Becoming a Great Civilisation

By Antares Two years ago an email was circulated on the APA list and around the arts community requesting inputs and feedback on the possibility of everyone pooling their resources to set up a new arts centre and performance space in Sentul West. Sentul West? I suppose some folks reacted with a few sniggers at […]

Menacing Forms

By Adeline Ooi Walking into the side entrance of the new Westin Hotel down at Jalan Bukit Bintang, you will find yourself intimidated – and attracted – by what appears to be a large and ancient torture device perched onto the wall. Black, mettalic, and organic, with a centre that spreads out in slinky waves […]

Responsible Filmmaking 101

By Toni Kasim For over a decade, Pusat KOMAS (Komuniti Masyarakat), a non-governmental organisation producing social documentaries, has been training and empowering marginalised groups to do their own documenting. Sometimes they go so far as to lend video cameras to orang aslis, urban poors, or squatters who get evicted and forced into uninhabitable longhouses, to […]

One Beat

By Sunetra Fernando Petronas Performing Arts Group’s latest offering, Satu Rentak, was performed on April 28 and 29, 2004, at the Dewan Filharmonik PETRONAS, directed by Mohd. Yazid Zakaria, winner of the best composition award at the Cameronian Arts Award 2002. Satu Rentak represents a first for PPAG in its concert-hall style staging of musical […]

Devil In a Kebaya

By Zan Azlee U-Wei has always made daring films that force spoon-fed Malaysian audience to think. Which is always a risk; although his films are critically acclaimed (his 1995 Kaki Bakar remains the only Malaysian film to have been screened at the Cannes Film Festival), none have ever been box-office successes. This ‘failure’ to make […]

We’re In Heaven

By Sonia Randhawa Pete Teo’s Songwriters Round has entered a new phase, coming back from the despair of no-No Black Tie to the latest KL venue, Alexis on Jalan Ampang. The last weekend saw two rounds, Friday and Saturday. Friday we had Mia Palencia (replacing Rafique Rashid), Aki, Shelley Leong, and Zahid from Disagree; Saturday […]

From Melaka With Love

By Shanon Shah To turn a historical figure or moment into a musical, one needs a cult of personality, a particular chain of events unfolding an incredible destiny, that certain larger than life quality that only the sweep and pomp of musical theatre can justify. In The King and I, it was the clash of […]

Girls’ Night Out

By Yap Sui Lin It is raining torrentially. We – my eagerly-awaiting-Irish-dancing-of-any-kind aunt, my game-for-everything mom and I – are caught in the typical bumper-to-bumper scenario. Can we make it? It seems bleak. Perhaps our burning desire to see ‘Dance of Desire’ at Genting moved the weather gods to stop the rain at last. As […]

White Man’s Burden

By Kam Raslan It could be said that Sir Frank Swettenham invented Kuala Lumpur. It was he who turned the combustible wooden town into brick with streets and clean water. With his imperial energy, vanity and colossal arrogance he gave order to the streets that we know today in the old part of KL. He […]
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