THE COOLER Lumpur Festival is a festival of ideas that is now in its sixth year. We have always believed in curating a program that helps us, as a society, understand our past and better plan for our collective futures.
This year, it is our intention to screen Amir Muhammad’s ‘Lelaki Komunis Terakhir’. Since its release, this film seems to have fallen into a grey area – it was originally passed without cuts by LPF in 2006, but overruled by the Home Ministry at the time due to some objections.
We have endeavoured to comply to all proper procedures, including speaking to FINAS, Lembaga Penapisan Film, as well as Special Branch, to get all the necessary approvals but none of these bodies have been able to advise us on the exact status of this film.
We believe the film has attracted unfair criticism purely on the basis of its title and no one who seems to have an objection to it has actually seen it. With that, we intend to proceed with the screening.
As a compromise, we have decided to host a closed screening for any Ministers or VVIP’s interested in watching the documentary before finally deciding on the fate of this 12-year-old movie. This will take place on Thursday, the 4th of October, Black Box Publika, at 9PM. After which, we wish to proceed with the public screening during the festival weekend and shall work towards announcing that.
About The Cooler Lumpur Festival
The Cooler Lumpur Festival is a multidisciplinary festival curated by PopDigital. The Kuala Lumpur-centric festival adopts specific themes each year with the aim to expand the city’s cultural horizons, build stronger communities and cultivate the creativity and imagination of people.
In 2013, The Cooler Lumpur Festival debuted under the simple theme of #WORD which set out to explore the written and spoken word.
The annual festival’s sophomore edition was themed #FAST – rooted in the notion that the driving-force behind successfully fast-forwarding development was through sharing, engaging and experimenting in new ideas.
2014’s #FAST was attended by over 5,000 attendees and featured contributions from artists, musicians, writers and thinkers including Man As an Literary Prize winner Miguel Syjuco, The Man Booker-nominated writer Adam Foulds and Damian Barr who was named Writer of the Year at the 2013 Stonewall Awards.
2015’s festival theme DANGEROUS IDEAS celebrated ideas as the driving force behind every decision we make, the root of all human progress, the power and means to overcome difficulty and the impetus to take action against injustice. DANGEROUS IDEAS featured panels and lectures by Lindy West, Ian Doescher and Tun Dato' Seri Dr. Mahathir Mohamad.
Its fourth installment in 2016 titled RE: INDEPENDENCE drove healthy discourse amongst communities, on everything from independence in nation building, right down to independence in our everyday lives. Amongst the concepts explored was the paradox of technology – it automates so many daily tasks for humans free their minds for other things, but most urban dwellers are also slaves to these mobile devices.
The fifth year’s edition in 2017 titled NOTES FROM THE FUTURE looked to the social, political, technological and cultural ideas that have become representative of these times and tell the story of our collective futures.
[CREDIT: The Cooler Lumpur Festival]
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