Sell Out!

Colour, 35 mm
Malaysia, 2008, 110 min
Section: Another View

Synopsis

When Yeo Joon Han went looking for funds for his writer-director feature debut, he got a lucrative offer from Astro Shaw productions, an offshoot of the multimedia conglomerate Astro All Asia Networks. He was given money and creative freedom but he had to make a movie that would be successful at the box office. The musical Sell Out! is the result. It blends the motif of compromising one’s principles for career and cash with a biting satire of avaricious, socially-approved corporations and artists. The film follows two FONY Corporation employees: she is the host of a bottom-ranking arts show; he is a designer who invented a reliable, multifunctional household appliance. The company bosses, however, back other priorities than art and dependability. This entertaining, originally stylized movie voices a targeted, even directly stated, farewell to the worn-out realism which is currently all the rage with festival fare.

About the director

Yeo Joon Han (b. 1969, Seremban, Malaysia) studied law in London, but took a liking to literature and theater at the expense of his studies. Although he wrote a musical, he made his living as a lawyer. In 2006 he shot his first short film, Adults Only. Screened at a number of international festivals, it took Special Mention at Venice, Best Short Film at Stockholm, and the Jury Prize and Audience Award at Lyon. The following year he made the film Girl in a Soap Bubble. His feature debut Sell Out! (2008) is the first-ever English-language Malaysian musical, and an "independent studio” movie. It came about as a small project with a limited budget and nonactors, but it was financed by an offshoot of the multimedia conglomerate Astro All Asia Networks. The film, in which Yeo Joon Han was inwolved in all aspects of its pre- and post-production, premiered during Critics’ Week at last year’s Venice festival.