BULI BALIK 's VOYAGE BEGINS TODAY, ALL OVER MALAYSIA! MAY THE JOURNEY BE A MEMORABLE ONE. INSYAALLAH. LET IT BE KNOWN TO ALL FRIENDS!!

It is the night before my baby comes alive and i want to share with all of you my intimate thoughts on the matter. BULI was a dream i had as a teenager to make my first movie. BULI BALIK was a promise i made to myself, to right the wrongs oy days past, to be able to do the one thing the genius P.Ramlee was never able to do, to own his own creative works. I am writing this down with tear filling my eyes as i remember the day i read how P. Ramlee died a pauper. How a great talent of this magnitude from this country was never allowed to reap the benefits of his own intellectual property really mystifies and disgusts me.

BUt this is the current state of this country even right now. NOBODY respects other people's rights to intellectual property. They feel it is their right to infringe on this rights because illegal music, films and software are being openly sold everywhere so this must mean that it is ok. When i say nobody. i mean from the top level down to normal people like you and me. I include myself because i admit. i also fall into the self-styled culture of checking out the latest foreign films from your friendly neighbourhood dvd PUSHER.

BUT consider this, What if suddenly it was ok to buy your lawyers stamp from a roadside stall or audited accounts from Petaling Streets at a discounted price. Or even giving your pay to someone else, after you have spent all your sweat and time in trying to do the best job u can, why? because everyone's doing it. SO why not you? "That is different!", you say, "Our job is not entertainment!... this won't happen to us". Just think about it, what the hell makes u think that u r so special, that something like this might not happen to you?

TV stations do not respect the rights of small production companies, because they want ALL RIGHTS to your product at an offered price where it should just be for a license fee for a one run or two run to air the said programme. They pay peanuts and so like a bunch of hungry monkeys we swarm over it to eat whatever the scraps is left and not fight for the system to be CHANGED. TV Broadcasters should just be BROADCASTERS and let the creative people do the creative work.

We are a country that is slowly killing it's creative minds because the work we do is not considered tangible like being an accountant or even a clerk at a bank. Banks won't touch creative people and put ridiculous demands on us in trying to secure a loan, only to later say no to the loan because of the age old banking mantra "NO TRACK RECORD". SME banks won't touch creative production companies with a ten foot pole because we are considered HIGH RISK. Like any business worth any grain of salt and not illegal is not high risk. BUSINESS IS ABOUT RISKing!!!

People just take what is currently happening because we all say "well i guess that's how things are in this country!". I say stop the bullshit and let's rewrite the books on how 'things are' in the country

Lemme let all of you in on one open industry secret that might shock you, besides Siti Nurhaliza and a few other people who are just talents (great talents though they may be) in this industry, NO other persons in the creative field of the entertainment industy in MALAYSIA ever makes any good money from it. "You look ok afdlin" some might say, and to the my response is, Yes, I truly am blessed because i am a talent as well as a creative person but i think about all the writers, songwriters, animators, directors etc in this country and i know, most of them live hand to mouth. AND these people are the ones who create all the great songs, poems, writings, scripts that drive this whole industry.

So what can we do about it. Personally at this point in time, i have no frakking clue! but i know that that the parliament has to pass a bill or something to give greater protection to a potential multi-billion dollar industry for it to continue surviving and even flourish.
Why was propaganda films a great important part of the war effort in all the world wars? The reason is because the media affects our mind either subconciously or conciously on any level. It is as important in building the image of a country as the twin towers or the Sepang race course. Our culture, our paradigm and the way we are, are reflected through our films.

FILMS are great tools to window our culture and the hearts of our people. HELP US HELP U MAKE THIS COUNTRY GREAT. Protect us. Give our livelyhood back to us. You take away our soul when you take away our creativity.

So, this is it people. I do not want to die a pauper and this is a promise i made to myself and to the late great P.Ramlee. To own and probably benefit from my own IP. If we don't protect our IP and make it worth something, then we might as well be living in the P RAMLEE days.

Thank you for supporting BULI BALIK and my creative endeavours. For those of you who don't like what i do, support the ones you do, because believe me,you make a difference to them. KEEP ON SUPPORTING MALAYSIAN FILMS.

POWER TO THE PEOPLE

Afdlin SHauki