Somewhere around November last year, Yasmin Ahmad and I had a small comfortable chit chat session in The Picturehouse lounge, on her movie Muallaf. (I've mentioned in one of my previous blog article) We had a great time talking to one another, and she was there to introduce her husband and daughter to me. Her warming personality has simply remove any possible obstacles between us to know more about her film.
She passed away peacefully on 11.25pm, 25th Jul 09 in Damansara Specialist Hospital.
The cause of the death was due to severe bleeding in the brain which was believed to be caused by her fainting 2 days ago at a TV station.
Lately, we had been hit by the news on the deaths of celebrities after we woke up every morning. Lightining will never strike twice, but on 25th June, Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett had left us. MJ was believed to died of a heart attack, which Farrah lost her battle to cancer.
The world has prepared the worst for Farrah, but not MJ. Exactly a month later, the god of death knocked on Yasmin's door and took the acclaimed director away.
Singaporeans will remember her with some of the ads she made for MCYS (Ministry of Community, Youth and Sports), where you will see how a loving father cares for his daughter, and the Indian wife who remembers her Chinese husband forever.
However, it was the series of ads she made for Petronas that catches my attention. No commercial hardcore selling, no strong competition on products and services, no cheese fondue type dialogues and cliche plots. All are just simple sights and sounds of what is happening around you and me. Screw the billion dollar hardcore bombarding of trashy ads. Yasmin gives you the real thing that not only satisfy the needs for the occassion, but also carries a strong message behind the ad.
While Muallaf gets a run in Singapore twice, Singaporeans are not fortunate to catch the last movie she directed, Talentime. Before she can direct Go, Thaddeus!, she left the world with incomplete works. She shares the similar fate of Stanley Kubrick and Lee Han Hsiang, two of the greatest movie director of all time. Kubrick wanted to direct A.I, but dies shortly after completing Eyes Wide Shut. H.H Lee died of a heart attack while making the blockbuster historical drama, The Burning of A-Fang Palace in 1997.
Malaysia will always greatly missed the best director of all time.
RIP, Yasmin.