Rising interest in Borneo stories
Published on: Friday, April 28, 2023
By: David Thien
Nadira has a Bachelors in Fine Arts in Film and Television from the Queensland University of Technology, Australia and attended Montclair State University in New Jersey, USA as an exchange student where she interned with production companies in Manhattan. - Twitter pic
Kota Kinabalu: Filmmakers in Borneo are lucky as currently there is rising interest in Borneo stories as shown in films, says Sabah mixed indigenous Dusun heritage filmmaker Nadira Ilana at an online forum.That’s also what motivated her to return from overseas where she had her tertiary education with a student exchange experience in New Jersey and the Big Apple city of New York to “tell Malaysian stories” with her films that she had directed over the years.ADVERTISEMENT
As a rising young Malaysian filmmaker, Nadira and her Telan Bulan Films aspire to give voice and representation to people rarely seen and heard to tell unique and brave stories in community-based international film projects, short films, and documentaries.
Telan Bulan Films is based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and was founded in 2016.
She is an alumnus of the Berlinale Talent Campus, BIFAN NAFF Fantastic Film School, Singapore International Film Festival’s SEA Film Lab and the Luang Prabang Film Festival Talent Lab.
Nadira has a Bachelors in Fine Arts in Film and Television from the Queensland University of Technology, Australia and attended Montclair State University in New Jersey, USA as an exchange student where she interned with production companies in Manhattan.ADVERTISEMENT
Nadira is the director of “The Silent Riot” documentary film, besides others, now living between Sabah where she is doing her filming, and in Kuala Lumpur, for her post-production work on her film. When back in Sabah, she prefers to head into the rural areas, like her kampung in Keningau.
“Film starts from storytelling,” she said, proud of her Dusun heritage, as an environmentalist, a feminist, and a spiritual person, regrets that colonialism has given Sabahans the imposter syndrome. (Imposter syndrome includes doubting your abilities).
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She started working in Kuala Lumpur in 2010, and “with a Nusantara mindset” found that people preferred her to speak non-Sabahan slang, and wanted to have peninsula-centric content, particularly in considering Malaya as the whole of Malaysia.
She regretted that after the May 13, 1969 riots, and the 1971 inception of the New Economic Policy and New Cultural Policy emphasizing on the primacy of the Malay language and Malay culture, which was a disadvantage to the mother tongue languages and cultures of Sabah and Sarawak.
“People don’t talk about how harmful this was for Sabah and Sarawak because of the leadership that we had at that time.”
“In Sabah, under Tun Mustapha, there was a one race, one religion, one language kind of campaign. He not only expelled priests but also prevented foreign anthropologists from coming to Sabah.” It was at that time with such measures akin to the erasure of indigenous culture at that time.
She regretted her childhood non-engagement with her Dusun roots and lingo at a time after such national policy prong, with her mother encouraging her to be fluent in English, which serves her well in overseas education and filming exposure.
Upon returning to Malaysia, Ilana produced and directed The Silent Riot, a 2012 documentary on the 1986 Sabah riots that won the Best Human Rights Award at the Freedom Film Fest and Best Human Rights Award at the Freedom Film Fest in 2013. She has since made Big Stories Bongkud-Namau, which won in 2013, and the short film “Were the Sun and the Moon to Meet”, which won Best Short Film (Open Category) at the Mini Film Festival in 2021.
In 2016, Nadira was part of the Big Stories, Small Towns project. She conducted a year-long film residency in Kampung Bongkud and Kampung Namaus, and the collaboration with the community resulted in 14 short documentaries and 3 photo series.
In 2017 her short documentary titled, ‘Anak Pokok/Saplings’, which was produced in collaboration with Tropical Rainforest and Research Conservation Centre won first runner up at the SXSW Community screening for Rainforest Partnership´s Films for the Forest judged by Richard Linklater and Raveena Tandon.
Her most recent short film ‘Were the Sun and the Moon to Meet’ or ‘Tadau om Vuhan Kopisoomo’ in Kadazan was first selected for Short Shorts Film Festival and Asia and was in competition for the International Shorts Category. The film went on to win Best Short Film at Mini Film Festival in Sarawak.
Nadira said Sabah does not lack filmmaker and director talents as the state has produced many that have won various film festivals awards over the years that have been shown to worldwide acclaim overseas.
For those aspiring to venture into filming and to attract funds from Finas, Nadira said, “To get a Finas licence, you have to be a Sendirian Berhad (private limited) company.”
After learning about Sabah political history, and after three general elections, she has given up covering the political class. “They are just doing the same things all over and over again” and now prefers to be able to tell stories of marginalised people.Stay up-to-date by following Daily Express’s Telegram channel.
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