Tea time with Kampung Tapir

An interview with See Wee Aw, director of Kampung Tapir

 Is Kampung Tapir city real or imaginary?
Kampung Tapir is a fictional place, but it is inspired by most of the village/town names from Malaysia. Usually the place named after the animal or mines etc due to the various amount of it in the place. There is a place called “Kampung Gajah” means “Elephant Village” but nowadays elephants rarely can be seen in the place. The funny thing is, most of the audience asked me “Where exactly is the Kampung Tapir?” or “Are you originally from Kampung Tapir?”, but in fact, there is no such place.

 How much do you want to develop the question of borders? Will you make further fims on this theme?
I grew up in the state of Johor in Malaysia, it’s not far to the Singapore border, stories of borders always an interest for me to question in a film, I certainly will make more films about it!

 Compromises, aspirations, self-sacrifice, expectations, decisions, why did you want to question the balance between individuality and generosity in relationships?
Although the Kampung Tapir related to a big issue of migrant workers, borders, identity, I thought the more important is how we see as a person, to link the emotional experiences with the audiences. Reason why I chose the question between individuality and generosity in relationships is I think this will be the most dilemma for these workers crossing the borders, and it is a issue that most of the people didn’t want to confront.

 Why were you interested in the link with Nature and rurality, environmental transformations and its consequences?
At first the story inspiration start from the animal: the Malayan Tapir. The first time I was so close to the animal is from a zoo in Johor Bahru, which is the border city to Singapore. And soon after that it was developed into one story, I chose to link the nature and environmental topic is I thought these are the thing we Malaysian forget the most, we are forgetting what we have and who we are while we are chasing for our own goal. I suppose it is again related to the topic of “individuality” and “generosity in relationships”. (These are new words I learned today, haha).

 On your opinion, will mankind’s future be more comfortable or harsher than nowadays?
That’s a big question, we are getting more comfortable for ourselves, but I think in some perspective, we are getting backwards.

 At first, did you write Kampung Tapir as a whole or was it part of a bigger story?
Kampung Tapir was intended to made as a short film, but I do have a bigger plan to made these migrant worker stories into a feature film.

 What sort of freedom would you say the short format allows?
I haven’t done any feature format yet, but I’m quite sure the story for Kampung Tapir suits as a short format. Short film is a format that is hard to distribute/show commercially in Malaysia, but because of the reason, I didn’t need to consider the marketing plan like a feature film, in some way it is a freedom to me. Also the scale of the film is not that big, it allows me having a flexible shooting plan while in production.

Kampung Tapir is being shown in International Competition I4.