the sound. With 'Karaoke', I still get all the atmosphere and ambient sound along with the dialogue but none of it passes through the language recognition parts of my brain. The dialogue becomes just another sound element. It's direct meaning is submerged and what emerges is the purity of language, the intonation and rhythm that can convey the emotional states of the characters.

While cutting 'Tropical Malady', I had an editing supervisor from Italy, Jacopo Quadri, working with me. He told me that there weren't enough Italian films to work on so he mostly edited foreign language films. At the time, I was sceptical that one could edit a film shot in a foreign language and be able to accurately judge performance or maintain a correct rhythm. And it seemed like an impossible task for an editor to wade through hours of takes in an unintelligible language. But with 'Karaoke', I found that the purity of not knowing allows me to concentrate much more on the acting performance when I'm not pre-occupied with the meaning of the dialogue.

Phantoms and Mobile Men Online

'Phantoms of Nabua', a short film produced by Apichatpong Weerasethakul as part of his PRIMITIVE installation and series, has premiered online at Animate Projects.

Phantoms of Nabua is a portrait of home. The film portrays a communication of lights, the lights that exude, on the one hand, the comfort of home and, on the other, of destruction.

The quality is great for flash video and loads really fast. Kudos to Animate for that.

Also, 'Mobile Men' part of Art for the World an event to celebrate the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights can be seen on YouTube. There are quite a few critical comments in response to the film since it doesn't seem to directly address issues of human rights, migration, poverty and etc. But as with most of his films, these issues lie at the core of the film's approach.

It's better explained in this interview:

I have been interested in a topic of extinction for a while, the extinction of species, of voices, of tradition, and of cinema. Thai society on the surface looks peaceful, however, there are so many injustices going on that contribute to the elimination of “the other”.

... the main actor is played by a migrant worker from Shan state in Burma named Jaai. The shooting of this film provided me a great opportunity to learn from his stories. He is one of the lucky ones who have decent jobs and are contented with the new living condition. But there exist many others who are still living in the opposite circumstances.

By the act of making the film, I would like to instill and capture his confidence and dignity. It is not about storytelling, but about a man who is full of life.