I was on a bus in Connecticut in August when Penny texted me from the airport in Sydney to tell me Yasmin Ahmad had died. Actually, Penny’s text asked if the filmmaker whose blog I followed was named Yasmin, and if so, she had died of a heart attack. I’ve never seen any of her films, unless you count a single extraordinary community service announcement:
But the blog – and its comments section – opened a window for me onto a lively, intelligent, warm, exuberant and sometimes embattled creative milieu in Kuala Lumpur.
The Trash and Treasure segment on today’s Movie Time on Radio National was about Yasmin’s film Gubra. And Peter Mares referred us to links on the Movie Time web site. Naturally, I followed them up, including one to a beautiful Tribute to Yasmin page, on which we get to see her on the set of a short film, Chocolate. Sadly I couldn’t find a version of Chocolate with English subtitles, and the film remains a mystery to me, but The Making of is lovely:
I don’t know if any of her films have been screened here. I hope we do get to see them.
Me fail? I fly! 