FILMING ‘THE RESIDENCY YEARS’ – A DOCUMENTARY ON TUNKU ABDUL RAHMAN IN ENGLAND IN JULY, 2009…AND RETURNING TO ENGLAND IN 18 YEARS, PART I.
By Mansor Puteh
(NOTE: Because of its length, this article is cut into two parts, with the second part appearing in four days’ time.)
THE MOST UNUSUAL THING ABOUT THIS DOCUMENTARY ON TUNKU IS THAT IS USES PHOTOS FROM THE PERSONAL COLLECTION OF SYED ABDULLAH AND TAPED INTERVIEW I DID WITH TUNKU IN 1986.
IF THIS IS NOT THE CASE, THEN THIS DOCUMENTARY ON TUNKU WON’T BE ANY DIFFERENT THAN THOSE THAT THE OTHERS COULD COME UP WITH.
IT IS NOT EASY FOR MANY PEOPLE TO APPRECIATE THIS SINCE THEY WILL THINK THESE ARE ORDINARY MATERIALS ON TUNKU BECAUSE THEY LOOK LIKE I HAD GOT THEM FROM THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES OR THE TUNKU ABDUL RAHMAN MEMORIAL. THEY ARE NOT.
AND ON THE FIRST DAY OF FILMING AT THE RESIDENCY ON 20 JUNE, I DISCOVERED TUNKU’S SAFE WHICH HAD NOT BEEN OPENED FOR MORE THAN 30 YEARS.
I INFORMED THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE PAPERS BUT ONLY THE MALAY MAIL CHOSE TO CARRY IT BY PUTTING IT ON THE FRONT-PAGE, MUCH TO MY SURPRISE.
IT CREATED A MEDIA SENSATION WITH RAIS YATIM AND HIS SENIOR OFFICIALS AT HIS MINISTRY GETTING WIDE COVERAGE IN THE MEDIA FOR DAYS, ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY ATTENDED THE FUNCTION TO OPEN THE SAFE WHERE THEY DISCOVERED 44 ITEMS BELONGING TO TUNKU.
What if the safe also contained papers and notes by Tunku which are scandalous in nature? Fortunately – or unfortunately, that didn’t happen.
I was wondering what Tunku might want to say of his successor, Tun Razak, Mahathir Mohammed and some others…as his parting shots.
However, I was not invited to attend the function, so I did not get to shoot it to include in the documentary.
In fact, I could have gone to the residency even if I was informed at short notice of the function, because I was nearby and driving to the national blood center where I went to donate blood.
So is this going to be a new documentary on Tunku like no other? It is. And the public will be able to see how it is so in February next year when it is expected to be broadcast on television.
* * * * * * *
This was my return trip to London and England in 18 years.
The flight on AirAsia X from LCCT in Sepang here to Stansted Airport outside of London was smooth taking about 13 hours. Shahreza and I were lucky to be given the wide seats in the front row where the leg room was spacious. And I was also able to shoot footage of the skies from my seat which I could also use in the documentary.
It proved to be a good choice to fly on this airline since the airport they land at is north of London and closer to Cambridge and Nottingham so it was very convenient. We escaped the huge crowds at Heathrow had we chosen to fly on another airline that lands there.
In all we were in England for ten days, and this was the first time I was able to travel quite extensively around the southern part of England in a rented car which was also very pleasant as we were able to go anywhere we wanted to. The trips were made more pleasant when we were able to use the SatNav (For Satellite navigation) or Global Positioning System (GPS) gadget which we borrowed from a friend, Ajar Mohammed’s husband, Colin.
And barely two days after I arrived in Malaysia, I was pleasantly surprised to receive a letter from Buckingham Palace thanking me for sending a copy of The Residency Years book to the Queen, who was a dear friend of Tunku’s.
Ajar, Shahreza and I were outside of the palace barely a few days earlier where we could see a large crowd of guests amongst the army veterans who were invited to attend a garden party given by the Queen.
The last time I was only in London for less than two days. I made a brief stopover on my flight back from Lisboa, Portugal where I was invited to participate in the Figuera da Foz Film Festival where my film, ‘Seman’ (A Lost Hero) was shown where it was nominated for best film. This was probably the first time a Melayu (Malay) film from Malaysia was shown in this festival.
And on 4 and 29 January, 2010, this same film will be shown at the Pompidou Cultural Center in Paris.
I was stopped by an undercover police agent while shooting video casually, like any foreign tourist would, and especially since it was also the first time I was shooting video in the country and using digital cameras or digicam instead of the analogue still cameras, while my nephew, Shahreza was driving in our rented Ford Focus along the road in Islington in London. We had just come to the city after six o’clock to escape the congestion charge of eight pounds, from Stevenage where we were staying at a Malaysian friend’s house.
We pulled to the curb so we could go to the Turkish halal restaurant to buy dinner before moving on to the city center to go to Trafalgar square to shoot more video and do some sketches.
The woman of Italian descent was decent and cordial so Shah and I were able to experience being in Britain this way.
The woman informed her superiors and a short while later a van of policemen all wearing bullet-proof vests came to ask us some questions which I answered, and after thirty minutes we were allowed to go on.
We went to the Turkish restaurant and bought our packed dinners and sat on the stairs on the curb to eat before driving on to the city center where we were lucky to get a parking spot near it, so we did not have to walk a long distance to Trafalgar square.
We remained there for about an hour while I shot video and also did some sketches of the buildings and area.
Later that night we returned to Stevenage and lost our way until we got the direction from some local Arab men whom we met by the roadside who showed us the way out of the city to return to Stevenage.
I am not complaining what the officers were doing as it was their job. I had been stopped at other international airports and let go after they found I was a bona fide traveler, and my passport shows how many countries I had visited and where I had gone to earlier.
And we returned to London together with our friend, Ajar Mohammed the next day by taking the train so we could go to few places in the city and in the ‘tube’ stations where I shot more video and did more sketches.
I wouldn’t know if I look suspicious to the local security officers for doing this.
I find it worrisome that the local security authorities would want to suspect foreigners who entered the country and who wanted to do surveillance work in order to harm the people there, as the job could be easily be done by the locals themselves.
Perhaps they should blame Tony Blair for creating such a fear in them for which they have to pay a huge price for it feeling insecure just because Tony wanted to be George W Bush’s poodle, and all of the United Kingdom has to bear the consequences.
I also shot video and took still photos and shot video and did sketches at Stansted airport while waiting for the flight to return to Malaysia. This airport reminds me of the Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Sepang, Malaysia.
Some of my main daily activities of shooting video, taking still shots and sketching may now become a crime in England. It was not in the past.
And what do the speakers say at the Speakers’ Corner at the edge of Hyde Park these days? Are they still as vocal and vociferous as the earlier generation of speakers were?
I did not get to see how they have become so or tamed because we did not get to go there. Maybe in my next trip to the city I will make every effort to re-visit the Speakers’ Corner just to see how the present generation of speakers have changed and what they are talking about these days if they are as witty and smart as some of those whom I had heard and performed there in the past.
(NOTE: Because of its length, this article is cut into two parts, with the second part appearing in four days’ time.)
THE MOST UNUSUAL THING ABOUT THIS DOCUMENTARY ON TUNKU IS THAT IS USES PHOTOS FROM THE PERSONAL COLLECTION OF SYED ABDULLAH AND TAPED INTERVIEW I DID WITH TUNKU IN 1986.
IF THIS IS NOT THE CASE, THEN THIS DOCUMENTARY ON TUNKU WON’T BE ANY DIFFERENT THAN THOSE THAT THE OTHERS COULD COME UP WITH.
IT IS NOT EASY FOR MANY PEOPLE TO APPRECIATE THIS SINCE THEY WILL THINK THESE ARE ORDINARY MATERIALS ON TUNKU BECAUSE THEY LOOK LIKE I HAD GOT THEM FROM THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES OR THE TUNKU ABDUL RAHMAN MEMORIAL. THEY ARE NOT.
AND ON THE FIRST DAY OF FILMING AT THE RESIDENCY ON 20 JUNE, I DISCOVERED TUNKU’S SAFE WHICH HAD NOT BEEN OPENED FOR MORE THAN 30 YEARS.
I INFORMED THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE PAPERS BUT ONLY THE MALAY MAIL CHOSE TO CARRY IT BY PUTTING IT ON THE FRONT-PAGE, MUCH TO MY SURPRISE.
IT CREATED A MEDIA SENSATION WITH RAIS YATIM AND HIS SENIOR OFFICIALS AT HIS MINISTRY GETTING WIDE COVERAGE IN THE MEDIA FOR DAYS, ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY ATTENDED THE FUNCTION TO OPEN THE SAFE WHERE THEY DISCOVERED 44 ITEMS BELONGING TO TUNKU.
What if the safe also contained papers and notes by Tunku which are scandalous in nature? Fortunately – or unfortunately, that didn’t happen.
I was wondering what Tunku might want to say of his successor, Tun Razak, Mahathir Mohammed and some others…as his parting shots.
However, I was not invited to attend the function, so I did not get to shoot it to include in the documentary.
In fact, I could have gone to the residency even if I was informed at short notice of the function, because I was nearby and driving to the national blood center where I went to donate blood.
So is this going to be a new documentary on Tunku like no other? It is. And the public will be able to see how it is so in February next year when it is expected to be broadcast on television.
* * * * * * *
This was my return trip to London and England in 18 years.
The flight on AirAsia X from LCCT in Sepang here to Stansted Airport outside of London was smooth taking about 13 hours. Shahreza and I were lucky to be given the wide seats in the front row where the leg room was spacious. And I was also able to shoot footage of the skies from my seat which I could also use in the documentary.
It proved to be a good choice to fly on this airline since the airport they land at is north of London and closer to Cambridge and Nottingham so it was very convenient. We escaped the huge crowds at Heathrow had we chosen to fly on another airline that lands there.
In all we were in England for ten days, and this was the first time I was able to travel quite extensively around the southern part of England in a rented car which was also very pleasant as we were able to go anywhere we wanted to. The trips were made more pleasant when we were able to use the SatNav (For Satellite navigation) or Global Positioning System (GPS) gadget which we borrowed from a friend, Ajar Mohammed’s husband, Colin.
And barely two days after I arrived in Malaysia, I was pleasantly surprised to receive a letter from Buckingham Palace thanking me for sending a copy of The Residency Years book to the Queen, who was a dear friend of Tunku’s.
Ajar, Shahreza and I were outside of the palace barely a few days earlier where we could see a large crowd of guests amongst the army veterans who were invited to attend a garden party given by the Queen.
The last time I was only in London for less than two days. I made a brief stopover on my flight back from Lisboa, Portugal where I was invited to participate in the Figuera da Foz Film Festival where my film, ‘Seman’ (A Lost Hero) was shown where it was nominated for best film. This was probably the first time a Melayu (Malay) film from Malaysia was shown in this festival.
And on 4 and 29 January, 2010, this same film will be shown at the Pompidou Cultural Center in Paris.
I was stopped by an undercover police agent while shooting video casually, like any foreign tourist would, and especially since it was also the first time I was shooting video in the country and using digital cameras or digicam instead of the analogue still cameras, while my nephew, Shahreza was driving in our rented Ford Focus along the road in Islington in London. We had just come to the city after six o’clock to escape the congestion charge of eight pounds, from Stevenage where we were staying at a Malaysian friend’s house.
We pulled to the curb so we could go to the Turkish halal restaurant to buy dinner before moving on to the city center to go to Trafalgar square to shoot more video and do some sketches.
The woman of Italian descent was decent and cordial so Shah and I were able to experience being in Britain this way.
The woman informed her superiors and a short while later a van of policemen all wearing bullet-proof vests came to ask us some questions which I answered, and after thirty minutes we were allowed to go on.
We went to the Turkish restaurant and bought our packed dinners and sat on the stairs on the curb to eat before driving on to the city center where we were lucky to get a parking spot near it, so we did not have to walk a long distance to Trafalgar square.
We remained there for about an hour while I shot video and also did some sketches of the buildings and area.
Later that night we returned to Stevenage and lost our way until we got the direction from some local Arab men whom we met by the roadside who showed us the way out of the city to return to Stevenage.
I am not complaining what the officers were doing as it was their job. I had been stopped at other international airports and let go after they found I was a bona fide traveler, and my passport shows how many countries I had visited and where I had gone to earlier.
And we returned to London together with our friend, Ajar Mohammed the next day by taking the train so we could go to few places in the city and in the ‘tube’ stations where I shot more video and did more sketches.
I wouldn’t know if I look suspicious to the local security officers for doing this.
I find it worrisome that the local security authorities would want to suspect foreigners who entered the country and who wanted to do surveillance work in order to harm the people there, as the job could be easily be done by the locals themselves.
Perhaps they should blame Tony Blair for creating such a fear in them for which they have to pay a huge price for it feeling insecure just because Tony wanted to be George W Bush’s poodle, and all of the United Kingdom has to bear the consequences.
I also shot video and took still photos and shot video and did sketches at Stansted airport while waiting for the flight to return to Malaysia. This airport reminds me of the Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Sepang, Malaysia.
Some of my main daily activities of shooting video, taking still shots and sketching may now become a crime in England. It was not in the past.
And what do the speakers say at the Speakers’ Corner at the edge of Hyde Park these days? Are they still as vocal and vociferous as the earlier generation of speakers were?
I did not get to see how they have become so or tamed because we did not get to go there. Maybe in my next trip to the city I will make every effort to re-visit the Speakers’ Corner just to see how the present generation of speakers have changed and what they are talking about these days if they are as witty and smart as some of those whom I had heard and performed there in the past.
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