FAQ
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WHAT IS 15MALAYSIA?
15Malaysia is a short films project. It consists of 15 short films about Malaysia directed by some of the best young filmmakers in our country. Each film lasts between 3 to 7 minutes.
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WHAT ARE THE FILMS ABOUT?
All our films have socio-political subject matters. These vary from corruption, race relations, inflation, Islamic banking, social apathy, ethical commerce, pedophilia, government health warnings and so on. Some are funny, other serious – all try to deal with aspects of Malaysian life. Each filmmaker was responsible for choosing his or her own subject matter.
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WHO ARE IN THE FILMS?
Our cast is a mix of actors, musicians and politicians such as Khairy Jamaluddin, Nik Aziz, Liow Tiong Lai, Tian Chua and Zaid Ibrahim. All were invited based on their willingness to participate and suitability for the role that they played. There is also a dog amongst our cast. And no, we don’t mean Paris Hilton…
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HOW WERE THE FILMMAKERS CHOSEN?
Invitations to filmmakers were issued based on their track record. Some are well known while others are relatively unknown. Many have spearheaded the award winning successes of Malaysian independent films at international film festivals in recent years. While not an exhaustive list of Malaysia’s top filmmakers, our directors nevertheless represent some of the best in the country. Their biographies and photographs are provided on this site.
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WHY POLITICIANS?
Since our project is about Malaysia, we feel it is entirely appropriate that we invited participation from our political representatives. It started out as a wild idea, but we were pleasantly surprised by how keen each of our politician cast member was to get involved. Every one of them joined us without imposing party political spin control or censorious stipulations. We retained final cut rights to every one of our films.
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IS THIS A POLITICAL PROJECT?
Insofar as all our films touch upon Malaysian lives, it goes without saying that they are creative expressions circumscribed by the country’s politics. However, 15Malaysia is staunchly non-partisan in party political terms. All Malaysians regardless of party political affiliations face the situations expressed in our films. As such, they are issues that every Malaysian citizen has a constitutional right to voice and are in fact above narrow party political interests.
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WHO PRODUCED THE PROJECT?
A small team led by Pete Teo produced 15Malaysia. It’s the same team that brought you the Malaysian Artistes For Unity project in 2008. There is a flattering little blurb about Pete in the ‘Producers’ section of this site. Go read it if you like that sort of thing.
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DID YOU ROB A BANK TO FUND THIS?
15Malaysia is sponsored by P1, the WiMAX Internet access provider. Please read about them and watch their profile film in the ‘Producers’ section of this site. Either they were super cool to buy into a crazy idea like 15Malaysia, or Pete Teo had to sleep with a lot of people. Probably both.
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WHY 15?
No reason other that it is a nice round number. Unlike 17.43…
Seriously, there must be hundreds of Malaysian filmmakers who are qualified to be included in our project. But we are not yet crazy enough to handle more than 15 films at one time. If you feel aggrieved that you weren’t invited and want to show us what we missed, please check out the ‘107Malaysia’ section on this site. -
HOW MANY PEOPLE WERE INVOLVED?
Directors, actors and tyrannical producers represent only a fraction of the people involved in this project. If we included editors, sound people, line producers, website designers, coding geeks, translators and other supporting technicians, over 100 people were involved directly with the production of 15Malaysia. The project took only 3 months to complete. It would have been sooner if not for the fact that Pete Teo doesn’t do mornings.
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HOW DO I WATCH THE FILMS?
To watch the films, just click on the picture of the film you want to watch in the ‘Films’ section of this site. As long as the film you have chosen is released, this will take you to the film’s screening page, where you can watch the film. More links in the screening page will take you to the director biography page and the screening page for the ‘making of’ film of your choice.
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HOW DO I DOWNLOAD THE FILMS?
We have provided free download links below each screen in all the film screening pages on this site. The downloadable video files are in M4V format and listed in various resolutions. Please choose the resolution you require and click the download link. Depending on the resolution you have chosen and the speed of your net connection, download time may vary between five to many tens of minutes. Please be patient.
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DOWNLOAD IS UNSUCCESSFUL OR SLOW!
In order to give you films with good picture quality, our downloadable files are fairly large in size. Yet, Internet connection in Malaysia is slow – which often result in broken connections and failed downloads. A good solution is to use a download manager to download our films – which is much faster and you can easily resume broken downloads arising from bad connections. We recommend Free Download Manager for Windows users and iGetter for Mac users.
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I CAN’T PLAY M4V FILES!
Our films are encoded in a file format called M4V. It is a very efficient MP4 format created by Apple. Windows users may need to download Quicktime Player or iTunes to play these files. On some Windows systems, you may be able to play the files by simply changing the file extension from ‘M4V’ to ‘MP4’. We recommend that you download and play our films with Quicktime if you encounter problems.
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HOW CAN I HELP?
You can help us by joining our Facebook and Twitter communities and by getting as many people to watch our films as you can. Please also download or embed our films and use our banners and wallpapers on your web pages and computers. We have provided sharing tools in each of our film screening pages as well as in the ‘Goodies’ section of this site. Please email us if you can help us in other ways! Our contact email is at the bottom of every page.
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HOW CAN I PARTICIPATE IN 15MALAYSIA?
We invite you to join the 15Malaysia project by displaying your short film about Malaysia on this site. We don’t care what equipment you shoot with. It can be 35mm film or just your mobile phone. The nice people at RUUMZ may give you prizes for doing it. Instructions are available in the ‘107Malaysia’ section of this site. Please check it out now!
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HOW CAN I MEET 15MALAYSIA FILMMAKERS?
Please join our Facebook page to be alerted for future seminars, workshops, meet-and-greet sessions or other activities with our producers, cast and directors.