Block B

A building becomes a living painting. The concrete homes and contradicting soundscapes frame the lives of an expatriate Indian community in Malaysia. “The grand scale of an aging modernist apartment block in the Brickfields neighbourhood of Kuala Lumpur sets the stage for a macroscopic analysis of the quotidian activities of its inhabitants. Seemingly trivial actions assume significant meaning as lives entwine between the rigid lines of the building. Observational cinema at its extreme, ‘Block B’ reveals much about the social structure of the Indian working class in the outskirts of a Malaysian metropolis.” – Alex Rogalski, Toronto International Film Festival Tamil with English subtitles. Awards: Best Canadian Short Film, Toronto International Film Festival 2008; Best Short Film, Festival Internacional de Cine de Mar del Plata, 2008; one of the Top Ten Canadian Short Films of 2008 by the Toronto International Film Festival Group. “Chris Chong Chan Fui paints a gorgeously formalist portrait of humanity with one masterfully restrained long shot. Glimpses and echoes of distinct and complex lives build a thoughtful meditation on our place in the world.” – Gisèle Gordon (panelist, Canada’s Top Ten) Director’s Statement: The area of Brickfields (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia) is the setting of BLOCK B. The area is a major local transportation hub (mono-rails, trains, and buses), but also an area of red-light prostitution, blind massage parlours, Indian cafés, temples, churches and mosques alike. This is a place where the overriding sounds of the azan (Muslim call to prayer) coming from the mosque compete with the chimes rising from the pooja (Hindu prayers). In effect, this mélange of sounds mimic the disparate voices that comprise the country’s own religious complexities and insecurities. Brickfields is also known as the ‘Indian’ part of town because of the large population of expatriate Indians working in Kuala Lumpur (KL) in IT, engineering, architecture, etc. for 2-4 year contracts. The husbands who are hired to work in KL bring their families along. Their wives are usually highly educated, but become housewives in an effort to support the husband’s careers. It is common that the wives rarely leave the apartment compound. Only venturing outside with their husbands, and sometimes with their neighbours. Usually they visit others within the same floor, or from the floors above/below. But they rarely venture far. In a country that highly discriminates against Indian-Malaysians, these residents fall between the cracks because they are expatriate, middle-upper class, highly educated, brought to KL to work. They are self-contained within their own compound, looking at the troubles of Malaysia and the Indian-Malaysians from a distance even though they live in the same area. It’s a community within a community. A detail within a detail. Connected, but distant. I wanted the stagnant shot of the building to expresses this detail. We are never given the luxury of seeing the face. We too are at arm’s length from the emotions we expect from the projection. We have to find another way to connect to the picture. The colours of the day offer stillness. The lights of the night offer a dynamic. The sound moves from the environment outside the compound, then into the details of a certain resident of the compound. It reflects the ins and outs of how the residents interact with and without the community around them. With one unmoving image of this cement building, the view initially becomes an overwhelming mass of squares and rectangles. Slots and pockets of closed-off lines, linked to other grids and to other squared-off shapes. Much time is required to watch the many details of this singular shot. Moreover, much time is required to get a small sense of how the residents walk through these lines.