Syukri A. Rahim

Hello there. I haven’t heard from you in awhile now. Look, I know this may sound all too familiar but damn, how have you been?

I’m writing this as somewhat a message to you, indirectly, hoping to reach you. Anyway, let me make this a quick one, so I don’t bore you with another bombing session.

I just want to say that you’ve been a good friend. I really appreciate your brief time spent with me. Though we never really got to peel off each others layers, we somehow got to see each others core. We may not be able to touch them but we saw them through.

To see you grow bigger, smarter and stronger over time really make me amused by you more. I don’t want to cheapen the words I express by repeating it over and over but I do honestly proud of you, friend.

I really hope we get to talk to each other soon. I know it might have been me for us to put a halt on our talks. And I am deeply disappointed for what I’ve done. I really appreciate you.

Our film got the best screenplay award at the BMW SHORTIES 2022. I was never really into or was adjusted to have my name on big screens or on flashy displays. Having to be called on stage to win an award for my writing for the first time was kind of surreal in a way because of how foreign it is to me. To have people coming to me to ask about the work itself and to talk in front of an audience about the pain of the work, it was actually very new.

What was it that it got crowned as the best that night? It was written purely through the excruciating experience and nights I’ve been crying my heart out. The prayers to grant me the peace of mind from this devastating storm thoughts of that person, those people, that place, those traumas and those dreadful claws. I found peace in writing it out. Fictionalising it to fit best my fantasy of romanticising my suffering. My openness to be vulnerable to this piece, to put up a face to have someone else to narrate this film for me, and to hear the reoccurring voice I told myself through the narrations of the film. I pride myself in driving myself through the compass of intuition. The raw primal sense that led this film to exist. To be able to stand next to new faces I’ve never met or knew was an amazing experience. They’re super talented yet so humble.

I want to be seen through my work. I want to bleed myself into my work and be able to show to him, her, and everyone, of how I feel at the moment. My over-exhausting explanation and choice of words are nothing but documentaries. They are very, very realistic, to some extent. But people like fictions. They like made up fantasies of, both, beauty and horrors. The thrill of heightened dramas that cost no one but themselves at heart.

The fact of the matter is that I’m scared. I was never the warrior that I like to think I am. I’m scared of human interactions. To fall into their traps and their beds. Films are my escape to flesh out and examine myself. To navigate the long winding rivers that keep on flowing. To interact and hypothesise my experiments. To understand what I deeply feel in a third person perspective.

It was a rainy night when I wrote the story. I was written in a way how a person would spew the sentences line by line. For me this is my personal note to myself, to my own future experience and a pat on the back.

Maybe the feelings that I felt long time ago, last week or maybe in the future shouldn’t define me. Yes, acknowledging what hurt me is important but for it to be a baggage for me to carry for the whole 200km of a dream I’m chasing after? Is it worth it?

When I was writing it, I had in mind that I was the narrator. By nature, that is how usually a writer would feel when they write something personal. But after having an outsider to go through the dirty lines that are my experiences, I had a second thought about my position in the world of the film. After the film was done, listening to it again and again got me feel that thinking that I might be “Am”.

After watching it for the 1000th time, I realised something. The film itself created this very beautiful poem for me. It told me that I am all the three characters in the film. I am the narrator. I was Am. And I will be Lee. It’s more like a lesson, a memory and also a warning of what I will become.

Filmmaking has always been hard for me. My techniques are still exploring its structure, my approach is still with a dim lamp in a dark cave and my stories are the smallest of atom. I think that is what intrigued me to make more films. To navigate what I feel. To rip open the nesting wasp colony and to be stung over and over again. To feel something. To understand and to learn.

Selaras bahagian selatan

Tegakkanlah paksi norma kompas

Nalurimu hanyalah buatan

Sang Esa untuk dia merampas

Harungi jelmaanNya

Alami Samsaraku

Harumi kata kata

Manis bibir membisu

The facade and front that have been barricaded from the incoming barbarians, not with weapons but questions and nosiness, have been desecrated.

I have committed the sin of Troy. The welcoming nature to be heard and to be comforted by outsiders, raiders in disguise, have left my city in ruins.

The once beautiful city that have been nicknamed by visitors now have became rumours and words of mouth about its ugly interior and flawed design.

I torched the trees, destroyed the garden and trashed the castle complex. But these actions have been done within the bounds of the city walls. For no one to see, for no one to know.

I wish to declare that peace has been made to embrace my catastrophic nature. Like how the field yields gold after the slags have settled, I have sowed my organs and blood with fire for the future harvest. Rich minerals and soil sediments.

Red hot molten stream poured out behind the creature. Tectonic plates rumble, seas shaken. Only by its mere presence.

The creature just came by, looking and observing. Oh how wonderful that it gazed upon the dry patch of land for me to water, the stashed crumbs of my meal that will attract pests and the unapologetic discipline of mine.

阳光见证 ｜ the sun as our witness

Recently we made a film that was solely made to send to a competition, which the theme was “love.malaysia”.

It didn’t intrigue me at first but the more I see how they (the organiser) visualise and fantasise the beauty of those two words, love and malaysia, together, I can’t help but want to participate and try to poke fun at those two words.

I honestly feel like saying “love malaysia” is a bit weird. One can only fully say it wholeheartedly from a benefitting position. Not everyone is treated equally. Not everyone is being able to love equally. Not everyone can have children equally. No one but the benefitting ones.

In this film, we explored the societal pressure and how unfair it is.

I wither and wilt

forever in guilt.

Tell me of the beautiful lakes and ponds you’d take me,

Just the two of us away from them, the fuss and the nosy.

We’d stare the sky under the shady trees, swathed with cicadas,

The blooming flowers compliment the view with breezing waving grass.

No words, just silence in the first few hours of our presence,

subtle watch and smile, missing each other’s essence.

Then we proceed the company with small talks about our interest,

Only to wonder which of the other would profess the word first.

Later we would pause the talk and take our eyes from feasting on our yearning.

The sweet instance turned sour,the clouds usurp the golden light, the weather’s marching.

You’d pull away your hand from the grasp of my two limbs resting on your skin.

I then ask you a question, the familiarity is like where I have been.

The sacred sanctuary wrenched into a grove of secrecy and doubt,

With fear and assumptions of infidelity about us sprout.

You’d curl back, nodding down and sitting with knees clutched in,

But I’d by your side, here place my hand back on your skin.

It has been 300+ days since I updated this blog. It has been 300+ days since I talked to you. It has been 1+ year. It has been ages! How are you? I’m good!

Not really. Of course we feel differently each passing day. But I’ve been good in general? I made a film recently this year, with the help of my friends, I called it 谋杀案 murder case. It sort of encapsulate what I felt since last we talked. Hope you enjoyed it! What do you think of the film?

I felt like the other side of me was consuming me and trying to become one. I don’t think that’s fair, don’t you think? I was spiralling down back then. Somewhere around December of 2020, I did pitch a story / short film called A Slow Descent Together to Singapore International Film Festival (spoiler alert, I didn’t get the grant). It was a bummer obviously. Poured my heart into it. It hits especially hard when you have a huge ego (hope you don’t). However it made me learn a few things. One of it is about an endless cycle.

Right after we sent that proposal / pitch, me and Mary along with other friends created something beautiful together, that is MONSOON21. It’s a syok sendiri compilation of films. I saw your name in the audience. Really appreciate the support! For us nobodies, it felt so good that we managed to be syok sendiri TOGETHER, you know. That is when I made 谋杀案 murder case as a part of my entry. Everyone did their best despite we literally had zero money in our hands. That’s the most valuable thing I’ve learned, to be surrounded with likeminded people. It was very refreshing too!

I’m hoping to get to know more people from the same scene! Maybe you can introduce me to anyone you know! (My bestest attempt at networking, please don’t judge, I’m new!)

I’ve walked out of the path of making film as income by the way. I hope we will be able to meet again when the borders are open to talk about the reason I walked out. As for now, I’m going to put it as personal reason. Also I felt like it was never meant for me to be able to churn ideas like the others could. I’m now comfortable to know that I only write or create with my fragile emotion (as you would say it).

Dear friend,

I will link you up with 谋杀案murder case to you personally. Just hit me up if you want to watch it again.

You know me, I bottle things up and burst out every once a year.

Please write to me soon!

Thank you for listening, you,

anyone,

everyone,

no one.

Love with warmth in cold,

A vivid memory glimpsed before my mind recently as I remember the day I was at the back of the seat, unsure who was at the passenger’s seat, my mother was driving her turquoise sedan, I was not sure to where until we reached there. I could recall badly my feelings but I think I was expecting to buy groceries as we stop by a Giant Hypermarket. Mother asked us to get out of the car and we followed. There was no actual conversation, either it was not really remarkable or Mother didn’t say anything at all. We exited the parking lot. I was 8 or younger. But it should be around that age as we moved to a different state, and the final one, and that car was still there when we moved.

But we then greeted by a taxi. She parked the car at the parking lot of the hypermarket. It was a hypermarket that we used to go when we had money or when Father was around, probably once a month. When we got into the taxi, we all sit quietly. It didn’t hit me until I realized we never got to see the car again ever since.

We never questioned any peculiar things revolving my Mother. She sat quietly by the window side, stoically.

I remember the day we were told by Mother and Father that we were told not to use the water heater ever again, as we only had one at the room downstairs which no one ever slept there. Mother worded the warning out but to followed with Father’s reasoning of news he heard someone got electrocuted by the water heater. We were scared and never wanted to use it, though the fear only stayed for months.

The days of our car got towed in the neighborhood with no Father around, Mother had to endure and beg the repo man to let the extension. Mother had to phone Father, who was away for work, as we were waiting to be sent to school. We didn’t go to the school that day.

To the stoic Mother who laughed at the bank notice over the house’s mortgage payment, Happy Mother’s Day.

-19th May 2020, Syukri A Rahim.