Speaking for the planet
> Environmental short Mr Garbage, about pollution on Pulau Ketam, is Malaysia’s entry in the Picture This Festival film competition
IN JANUARY this year, Sony Pictures Television Networks (SPTN), in partnership with the United Nations Foundation, called for entries for the Picture This Festival for the Planet, a short film competition for filmmakers to showcase a positive vision for the future of the planet.
Malaysian filmmaker Mark Lee is one of two finalists in the Asia region for this competition. The other is Singapore’s Wally Tham.
Lee and Tham will join six other regional finalists from around the world for the final round of the competition in Los Angeles on July 31.
The festival will include a day of networking with industry leaders, a workshop with social impact partners at the Sony Pictures Studio lot, and the screening of the regional finalists’ films, after which the grand prize winner will be announced.
Lee’s short film Mr Garbage tells the story of electrician Chua Hock Boon, who together with environmentalist Agnes Loh Keat Geok, work tirelessly to recycle the mountains of garbage that have accumulated for generations in their hometown of Pulau Ketam, a small fishing village on an island located off the coast of Port Klang in Selangor.
The film was produced by HUG projects, a digital storytelling platform with a focus on environmental subjects that is founded by Lee and his coproducer, KitLing Chin.
Lee met Chin at Universiti Putra Malayia, where Lee is currently doing his PhD. At the time, Chin was a researcher at the university.
The two discovered they shared a mutual passion for the environment, which drove them to start HUG.
Their first documentary was about Frederick Walker, a landscape designer once responsible for the devastation of forests, but who decided to try to undo the damage to the environment.
Aside from Mr Garbage, HUG also submitted a second short for the festival called Normala, about a housewife trying to save the local mangrove forests.
“Our concept for HUG’s documentaries are ordinary people doing extraordinary things for the environment,” said Lee. “Research takes the longest time, [especially] to craft and build a story. Shooting usually takes about a day.” According to Chin, the idea for Mr Garbage began when they were introduced to Chua by Loh. “He is a very simple man but he was reluctant to talk,” said Lee. “In Pulau Ketam, it is like that. He was the black sheep.”
Essentially, Chua was doing something none of the other villagers were willing to do, and was getting a lot of flack for it.
“It was actually a challenge for him to stand up and speak about his [hometown]. So we appreciate that very, very much.”
Lee said there were a few others doing the same thing, but Chua had been at it for years.
The short was shot in March this year, and took less than two days to complete.
Lee said a lot of production companies have done filming in Pulau Ketam before, and so their presence there was not met with suspicion, although the villagers had no idea what their film was about.
Speaking about the Pulau Ketam garbage situation, Lee said: “The people there have been living like that for the past 50 or 60 years. They never cared to do something about it.”
Chin added: “That place is a mud flat, there is no road or transportation to take out the garbage. They did create a dump site, [but] even though it is large, nothing was recycled.”
Unlike other parts of Malaysia where materials like steel are sold off, here it is just thrown in the dump.
Lee said they wanted to do something to create awareness, and fortunately, the competition was announced around the same time. “It means that someone does care, especially a big organisation like SPTN.”
Following this, Lee and Chin now have plans for HUG to produce full-length documentaries.
For more on Mr Garbage and the festival, log in to www. sonypicturethis.com.