KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 27 – Jason Lim, an up-and-coming local film director and producer, has produced a moving 15-minute film entitled, “Are You Blind?”, to highlight the plight of blind people moving about in Kuala Lumpur.
Using a crew and cast of 25, the 28-year-old film enthusiast started filming in early July and completed his project in about a month.
Asked why he had embarked on such a subject, Lim said he was moved by the sheer ignorance and apathy that the public has for blind people in this country.”We live in a society that is even suspicious of a blind person on the streets, like making an honest living selling items like tissue paper,” he said.
“Are You Blind” depicts a blind man’s quest to be independent and the challenges faced by him while attempting to go into the city by public transport and a shopping mall with a guide dog.
In the film, Lim portrays the ignorance of society on guide dogs used for blind people in Malaysia.Asked how did the filming go, he said that there were many challenges.”If it weren’t hard, everyone else would have done it. The hard part is what makes it great. Every step was a challenge, every scene was tricky and risky.
“The most challenging part for myself was choosing the right moments in executing the real life situations such as when a blind man tries to enter a bus with his guide dog,” he said, adding that his film would be shown at a special screening at Golden Screen Cinemas in Pavilion, here tomorrow night.
Thanking his crew and cast for a job well done, he said whenever a risky scene was completed and captured on film, “those moments were priceless!”
Asked what he hoped to achieve with the film, he said: “I don’t expect a 15-minute film highlighting the plight of the disabled could help change the civic consciousness of Malaysians overnight.
“But by allowing this particular film and my previous films as a medium to be shown to the world, I hope that more Malaysians would realise the embarrassing truth that many of us live in denial about the existence of disabled people among us. It really doesn’t matter what religion, race or culture we belong to but if we don’t have human values in us, how much are we worth then?”
– BERNAMA
