When a society fails to pay attention to a tragedy, it is more likely such tragedies will be repeated.
This idea inspired Malaysian director Lim Kean-hian (林峻賢) when he decided to focus his short film Langit Budak Biru on the plight of LGBT students in Malaysian schools, even though he knew the film’s topic would be controversial in the conservative Muslim country.
Lim said in a recent interview that he was “extremely thrilled” to learn he had been nominated for Best Live Action Short Film at this year’s Golden Horse Awards
He sees the accolade as a way for the film to reach a larger audience.
Lim also hopes that a wider audience for the film could help raise awareness about LGBT issues in Malaysia, and foster more inclusivity and empathy for this minority group.
Langit Budak Biru, which translates into “sky boy blue,” follows two teenage boys, Abu and Nuwas, who are roommates at a boarding school.
The two are on extreme ends of the school’s social hierarchy: Abu is popular and gets good grades, while Nuwas is constantly bullied.
The film follows the emotional and physical struggles the two teenagers face and invites viewers to consider the wider social and cultural implications of their dilemmas.
Lim said his inspiration for the film came from a tragic incident that took place in Penang, a state in northwest Malaysia.
In 2017, an 18-year-old student of Indian descent studying in Penang, who had been bullied at school for being effeminate, was brutally beaten by five schoolmates and died of his injuries.
Despite the gravity of the incident, Malaysian media paid very little attention to it, Lim said.
He contrasted the indifference of Malaysian society to the boy’s death to the death of Yeh Yung-chih (葉永鋕), a Taiwanese junior-high school student who was bullied for similar reasons, and whose death prompted the Gender Equity Education Act (性別平等教育法) to be passed.
Lim hopes the film will inspire others to make films on similar topics, thus creating ripples of change.
Langit Budak Biru is not the first film Lim has made that deals with controversial social issues. His third short film, the award-winning Never Was The Shade, touched on ethnic and religious tensions in Malaysia.
Lim said his focus on social issues is likely due to his education in Taiwan.
He received his undergraduate degree in film at Taipei’s Shih Hsin University, and later earned a post-graduate degree at Taipei National University of the Arts.
“A lot of Taiwanese films and short films focus on social issues, and I think I was very influenced by that,” Lim said.
Many of his professors also focus on such issues in their films, he added.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,