___________________________________________________________________________________

Finally we have the winning proposals for the 8^th KOMAS FreedomFilmFest (FFF) 2011! Through an intensive process held in KOMAS office on Saturday 30^th April 2011, the 4 judges finally selected 3 winning proposals out of a total of almost 40 proposal entries submitted for the competition.

Afiq Deen presenting his proposal at the Judging  Interview session.

Afiq Deen, a Penangite is from a broken family and has seen how his mother had struggled as a single parent living in the slum area. Although he has experience writing scripts and making a few short films of his own, this will be Afiq’s first attempt at making a documentary. When asked about the title “The Letter J”, Afiq said that the letter ‘J’ represented the Malay word‘Janda’ (divorcée) and he chose this title to depict the difficulties and discrimination faced by a divorcée in our society.

Liaw Pey Wen discussing her ideas with the Judges.

Liaw Pey Wen, a journalist from Johor wants to depict the struggle faced by the Orang Seletar, an Indigenous tribe living by the river banks in Johor Bharu. They are struggling because their livelihood  have been deeply affected by large development projects taking place around them. Pey Wen hopes to uncover and document their stories of strength and survival.

The three winners will be producing their films from May till September and the three films will be premiered in early October in Selangor, Penang, Johor and Sarawak respectively.

Please check into our website or facebook regularly to see latest updates and to follow the  production blogs of the winners.

Daring documentaries in the making: winners of the FREEDOMFILMFEST competition selected

Finally we have the 3 winning proposals for the 8^th KOMAS FreedomFilmFest (FFF) 2011! Through an intensive process held in KOMAS office on Saturday 30^th April 2011, the 4 judges finally selected 3 winning proposals out of a total of almost 40 proposal entries submitted for the competition.

The winners are as follows:

• Mohd Afiq Deen Bin Azizan with his proposal titled “The Letter J”,
• Liaw Pey Wen with her proposal titled “The Struggling Fishermen”.

The panel of judges consisted of Klang Member of Parliament Y.B. Charles Santiago, Malaysiakini TV’s  Shufiyan bin Shukor , Red Communications Director Lina Tan and KOMAS Board Member Anna Har. The judging process was observed by Dr. Adrienn Sallai, the Third Secretary for Political Affairs with the European Union which sponsors KOMAS’ FFF programme. The top 6 short-listed participants were interviewed by the judges and finally the 3 top winners were picked.

“It was tough to pick because the quality of ideas and proposals were similar. I think the judges were pretty focused on FFF’s theme ‘Dare to Document”, Shufiyan said. “The shortlisted entries and finally the 3 winning proposals were selected based on their proposals being the closest to the theme”, he added.

Afiq Deen, a Penangite is from a broken family and has seen how his mother had struggled as a single parent living in the slum area. Although he has experience writing scripts and making a few short films of his own, this will be Afiq’s first attempt at making a documentary. When asked about the title “The Letter J”, Afiq said that the letter ‘J’ represented the Malay word ‘Janda’ (divorcée) and he chose this title to depict the difficulties and discrimination faced by a divorcée in our society.

Liaw Pey Wen, a journalist from Johor wants to depict the struggle faced by the Orang Seletar, an Indigenous tribe living by the river banks in Johor Bharu. They are struggling because their livelihood  have been deeply affected by the Iskandar Development Project. Pey Wen hopes to uncover and document their stories of strength and survival.

4 Premier screenings of the winning films will be organized in Selangor, Penang, Johor and Sarawak respectively. The films would also be brought to different communities throughout the nation through the programme’s community screening activities as an effort to “bring the festival to the communities”.

To find out more about the FreedomFilmFest, log on to http://freedomfilmfest.komas.org or follow FreedomFilmFest on Facebook and Twitter.

For further inquiries:

Rekka Chinnasamy,

Coordinator, FreedomFilmFest

Tel/Fax: 03-79685415

HP: 017-3749887

Email: freedomfilmfest@komas.org