Tokyo Film Festival report of the RIVER OF EXPLODING DURIANS press conference held on the 24th Oct. An excerpt of director Edmund Yeos words. -------------------------------------- Edmund explained, “I do feel strongly about history. A lot of the historical events portrayed in the film are unspoken history that’s not officially in textbooks. They’re not spoken about due to political reasons. So for me personally, I believe a lot in the power of cinema. To some people, movies just might be for entertainment. But for me, I believe that we use cinema to remember the world. So I always believe that cinema is forever. So if I can put all these historical events that are not spoken aloud in this film of mine, would people remember? So this is my intention – to help people remember all these events.” He continued, “For me, I basically wanted to ask questions in my film. I didn’t want to openly complain or condemn things – because I feel that people have been doing that a lot – on facebook. For me it’s real tiring, going online everyday – and you know, it’s just people complaining about the government or people complaining about the opposition. I just want to ask questions. I think it’s a very Malaysian thing that we always complain about things. I think it’s very stupid. I think we should be thinking more. So, I just want to ask questions so we can contemplate. And the reason why I wanted to bring historical events from the past, like the Thai incident, the Filipino incident, is because they were in our neighboring countries and there are some parallels between what happened then and some stuff that happened to us. So, my question is; if we continue doing what we are doing, is history going to repeat itself or should we try something different so we can be more hopeful?” Edmund leaves the questions open for viewers to contemplate.
Posted on: Tue, 28 Oct 2014 16:18:29 +0000
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