Friday April 6, 2007
Home, sweet home
Stories by LI EE KEE
The Bird House delves into people’s changing perspective of their homes and conservation.
The conflict between two brothers who have different designs on their ancestral home forms the premise of The Bird House.
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Khoo Eng Yow (left) and cinematographer Albert Hue on the set of The Bird House. |
His brother, the ill-mannered Hua, is drawn by the promise of riches obtained by venturing into the birds’ nest business. But, first, he has to convert the house into a breeding ground for swallows.
However, neither one has sought approval from their ageing father, who seems oblivious to what is going on.
The 97-minute movie is the feature length debut by Khoo Eng Yow, who also co-wrote, produced and edited the film. An engineer by training, the Taiping-native made his first foray into filmmaking with the short film, Railway Steps (2002), which won the bronze medal at the 7th Malaysia Video Awards.
Khoo explained that he wanted to portray people’s changing perspective of their homes and conservation. In his opinion, there is no easy solution to the matter.
“Conservation or economic development? As you’ll see in the movie, there is no straightforward answer. Using the family, I wanted to show how people and society view and approach conservation.
“Keat spoke of preserving heritage and culture and decided to turn the house he grew up in into an antique shop. But he forgot that once he does that, the house is no longer a home but a place to do business.”
Prior to filming, Khoo had checked out Malacca, Penang and Ipoh, Perak for possible locations for the movie. He eventually settled on what he said was “the most obvious choice” – Malacca.
“The houses were the oldest, constructed by the Dutch 400 years ago. And here, the contrast between economic development and conservation is evident.”
The movie, costing a modest RM50,000, has been making its rounds at the international film festival circuits. It made its world premiere at the Tokyo International Film Festival 2006 and recently, the Fribourg International Film Festival.
According to Khoo, the movie has generated interest among foreign audiences, who are especially curious as to how Malaysians can speak so many languages.
The movie is mainly in Hokkien and Mandarin with a smattering of English and Bahasa Malaysia.
Khoo took two-and-a-half years to complete the movie. He said that for a first time effort, he was satisfied with the result.
“The next one will be better. With The Bird House, I’ve achieved my dream. If at the end of the movie, you spend even a couple of minutes thinking about the movie, the issue of conservation, I would have accomplished my objective.”
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