Timely to recall Yasmin's messages of understanding

How would the late filmmaker Yasmin Ahmad respond to a non-Muslim parent's complaint that her child was made to eat in a changing room because it was Ramadan?

"She would meet it with a sense of the ridiculous, with good humour and great understanding."

According to copywriter Jovian Lee (left in pic), who started working alongside Yasmin at the advertising agency Leo Burnett in 1990, Yasmin had even addressed this exact issue in one of her television commercials.

In the light-hearted commercial dubbed 'Cekodok Monster', a Malay woman who is fasting comically views non-Muslim eating in front of her with scorn.

Ironically, she later finds that in her scorn and suspicion, she had inadvertently stolen a Chinese man's cekodok (banana dumplings).

"It was about Muslims and non-Muslims, about people 'disrespecting our religion'," he told Malaysiakini after a forum on Yasmin's work organised by the Soka Gokkai society today.

"She understood that not everyone had the purest intentions but she always bersangka baik (assumed the best)."

Lee said that even the contentious concept of ketuanan Melayuwas dealt with in a corporate video commissioned by Petronas. It was played for the audience.

The corporate video, which was part of a series that left the audience in tears today, starts with this question: "Who's earth is this anyway?"

"If I can call this earth mine, why is it that when I go I cannot take it with me, but instead it will take me?" the narrator hauntingly asks.

Understanding, not tolerance

Lee said that Yasmin, who died from a stroke in 2009 at the age of 51, always felt that tolerance could not replace understanding.

Her works, he said, came from observing and trying to truly understand "each other's problems, motivations and sadness".

He said that instead of storyboarding, Yasmin would call everyone who worked at Leo Burnett, including cleaners and office boys into her office, and everyone would share stories from their lives.

"And she would say 'I like this story, or that story', and she would take these people to meet the clients and tell their story. It doesn't matter if they could speak well or not.

"Sometimes the clients would be in tears hearing those stories, because they came from the heart...These stories are real, they were never plucked from the air," he said of the poignant commercials she is fondly remembered for.

Although well-loved, he said, Yasmin's messages were not always well-received, and she was "whacked" for her films like ‘Sepet' and ‘Gubra', which involved scenes which some did not agree with.

For example, in ‘Gubra', many took offence to a scene where a muezzin pats a stray dog while on his way to the mosque for dawn prayers.

"She was not some liberal Muslim to whom religion did not mean a thing. She prayed five times a day. Islam and God meant everything to her.

"Lots of Muslims didn't understand what she was doing...but she never gave up," he said.