I read Abdul Rahman Koya's opinion of Hishamuddin Rais' debut film, ' Dari Jemapoh ke Manchestee and then to where?' (Aug 27) with interest. The writer has failed to realise is that this film is more like a comic or children's adventure novel. It is in the style of Enid Blyton's Secret Seven adventure series.

So what's wrong with a Malaysian filmmaker coming up with a film like that?

The writer does not seem to be familiar with film genres. He has failed to look at this film as a comic one, but chooses to compare it with other serious dramas that usually have more profound moral, social and political issues in its story.

This film is devoid of any pretensions with regard to such issues. It is a simple film with an ordinary story. It is not unlike the many Iranian films that are about mundane social issues.

Incidentally, however, this focus on the ordinary must also be seen not as a strength of the Iranian directors, for they do such films to play to the gallery and impress the West who is only interested to see films from Iran and other Third World countries which revolve around their simple lifestyles.

All the films from Japan that have won international recognition in the West, particularly in the Cannes Film Festival, have been those period pieces of costume epics. No film that depicts life in modern Japan has won any recognition. So, the West is still stuck in a time capsule and wants only to see Japan and her people in the image of their ancestors in samurai clothes.

Any intelligent film from Iran that shows sophistication in the people's thinking and understanding of world affairs will not be liked in Cannes or any other festival in the West. And because of this reason alone, some Iranian filmmakers such as Mohsin Makmalbaf, Amir Naderi, Abbas Kiarostami and Jafar Pahani are making such films about Iranian kids losing a shoe, or looking for a balloon, or losing their way home, over other stories, as a way to ensure their participation in these festivals.

Personally, I am not fascinated with such films from Iran; they do not reflect the new reality of the New Iranian Cinema or the New Post-Revolutionary Iran that I had the good fortune to visit on two occasions, at the invitation of the Farabi Cinema Foundation to show my debut film twice, in their Fajr International Film Festival in 1992 and 1994.

And for the same reason, I am also not fascinated with all the films made by the fifth generation China filmmakers such as Jiang Zimou, Chen Kaige and the others who have won recognition in the West, particularly in Cannes. Their films are mostly on sexual and homosexual themes and the plots revolve around the sexual promiscuity of characters in the confines of thick palace walls in ancient China.

I am sure there are more important stories that these directors could have used for their films but they prefer to play to the gallery, too, and impress the West by coming up with such titles as Beijing Bastards , Farewell, My Concubine , The Red Lantern , Shanghai Triad , Lifetimes , etc., that are all on gangsters, prostitutes, concubines and homosexuals.

While being driven from the National Airport outside Beijing to the hotel in downtown Beijing, I could see thousands of stories on the ordinary Chinese people, waiting to be explored. Unfortunately, the Chinese directors have not been able to see them, unless if they include the mandatory sex scenes in them.

If there is any social, cultural, or political insinuation in Dari Jemapoh ke Manchestee , it is just pure conjecture. The truth is the film is something new in the Malaysian cinema. It does not matter if the story and all the incidents are not logical. In fact, the whole film is so illogical that it is preposterous. So, what's wrong with that? I have seen more preposterous films that were made by famous Hollywood directors.

Steven Spielberg's adventure films in the Indiana Jones series are illogical and preposterous: A Jewish-American anthropologist-hero swishes a pistol when he is surrounded by a group of sword-wielding Arabs in Old Cairo, and they all scamper?

Sadly, in the same breath, the writer had the audacity to laud Rush Hour 2 , which to me is worse than all the teen films that Yusof Haslam has ever made. It is not only illogical, but downright nonsensical.

Compared with Rush Hour 2 , Hishamuddin Rais' Dari Jemapoh ke Manchestee has more artistic values. On top of that it is more relevant and important to Malaysians, because this film is about Malaysians and Malaysia, to say the least.