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My friend Dana from Filmkrant asked me to write something about "The Miracle of Malaysian Cinema". It is for the event of NEW MALAYSAIN CINEMA in Rialto Amsterdam. Here's what I wrote to her: ---------------------------------------------------------

I just had my birthday dinner 2 weeks ago. with Amir, James, Ming Jin and the gang. Seng Tat is in Paris, but he said he bought me a bottle of French red wine.

"It is nice to have many good friends around." Seng Tat said, on facebook. He said he will bring me the bottle of red wine when he see me in Amsterdam Rialto. And he asked me to bring him his video camera and 5 miniDV tapes from KL. "Let's party together in Amsterdam!" Yes, that's a come back after some crazy parties in Beijing and Bangkok last month.

To quote Amir Muhammad ( you will soon realize I always quote Amir Muhammad, because he is the smartest of us all), "When you don't have money, you might as well have friends."

I guess that explains why we remain good friends after so many years, because we are still poor after so many years.

We make very cheap film with miniDV camera. And we just help each others in each others' production, taking turns to be producer, director, cinematographer, editor, actor...... We like to hang out together. Most of the time the film productions are like a short vacation, or small gathering. We are not that ambitious, and happy with making amateur films.

To give you an idea, here's how we worked: in September I made a short film called EVERYDAY EVERYDAY which Seng Tat produced and James Lee was the cinematographer; And in the same weekend I produced Seng tat's short film CHASING CATS AND CAR with Khoo Eng Yow as the cinematographer. And this month I made a short film TO SAY GOODBYE OR TO ASK FOR HELP with Ming jin as my cinematographer. Next month Ming jin will make a short film I HAD ALREADY FORGIVEN YOU, with me as cinematographer and extra (as a prostitute, as usual). And then in December I will produce a feature film of James, CALL IF YOU NEED ME. He would not trust his camera to Ming Jin or me, so he is holding the camera himself. Yes, this is how we make films. And you really can't expect those films to be good.

I guess I like making film because I really like to hang out with my friends. And the nicest thing is we don't take ourself too seriously. That is nice. That means we can make fun of ourselves, or at least we can always make fun of Ming Jin. We always watch each others' films and go, "Oh... That's lousy, I'm sure I can make a better one." I must say seeing bad films made by your fellow filmmakers is always a good motivation to make a better film. Thank god my friend ming jin always make bad films. So far he had made the worst film of all and he had buried it underground, never a chance to see daylight, but remain the greatest motivation for us to make a better film, which is not difficult anyway.

Recently we have take up cooking as well. We cook together in the office. Although Seng Tat is not an experimental filmmakers, he do experimental cooking. How much I wish it is the other way round. Because we have this house rule in the office, you must eat whatever lunch that is cooked by whomever. Thank god seng tat had left to Paris. He is now cooking for the chinese filmmaker Robin in the cannes residency, God bless Robin.

Of course in the end seng tat had drank my bottle of red wine, on the same day he bought it.