I GUESS I was living my journalistic dreams last Friday night, when through The Vibes I was invited to watch a special screening of an experimental short called ‘SILIKA’ produced by the band LUST and Krew Filem Sek Kito (KFSK) as the production team.
The screening was held in a small independent venue popular among independent music followers, Live Fact, Kota Damansara, nearby The Strand – two floors above a barbershop. The seating arrangements were properly socially-distanced and super-sprayed by a type of desensitising liquid.
“But do you define yourself as a journalist?” asked Zim Ahmadi of Awful Track Record who, unsurprisingly, was also there. I just missed the chance to meet another independent music journalist in Zhafirin Zulkifli, of Bawah Tanah Rasmi, who was there for an earlier session.
“No, not really, I don’t cover the event like how a journalist would, but put myself in it.”
Although yes, I might be contradicting myself a bit because the style I’m influenced by, new journalism, is a legitimate journalistic style and I can call myself a journalist if I want to.
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“Have you heard the EP Vantablack before?” Zim added.
“Not really, this film is my first experience of it.”
“It would be interesting to know your take about this, as someone who hasn’t listened to the music before.”
LUST’s EP ‘Vantablack’ is an important component to this film as the whole film is kind of a reaction to it, an interpretation of it in performance and visuals. My raw gut feeling is I enjoyed it, there might be context lost here or there but in general, especially the more narrative-oriented vignettes, I can see what it is about.
The story is told in six seemingly loose but interconnected vignettes, with three of them following three protagonists and their story: the son following the song ‘Hedonist’ (Fakhrul Aiman), the outsider following the song ‘Vantablack’ (Eli Orkid; who is also the film’s choreographer), and the hustler following the song ‘What We Said’ (Nidusmas).
Of course, I only knew the song names after finally listening to the full EP and seeing how it all fits together. I would not say you can’t watch the short film without listening and familiarising yourself with the EP first, but it would definitely help.
Even the title ‘SILIKA’ tells their intention. As in silica glass, it is a reflection, ‘Vantablack’. In the visuals, we can see how the on-screen talents are framed around screens, windows, mirrors, and other reflective materials. Also how their physical movements are also a reflection of their inner turmoil – the inside reflecting on the outside.
This reminds me of how LUST describes ‘Vantablack’ as the human mind (in its capability in absorbing information) and the EP as a self-reflection project during pandemic times. ‘Vantablack’ exists as the band’s reflection, and SILIKA exists as KFSK and the on-screen talents reflection of ‘Vantablack’.
A reflecting-ception on several levels.
“So, how’s the film?” asked Faris Khairi of LUST while introducing me to one of the directors, Nazim Omar of KFSK, who reiterated the question with an added joke. “Of course when asking directly like this everyone will say it is good isn’t it?”
I answered that the film was cool. It really was.
Although someone from a more fundamentalist strain might want to argue if the short film is even a film or a long music video? Especially when the on-screen talents themselves in the BTS shoots mentioned the project as a music video, not a film.
“Maybe it needs something to make it more filmic?” I said. Myself and Zim were in a more theoretical discussion about it.
“What do you mean? Maybe by adding dialogues? Something that people will be more familiar about?”
“But dialogues can be a bit boring,” I mumbled as all of us went out of the screening room.
Especially when the narrative is already being shown, told to us by the expressions, body movements of the characters. Sometimes dialogues are not needed.
We are living in a world where Roger Waters of Pink Floyd already did something conceptually similar for the critically-acclaimed ‘The Wall’ (1979) album. ‘The Wall’ is in movie form (1982), it is in several concert tour forms (the Berlin 1990 concert under Roger Waters after he broke up with Pink Floyd, 8 months after the fall of the Berlin Wall, is one of the best), it is now even in opera form (2017).
Sometimes a concept can’t be contained within a single medium. It needs to go out, explore multimedia expressions. Especially one that’s as self-reflective as ‘Vantablack’.
Right now ‘Vantablack’ exists as an EP, a VR (virtual reality) concert in collaboration with Experiential Design Team’s ‘Silau Maya’ (stylized as LUST x Silau Maya), and as the short film ‘SILIKA’.
Who knows, maybe we’ll even get a theatre version ‘Vantablack’, or the whole EP in remix form seeing as there are already remixes of individual songs (as in 100 gecs’s remix album ‘1000 gecs and The Tree of Clues’ (2020)).
“Yeah, we are trying to make an experimental film but not too experimental,” said Arman Shahmiey of KFSK, the other director, who was also credited as the person who came up with the story and as the editor.
What’s interesting is that Arman is still a student in Aswara.
“Yeah, there’s still a narrative that even regular movie-goers can follow, especially the three characters of ‘the son’, ‘the outsider’ and ‘the hustler’. And I really like how the editing follows the audio beat-by-beat, it was really on-point.”
And I do really like how smooth flowing the editing is. The visuals, the vignettes, the narratives, the songs from the ‘Vantablack’ EP, every part flowed into each other without really pulling you out. It was a seamless audiovisual experience.
The after screening ‘party’ was a simple one where all of us were by the roadside in groups discussing, talking, catching up, getting to know each other. The Mynews.com shop nearby also helped in terms of beverages and snacks. This is one of the things we all missed since the pandemic. Just a group of friends, strangers, future acquaintances, just hanging by the roadside or Mamak restaurant to talk about the film/concert/show we watched to many other random things.
I did head back early by catching a Grab but these are the times I do miss the long sessions one would have in pre-pandemic days. In a way some cinema purists are right, a cinema is a complete physical and communal experience. What was exactly said or done might not be entirely remembered, but I’m sure all of us on that day did have fun during the screening.
SILIKA is also now showing through LUST’s YouTube channel. – The Vibes, April 17, 2021
A.R. Shah is a multimedia storyteller exploring the various modes of storytelling. Currently, he is part of the artist collective Projek Rabak which examines deeper the arts and humanities in the Malaysian and Southeast Asian context.
