Herstory Malaysia

The Game by Masturah K

admin — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 17:56:32 +0000

Part 1

It was 6:12pm. That’s the time the digital clock on the kitchen wall shows…

We were finishing our early dinner when my Dear husband of 2 months picked up his empty plate and cup, came over to my side at the square dining table, while I was still eating my last bite of food, and he came to whisper to my left ear…

“Dear, how about a game tonight?” his left cheeks brushed my left cheeks and he continued walking to the sink behind me. As he was washing his plate and cup, my chewing on my last bite of food becomes slower… as if I was thinking…

“Hermmm…” was the only sound that came out from me for the moment. After he is done with his washing, he came and sits across me and said, “Well dear? You still didn’t answer my question…?”

I was done with my food. So I crossed my hands on the table, looked suspiciously and stared my Dear Honey for some seconds. I heard my heart said: Nikita, what are you thinking? He is your Honey… He loves you as much as you loved him… so what can possibly go wrong? And at the same time, I heard my mind said: Nikita, your Dear Honey is full of surprises. Please remember the mental note: Beware.

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The Letter by Lady in Red

admin — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 17:54:20 +0000

It was a real fine day, the sun was shining very bright and it was a perfect day for Ling Ling. She was excited and happy and yet sad, but she had to keep her chin up for the sake of her daughter Mei Ling. It was Mei Ling’s big day, the day she turned into a woman when she got married to her childhood friend in Taiwan. Taiwan’s summer can be very hot and yet can be humid and sometimes windy but it was this season Ling Ling preferred to celebrate the big occasion for her daughter. She went to her room, getting ready to say the last word to her daughter as in the Chinese custom the bride would leave her own house to follow the husband on the day they got married. Putting on wedding veil over her daughter’s head is a gesture to honor the marriage’s procedure. She had to play the role as a “father” and “mother” to her in giving her away to be married later in church service. Clutching the letter in her hands, Ling Ling had doubts whether she should tell Mei Ling or not. She had not been sleeping for the past one week since receiving this letter with the stamp from Sarawak. It was the contents of the letter that made her regret that things that she should do were not done.

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Still by Julya Ooi

admin — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 17:52:44 +0000

I heard this story from a friend and I found it astonishing and unbelievable on so many levels. It doesn’t even sound real but I can imagine how the women must have felt to have to make a decision while considering the morality, values,
religion and the law at the same time.

Int. Mrs. Lee’s room – night

MRS. LEE hears the scream and thinks she is dreaming but the screams escapes her hallucination and pierces through her ears to shake her up. She bolts out of bed with her heart pounding in her chest. The darkness remains ambiguous in her room; everything is obscure and unidentifiable. She takes a deep breath to calm her nerves and then the ghastly squeal permeates the night once more, raising goose bumps on her skin. She fumbles out of bed, dashes for the switch and flicks it
on to ward of superstitions and taboos. She waits another moment to see if she is really dreaming when the hammering
on the door justifies her fears for the worse. She unlatches the door nervously when she hears ANNA calling out to her and sees anxiety written all over her face.

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Spirited by A. A. Lee

admin — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 17:50:45 +0000

I am so inspired by your effort to bring forth stories about women by women. At a time in my life when I had just endured one of the most mentally, emotionally and spiritually torturing experience of my life, discovering and reading your blog is syncronistic. While the tortuous experience may be over, I am at present trying to make sense of it by stringing words to the whole experience. Being a woman, naturally it manifests as a great need to talk to my friends. I have had friends who have told me to simply forget and move on. While the advice may be said with the best of intention it is nevertheless steeped in ignorance and inexperience as any man or woman who have truly suffered would tell you, you can never ever forget. One male acquaintance told me to not think about it nor talk about it, which I took as an insidious attempt to silence women. But for some reason, I can?t and maybe that is a good thing.

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Sex, Love and Drugs by Ruby

admin — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 17:49:21 +0000

I was in love with the guy next door called Francis. i didn’t realised i was in love with him cos i knew him for a while
already. When i was 16, i realised that i love him. he was an understanding guy. he worked as tranportation of vegetables in
the market. he used to exchange records of songs. among the records, there was a letter where he told me he liked me. so
we started dating but his sister forbidded it. My father might not be happy so we just kept our relationship to ourselves. Then my father found out and make a problem. I left the house when i was 17, i fought with my father. my mother passed away already. My boyfriend was 18 or 19.

We stayed together, in ipoh. I was taking care of a massage parlor, i stayed there. He would come every night. We slept together in one room. The parlor’s boss knows me and helps me out a lot. My boss was very nice lady, she taught me how to massage. Although there was sex work in the parlor, i didn’t do that because i wasn’t ready. I slept only with my boyfriend. I got the work through a friend of mine who told me they were looking for someone to take care of the parlor. The boss allowed us to choose to have sex with customers or not.

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Story by Mould and Dented

admin — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 17:46:54 +0000

Brief background: Mould & Dented is a woman/girl/child, Melayu, Muslim, who grew up as “budak PJ” in the era of the New Romantics. Has a bad habit of living in the past, when the present (and her children) should really be the focus of her time and attention. Generally, has no regret of what she has done but a lot of what she did not do. She is still paying for that now. Although she works in the field of women’s rights, she still lacks the courage to let her voice roar and be heard.

This story is from Mould & Dented’s experience and her witness to someone else’s. She wants to share this because they are not shared enough. She says, “growing up, we only speak of what ideally, love and relationships should be like. We rarely give validity to our own feelings and experiences because we always think that it should be different, more than what we experience in reality. We are influenced by past experiences of other family members and friends, the books we read, the movies we watch, current trends, the media, etc. Giving validity to our feelings and experiences is the process of empowering ourselves. If this opportunity is not given and developed, it will take a long time to learn to listen and trust our instincts, our own inner voice, to defend and stand up for ourselves when it is crucial to do so”.

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Liebelied by Nadira Ilana

admin — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 17:44:02 +0000

1. INT. COLLEGE CLASSROOM. DAY.

A typical college classroom in Malaysia – small and tiled with desk-chairs. Safira, 19, is a Malay girl; lean, softspoken and shy. During class, she’s reading a book on top of her textbook, which she doesn’t even attempt to hide. The rest of the class is attentive and quiet, if not bored and uninterested as the lecturer rattles on monotonously.

TEACHER

And that concludes the end of our lecture…

Everyone gathers their things to leave.

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Callused by Audrey Joyce Nelson

admin — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 17:25:46 +0000

“Did you play hide-and-seek with you father last night, Jem?”

“Yes.”

“Gosh, I wish my father did that. But he never plays with us. Ever! He just sits on
the couch and watches TV.”

I was silent. I wondered what having a couch potato as a father would be like.

“Anyway, did you win this time?”

I shrugged and walked away. Of course I didn’t win. I never win. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t win against Father. He was just TOO good. We’ve been playing the same game since I was four. I’ve only won once and that was only because Mother came home from work early. Father yelled “Game Over, Jem!!!” and went downstairs to greet Mother. So technically, I didn’t really win. But we played every night and I was Father’s favourite. He wouldn’t play with any of my three sisters but instead he used to beat them cruelly. I was special. That’s what he said anyway.

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Launch at Seksualiti Merdeka

herstoryadmin — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 09:48:40 +0000

written by Jac Sm Kee on Sunday, October 17, 2010 at 10:12am

The launch of HerStory Malaysia at the Annexe Gallery, KL 2010

I haven’t been for events in awhile, but it’s Seksualiti Merdeka time, so mesti! I also made a conscious effort to make it for the Herstory launch, not only because I wanted to support the awesome women behind it – Mien, Paik Yin, Smita, Angela, Effa & more – but also because I felt it was one of the singularly feminist event at SM this year. Sometimes in activism around sexuality issues, no matter how well placed the intentions, the same kind of gendered power relations can get replicated. The prominence of gay issues and rights over lesbian perspectives and realities, and trans women over trans men (which makes me wonder if the gender-contagion is harder to dissipate than imagined..). So I guess maybe it’s my own sense of skewy politix that made me sikat my rambut, dig out a pair of clean pants & go. Plus I haven’t had the chance to go for any SM events yet, so double bonus double happiness double double ^^

It was packed. Ez and I got there at tepat-tepat pukul 8, and there was a line snaking down from the entrance of the Annex gallery down to the stairs. First good sign. We checked out the “Portraits of the Unspoken” art project and took our turn to shuffle down the que to register. Of course by the time we got into the room, there were no more seats. Even the small landing up some steps was crammed with excited people bercangkung together-gether. Those of us standing at the back were ushered to the front of the stage and sat on the floor – okaylah, good view but sakit buntut after a few hours!

The launch started with the usual speeches and stuff. The host turned out to be Sarimah Ibrahim, apparently one of M’sia’s top TV host. She was actually really good. There was almost not a single “uhm” or pause between words the entire night, and she was able to relate personally to the event, engage the people present, and only made a couple of almost-sexist joke -^. Yasmin & Angela spoke about the importance of hearing women’s stories, in all its diversity and texture of voices. And especially on something as susceptible to stereotypes as women’s sexuality – there are too few spaces that privilege the many different types of realities, experiences, perceptions and conceptualisation of women.

And I think Herstory really did just that.

The night opened with Shh…Diam! – a quirky, charming, senyum-sampai-mulut-ternganga-inducing band that sang openly about loving another woman, the importance of clean bathrooms in the art of courtship and evil woman, the importance of clean bathrooms in the art of courtship and evil women twisting like daggers under your skin. “I love you Julie! Fuck what they say! Lalalala”. Nice catchy riffs, 4-piece all grrl band, smart-ass lyrics. Lovely. Absolutely terlalu completely fuckin’ lovely. I am officially now a fan.

It also got me thinking about the importance of cultural references in the formation of queer identity, queer spaces, queer politics. The first lessons in queerdom probably began with books or movies. Opening up narratives that challenge the usual girl-meets-boy-meets-girl mythology. Bits of lives that sometimes speak to our own silent struggles to just come to term with our own Difference. And having a theme song definitely helps. Having home-grown theme songs that absolutely rocked my socks off is just… damn! I’m alive in lucky times.

And I’m also thinking this is why Herstory is important too. Creating cultural artifacts and discourses that speaks about the diversity of women’s lives and voices. Even in the kind of ‘normal’, heard-before stories, the way they are told through the films casts them in new light. (spoiler alert – dont read if haven’t seen the films yet!)

My personal favourite is Crystal Woo’s film, Spirited. Shots of many different women in their everyday spaces, making things with their hands, playing, doing, strung together rhythmically and narratively with a song byMonoloque. I tried to search my head for an adjective for the song, but failed. It just worked. At times tensed, at times lulling, at times anxious, they accompany the visual glimpses into the women’s lives really well. When asked by one of the audience members after the film, on what the story was, Crystal explained that it was about the emotional turns in a relationship between two people, without the details of what happened cluttering its affective essence. The film centres on a dialogue between A.A. Lee (pseudonym of the writer who chose to be anonymous) and another person, and Crystal took the emotional response and journey and created something akin to poetry in her short film. The images were gritty and in vivid colour, sometimes at a distance, sometimes intimate, loaded with layers of pregnant silences. Loved it.

Next was Ruby’s story, as told by Mien(.ly), called, Happy Massage. I was really quite impressed by the maturity and care taken by Mien in telling this story. The story is not an easy one, it’s pretty painful. It recounts Ruby’s experience in her youth, her abusive father, how she started doing sex work and drug-use. I saw the story as being about the many ways we can love and lose – how Ruby loved and lost a lover, loved and lost a friend, the twining of sexual being and love, and the disentangling of sexual being and love, and the continuous journey of different kinds of loss and love – sometimes painful, sometimes joyful – that she, and I guess all of us, go through in life, especially as women.

Then was Still by Mislina Mustaffa, about the story of a young girl who gave birth to a stillborn baby and the conversation between her landlord and another person about what to do with the potential consequences. The story was heard and recounted by Julya Ooi through a tensed dialogue, projected at the bottom of a shot of a large monsoon drain throughout the entire film. It’s raining heavily, the traffic light changes from green to red to orange and back again, and traffic shuffles by. Towards the end of the film, you’d expect a baby or something to float down the drain. Then came a weird mash-up of Shahrizat’s speech on how it’s time for men to “wake up” and take responsibility over I’m not sure what. Their lives or maybe the lives of women or maybe just their laundry. Never quite know with Shahrizat. I liked the Malay dialogue (the English one felt a bit forced), and the still of the monsoon drain is quite conceptually clever. Playing with suspense, and bringing up a lot of questions about how we relate to tough things – throw down the drain, jalan only etc. But I felt the mash-up at the end was annoying, too long and doesn’t really bring up anything new or different or engaging to the entire narrative. Almost like a political cop-out. Or maybe I just didn’t get it.

Bernice Chauly directed and narrated the next piece, written by Nadira Ilana, calledCreatures. It’s poem about love, and the twists and falls and flights in love, distances and in the living of a relationship named as love. When the poem borrowed from Greek mythology at the very beginning, I felt a little “urk” rising, but the imagery and motion graphics done by Fairuz Sulaiman was so beautifully done, it managed to instill enough patience so that this is contextualised within the story of the relationship. The photographs of, I imagine, her parents, at various stages in their lives together, collage-d throughout the captivating reading of the poem by Bernice was really very very awesome.

The last film was Sharifah Amani’s debut as a director in telling Susan Bansin’s story,Sangkar. Desire and sacrifice, and the muted dialogue in the space where two people have no ability to express their love for each other. It’s a love story between a young girl who lives with her sick mom in a dilapidated wooden house and a young boy who lives with his father in a huge bungalow, reminiscent of Romeo and Juliet. Except here, Romeo’s dad decided to marry Juliet. And the story focusses on the particular moment of “Ever after”, which is drenched with impossible longing and the continuance of life. Amazingly done.

It’s really something special, magic, that this project has created. Beautifully crafted works that tells complex and true stories. Multiple connections between storyteller, listener, re-tellers, and back again. Bringing to light amazing talent in filmmaking, music, acting, scriptwriting, organising and more. All the necessary bits in the politics and revolution of change through the critical agitation of normative reality that takes place in conversations over culture. Pop, art, and otherwise. I left Herstory and SM that night, feeling like I took part in an important part of M’sia’s herstory, and caught of glimpse of something really amazing and inspiring taking place. Lucky to be here. ^^

Writing this reflection in kudos to the women (and men) who made this happen. You grrls rock!

Featuring 5 short film synopsis

herstoryadmin — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 12:45:43 +0000

HerStory Malaysia A showcase of women’s films about LOVE, SEX and DESIRE.

HerStory Malaysia is keen on creating spaces for women to come together and learn how to share their stories with others using artistic platforms like filmmaking. Our HerStory Films Project seeks to collect stories about love, sex, and desire from Malaysian women, with an emphasis on diversity and personal experiences of falling in—and out—of love in a distinctly Malaysian context. This year, we are showcasing these 5 short films.

1. HerStory filmmaker : Crystal Woo with HerStory Teller : A.A Lee presents to you Spirited

A love affair with a man who used supernatural means to make the woman attracted to him.

2. HerStory filmmaker : Mien.Ly with HerStory Teller : Ruby presents to you Happy Massage

Ruby was 17 when she left home after a big fight with her abusive father. She had a lover who took care of her but that didn’t last long. She found work and friends in a massage parlor but learnt that some things are not as easy as she wished it would be.

3. HerStory filmmaker : Mislina Mustaffa with HerStory Teller : Julya Ooi presents to you Still

A young girl gave birth to a still born in a house with 2 middle aged women. They debated about calling the cops or burying the baby and issue deeply and quietly in order for the girl to not be stigmatized by society.

4. HerStory filmmaker : Bernice Chauly with HerStory Teller : Nadira Ilana presents to you Creatures

A young woman yearns for her lover through a journey of prose and metaphor, and explores how the Greek notions of love still apply today.

5. HerStory filmmaker : Sharifah Amani with HerStory Teller : Susan Bansin presents to you Sangkar (Cage)

A story about a high school girl in a rural area. She just reached an age where this one particular boy caught her eye and possibly heart when her family has to marry her off to an old man, who turns out to be the boy’s father.