FILMING ‘THE RESIDENCY YEARS’ – A DOCUMENTARY ON TUNKU ABDUL RAHMAN IN ENGLAND IN JULY, 2009…AND RETURNING TO ENGLAND IN 18 YEARS, PART II.
By Mansor Puteh
So I was quite delighted to be able to return to Britain after an absence of so long. I was going elsewhere during the period I did not return to England, so I did not miss going to the country that much especially since I had been there six times before.
I was quite delighted with the outcome of the production of this documentary.
And what is more delighting is for me to see the documentary looking like a home video production but because of the materials I have and the fact that it is on someone like Tunku is what makes it even more special.
What if it were of Gandhi? Would this documentary be able to capture the imagination of a wider international crowd?
So imagine if there are similar materials on Gandhi or any of the earlier American presidents that are presented in the same manner, surely they would become exclusive productions.
But since this documentary is on Tunku then there are many even in Malaysia who will think not too highly of it.
Has Tunku been forgotten? Even the ‘tahlil’ prayers that was held in conjunction with his death last 6 December was not well attended. So few of his remaining relatives were present. And most of those who were there were from amongst the staff of his memorial, Arkib Negara and ministry of information, communication and culture (KPKK).
And write-ups on Tunku are sparse these days; those that are written are mostly on things which had been written or described by those who knew him as prime minister.
There are still not many works related to him either in the form of books, exhibitions, documentaries and least of all feature films for the international market.
So the documentary I have just produced is definitely the first of its kind on the first prime minister of Malaysia and our Father of Independence or ‘Merdeka’ to be made, using most materials sourced from the family album of Syed Abdullah Barakhbah, who is Tunku’s nephew whom he adopted as a child.
There can be no documentary of this type and nature simply because most of the materials I used in it are sourced from some of his immediate family members which the public does not have any access to.
Yet, this does not register well with the media in the country who chose to highlight many other unimportant things which they like.
This documentary reveals the taped interview I did with Tunku at his residence in Bukit Tunku in 1986, so for the first time the public will be able to hear Tunku again, in his own words and voice, talking about many things, including his interests in film production for which he would later be involved with three of them; of his experience going to England at a tender age of 16 and studying in Little Stukeley, Cambridge and London in 1919, 1920s and 1940s.
I was fortunate to be able to discover all the three buildings where Tunku had lodged at, and met the owner of The Old Rectory, Carmilla Payne who also appeared in the documentary explaining about the building she and her husband had bought three years earlier when it was a ramshackle building destined for demolition.
This couple was insistent on purchasing it and was able to convince the local authorities not to demolish it and after they won the battle to save the building, they set out to refurbish it to its almost original condition.
It was a delight to be able to stand outside of the building and from afar as our rented Ford Focus was approaching the building which passes through a narrow village road, I could feel excitement building inside of me as I continued to shoot with my camcorder.
It didn’t look as tall as it was in the photo. It didn’t look too old either.
But I was not concerned about the physical aspects of the building as long as it was still there and standing. But what I was most concerned about at that time was how Tunku, as a young boy had also been there to live there for three years getting tutorship from a Catholic priest until he managed to obtain a place to study at St. Catharine’s College of Cambridge University. It was not a mean feat for a Melayu (Or Malay as the English say it) to be able to get to such a university.
No Malaysian had gone to this length to find the buildings where Tunku had lodged at. This is not surprising even considering the large number of Malaysians who are residents of the country with some who have been there for many decades, and living not too far away from any of them.
But what I was most surprised was how the few correspondents of Malaysian publications who are in London who had not made any effort to locate them so they could also write about them. They probably did not know much about Tunku enough to be aware of where he had lodged at when he was a student in the country earlier.
I was intrigued when I found some addresses and names of the buildings where Tunku had lodged at from his biographies, essays and notes. I was not worried if the buildings had been demolished; all I wanted to do was to find their locations and see whatever that was left of the buildings.
To my pleasant surprise, all the three buildings were still around and standing like they had been waiting for us to come and greet them.
This is England, I thought, where the authorities make sure that old buildings are preserved and maintained for continued use. It is unlike in Malaysia, where buildings are razed to the ground in less than two or three decades when they were found to be ugly.
In England and as in many other developed countries, old buildings are beautiful, while in Malaysia they are a nuisance and have to be taken down.
It was also supposed to be early summer and I was braced for some hot weather, but it was not to be; the weather was fine with temperature quite low that I had to wear the brown leather jacket I had brought from Malaysia, otherwise, it would feel chilly after a while especially when one is outside and is exposed to the weather and when it is raining like it happened on many days, when it poured for long periods of time.
But coming to Cambridge for the time was an interesting for me. I got an email from Oxford University when I was there, asking me to complete my application to work on my doctorate there which I did not.
I might want to seriously consider working on a doctorate once I’m done with my feature film, ‘Malaysian Snow’ which I want to do in Nottingham mostly. There are only a few scenes in Malaysia. I hope I can get to do this film in the spring of next year.
We went to St. Catharine’s College where Tunku had studied at from 1922 to 1926 as the records showed. I shot some video footage and still photos of the college and also went to the toilet where I told myself how at an earlier time, Tunku, too, might have gone there to relieve himself.
Not so far away was the dining hall with wooden tables lined up in neat rows and there were the some of the staff of the hall who were packing up like they just had given meals to the students. But it was now in the semester break…
It also surprised me how I was at the university last July and in the year when they were celebrating their 800th anniversary, too. I found this out when I saw some banners hanging from lampposts outside.
I want to try and come up with a special photo collage exhibition called, ‘Cambridge 800 – and Tunku’ to commemorate this. I did not think about doing this when I was at the university but only after I returned so I did not take too many photos at other places other than at St. Catharine’s and King’s College and some other places on campus as well as the city.
The City of Cambridge itself is fairly large with a population of 600,000 people who were mostly white. And the buildings are mostly those that had been around for centuries.
The other place in Cambridge which was my main focus was the house in Grange Road where Tunku had rented a room at a house at. I was delighted and quite overwhelmed when I saw the house still standing.
We shot some video and still shots and an English woman came out of the house to enquire what we were doing and I explained, so she knew. I then showed the photo of the room where Tunku had lodged at and she said it belongs to another tenant of the building which has now been divided into three owners since it is a large house.
We returned to the same house few times during our three-day stay in Cambridge to see it at different times in the day and also night which ended fairly late at around ten o’clock.
And not too far away from the house is a football club belonging to the university. So I supposed Tunku had spent many hours playing football with his teammates representing their university.
It is not often that we find Malaysians studying abroad being able to represent their university in any sporting event, so what Tunku had done to get into the football team of Cambridge was certainly commendable.
Ajar came from her house in Hitchin and met us at the Carlton Lodge where we stayed and from Cambridge, the three of us went to Little Stuekeley where we found The Old Rectory where Tunku had stayed at when he first arrived in England in 1919, when he was barely 16 years old.
The Little Stukeley is more than one hour drive from Cambridge. We left Cambridge after lunch and got there easily, driving along a rural road which was narrow and quiet. We had it for most of the time.
However, we drove past the village and had to turn around and got some direction from some people along the way before finding an elderly woman who was with her dog who showed us where The Old Rectory was. It was the tallest building in the village but it was hidden by the tall trees which were shady and green.
If I were to produce a feature film on Tunku here in 1919, I could have easily done the scene here without doing many renovations on it, as it looks quite dated, except for the few vehicles that were parked outside of each of the houses here.
We returned to Cambridge and Ajar took her car to drive back to her house in Hitchin, while Shahreza and I joined her and husband, Colin the next day and putting up in their other house in Stevenage.
The three of us went to London on 22 July where we met Yunus Raiss who was a student at the Malayan Teachers’ Training College in Kirkby near Liverpool in the 1950s and had met Tunku when he came with his entourage in February, 1956 where Tunku announced the success of their discussion with the British foreign office at Lancaster House on the impending independence of Malaya which he made to the students on 6 February, 1956, or two days before his 53rd birthday.
I did a long interview with Tunku in the main hall of Dewan Malaysia (Malaysia Hall) in Bayswater. This was the first time I visited the Hall after it was moved from Brynston Square where Yunus lives.
After the interview we had lunch at the restaurant in the basement of the Hall and went our own ways, with us going to Barkston Gardens in Earls Court to see if we can still find the building where Tunku had lodged in the 1940s when he returned to England to do his Law. We did, and it was not too far away from the Earls Court station.
The building was closed and there was no one whom we could ask concerning the house. I only shot some video footage and stills which I am using in the documentary.
From there we went to Buckingham Palace and saw a crowd of people in the road in front of the palace that had been blocked to traffic. There was a garden party given by Queen Elizabeth to a group of war veterans who could be seen walking out of the palace gates with their chest bedecked with medals. Some had to ride in wheelchairs.
We then went to the British Library where we met my former course mate at ITM and her husband who were in London for the birth of their first grandchild. We then moved to a café because the one outside of the library was closed as it was already too late.
This is London, and 18 years after my last trip there. It does not look any different than the London I saw then, except that we were in the Post-911 Era of the city and country.
There seems to be more non-Caucasians in the city and they are present everywhere, including in the more fancy areas.
What will London especially look like in 18 years from now? Will it also have its first Mayor who is not Caucasian but from amongst the others?
And what else will I be able to find on Tunku when I return to England the next time? What else did he leave behind in England that he did not tell us and wrote in his essays?
So I was quite delighted to be able to return to Britain after an absence of so long. I was going elsewhere during the period I did not return to England, so I did not miss going to the country that much especially since I had been there six times before.
I was quite delighted with the outcome of the production of this documentary.
And what is more delighting is for me to see the documentary looking like a home video production but because of the materials I have and the fact that it is on someone like Tunku is what makes it even more special.
What if it were of Gandhi? Would this documentary be able to capture the imagination of a wider international crowd?
So imagine if there are similar materials on Gandhi or any of the earlier American presidents that are presented in the same manner, surely they would become exclusive productions.
But since this documentary is on Tunku then there are many even in Malaysia who will think not too highly of it.
Has Tunku been forgotten? Even the ‘tahlil’ prayers that was held in conjunction with his death last 6 December was not well attended. So few of his remaining relatives were present. And most of those who were there were from amongst the staff of his memorial, Arkib Negara and ministry of information, communication and culture (KPKK).
And write-ups on Tunku are sparse these days; those that are written are mostly on things which had been written or described by those who knew him as prime minister.
There are still not many works related to him either in the form of books, exhibitions, documentaries and least of all feature films for the international market.
So the documentary I have just produced is definitely the first of its kind on the first prime minister of Malaysia and our Father of Independence or ‘Merdeka’ to be made, using most materials sourced from the family album of Syed Abdullah Barakhbah, who is Tunku’s nephew whom he adopted as a child.
There can be no documentary of this type and nature simply because most of the materials I used in it are sourced from some of his immediate family members which the public does not have any access to.
Yet, this does not register well with the media in the country who chose to highlight many other unimportant things which they like.
This documentary reveals the taped interview I did with Tunku at his residence in Bukit Tunku in 1986, so for the first time the public will be able to hear Tunku again, in his own words and voice, talking about many things, including his interests in film production for which he would later be involved with three of them; of his experience going to England at a tender age of 16 and studying in Little Stukeley, Cambridge and London in 1919, 1920s and 1940s.
I was fortunate to be able to discover all the three buildings where Tunku had lodged at, and met the owner of The Old Rectory, Carmilla Payne who also appeared in the documentary explaining about the building she and her husband had bought three years earlier when it was a ramshackle building destined for demolition.
This couple was insistent on purchasing it and was able to convince the local authorities not to demolish it and after they won the battle to save the building, they set out to refurbish it to its almost original condition.
It was a delight to be able to stand outside of the building and from afar as our rented Ford Focus was approaching the building which passes through a narrow village road, I could feel excitement building inside of me as I continued to shoot with my camcorder.
It didn’t look as tall as it was in the photo. It didn’t look too old either.
But I was not concerned about the physical aspects of the building as long as it was still there and standing. But what I was most concerned about at that time was how Tunku, as a young boy had also been there to live there for three years getting tutorship from a Catholic priest until he managed to obtain a place to study at St. Catharine’s College of Cambridge University. It was not a mean feat for a Melayu (Or Malay as the English say it) to be able to get to such a university.
No Malaysian had gone to this length to find the buildings where Tunku had lodged at. This is not surprising even considering the large number of Malaysians who are residents of the country with some who have been there for many decades, and living not too far away from any of them.
But what I was most surprised was how the few correspondents of Malaysian publications who are in London who had not made any effort to locate them so they could also write about them. They probably did not know much about Tunku enough to be aware of where he had lodged at when he was a student in the country earlier.
I was intrigued when I found some addresses and names of the buildings where Tunku had lodged at from his biographies, essays and notes. I was not worried if the buildings had been demolished; all I wanted to do was to find their locations and see whatever that was left of the buildings.
To my pleasant surprise, all the three buildings were still around and standing like they had been waiting for us to come and greet them.
This is England, I thought, where the authorities make sure that old buildings are preserved and maintained for continued use. It is unlike in Malaysia, where buildings are razed to the ground in less than two or three decades when they were found to be ugly.
In England and as in many other developed countries, old buildings are beautiful, while in Malaysia they are a nuisance and have to be taken down.
It was also supposed to be early summer and I was braced for some hot weather, but it was not to be; the weather was fine with temperature quite low that I had to wear the brown leather jacket I had brought from Malaysia, otherwise, it would feel chilly after a while especially when one is outside and is exposed to the weather and when it is raining like it happened on many days, when it poured for long periods of time.
But coming to Cambridge for the time was an interesting for me. I got an email from Oxford University when I was there, asking me to complete my application to work on my doctorate there which I did not.
I might want to seriously consider working on a doctorate once I’m done with my feature film, ‘Malaysian Snow’ which I want to do in Nottingham mostly. There are only a few scenes in Malaysia. I hope I can get to do this film in the spring of next year.
We went to St. Catharine’s College where Tunku had studied at from 1922 to 1926 as the records showed. I shot some video footage and still photos of the college and also went to the toilet where I told myself how at an earlier time, Tunku, too, might have gone there to relieve himself.
Not so far away was the dining hall with wooden tables lined up in neat rows and there were the some of the staff of the hall who were packing up like they just had given meals to the students. But it was now in the semester break…
It also surprised me how I was at the university last July and in the year when they were celebrating their 800th anniversary, too. I found this out when I saw some banners hanging from lampposts outside.
I want to try and come up with a special photo collage exhibition called, ‘Cambridge 800 – and Tunku’ to commemorate this. I did not think about doing this when I was at the university but only after I returned so I did not take too many photos at other places other than at St. Catharine’s and King’s College and some other places on campus as well as the city.
The City of Cambridge itself is fairly large with a population of 600,000 people who were mostly white. And the buildings are mostly those that had been around for centuries.
The other place in Cambridge which was my main focus was the house in Grange Road where Tunku had rented a room at a house at. I was delighted and quite overwhelmed when I saw the house still standing.
We shot some video and still shots and an English woman came out of the house to enquire what we were doing and I explained, so she knew. I then showed the photo of the room where Tunku had lodged at and she said it belongs to another tenant of the building which has now been divided into three owners since it is a large house.
We returned to the same house few times during our three-day stay in Cambridge to see it at different times in the day and also night which ended fairly late at around ten o’clock.
And not too far away from the house is a football club belonging to the university. So I supposed Tunku had spent many hours playing football with his teammates representing their university.
It is not often that we find Malaysians studying abroad being able to represent their university in any sporting event, so what Tunku had done to get into the football team of Cambridge was certainly commendable.
Ajar came from her house in Hitchin and met us at the Carlton Lodge where we stayed and from Cambridge, the three of us went to Little Stuekeley where we found The Old Rectory where Tunku had stayed at when he first arrived in England in 1919, when he was barely 16 years old.
The Little Stukeley is more than one hour drive from Cambridge. We left Cambridge after lunch and got there easily, driving along a rural road which was narrow and quiet. We had it for most of the time.
However, we drove past the village and had to turn around and got some direction from some people along the way before finding an elderly woman who was with her dog who showed us where The Old Rectory was. It was the tallest building in the village but it was hidden by the tall trees which were shady and green.
If I were to produce a feature film on Tunku here in 1919, I could have easily done the scene here without doing many renovations on it, as it looks quite dated, except for the few vehicles that were parked outside of each of the houses here.
We returned to Cambridge and Ajar took her car to drive back to her house in Hitchin, while Shahreza and I joined her and husband, Colin the next day and putting up in their other house in Stevenage.
The three of us went to London on 22 July where we met Yunus Raiss who was a student at the Malayan Teachers’ Training College in Kirkby near Liverpool in the 1950s and had met Tunku when he came with his entourage in February, 1956 where Tunku announced the success of their discussion with the British foreign office at Lancaster House on the impending independence of Malaya which he made to the students on 6 February, 1956, or two days before his 53rd birthday.
I did a long interview with Tunku in the main hall of Dewan Malaysia (Malaysia Hall) in Bayswater. This was the first time I visited the Hall after it was moved from Brynston Square where Yunus lives.
After the interview we had lunch at the restaurant in the basement of the Hall and went our own ways, with us going to Barkston Gardens in Earls Court to see if we can still find the building where Tunku had lodged in the 1940s when he returned to England to do his Law. We did, and it was not too far away from the Earls Court station.
The building was closed and there was no one whom we could ask concerning the house. I only shot some video footage and stills which I am using in the documentary.
From there we went to Buckingham Palace and saw a crowd of people in the road in front of the palace that had been blocked to traffic. There was a garden party given by Queen Elizabeth to a group of war veterans who could be seen walking out of the palace gates with their chest bedecked with medals. Some had to ride in wheelchairs.
We then went to the British Library where we met my former course mate at ITM and her husband who were in London for the birth of their first grandchild. We then moved to a café because the one outside of the library was closed as it was already too late.
This is London, and 18 years after my last trip there. It does not look any different than the London I saw then, except that we were in the Post-911 Era of the city and country.
There seems to be more non-Caucasians in the city and they are present everywhere, including in the more fancy areas.
What will London especially look like in 18 years from now? Will it also have its first Mayor who is not Caucasian but from amongst the others?
And what else will I be able to find on Tunku when I return to England the next time? What else did he leave behind in England that he did not tell us and wrote in his essays?
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