Creative licence was used in ‘Tanda Putera’ to adapt historical events into a film, its director Shuhaimi Baba explained.

In an interview with magazine Timeout Kuala Lumpur ’s August 2013 edition, she said this was not something that could be avoided by any filmmaker.

“‘Tanda Putera’ is a feature film - an interpretation based on historical events with the May 13 incident as the opening backdrop.

“Like any movie, you need to stitch your story together so you can’t avoid using creative licence,” she was quoted as saying.

tanda putera premiere 200813 reception She was asked how faithful the film is to actual history and why she chose to tell the story of second prime minister Abdul Razak Hussein and his deputy Dr Ismail Abdul Rahman, with May 13 as the backdrop.

Shuhaimi said she chose to depict the duo’s relationship as it was a “unique situation”, where both a prime minister and his deputy were terminally ill during a very tumultuous time in the nation’s history.

The film, when opens in cinemas next week after several postponements, first courted controversy when a picture of DAP MP Lim Kit Siang was uploaded onto the film’s Facebook page.

Under the picture, uploaded in an album of scenes from the film, was a caption saying that Lim had urinated on a flag pole at then Selangor menteri besar Harun Idris’s residence. It was later removed.

Lim was not in Kuala Lumpur on May 13, while a witness said that such an incident was “impossible” as the flag pole was inside the heavily-guarded fenced compound of the MB’s home.

In the film, a group of Chinese youth are shown urinating on a flag pole in front of the MB’s house, but Shuhaimi reportedly said nowhere does it show in the film that Lim was involved.

The controversy that arose from the Facebook picture led to the postponement of the film's release.

Hurt by critics’ racism

Asked about this by TimeoutKL , Shuhaimi said she was “put off” and “hurt” by what she believes to be racism on the part of her critics.

“The horrid cyber attacks, verbal abuse and bullying made me feel like I was transported back to the time of being in a communist country.

“I was attacked because I’m a Malay filmmaker, not because I’m a filmmaker. That really hurts my sensibilities,” she said.

tanda putera premiere 200813 02 She also said that she was a victim of “immature politicising by politicians and their cyber supporters that undermined (her) right as a filmmaker”.

Shuhaimi said that controversy, however, comes with the territory of filmmaking and that one does not need to wait for a film like ‘Tanda Putera’ for a “serious discourse on racial matters”.

The director, who calls herself “the original founder of horror films” after directing a pontianak film after a 30-year ban on such films, said ‘Tanda Putera’ was made for “cinemagoers” who are “mature”.

“People who go to the cinema are mature - they can absorb anything. The self-obsessive ones are those who don’t watch movies in the cinemas. Maybe they don’t watch movies at all,” she said.

She was also asked by TimeOutKL if her critics were missing the point of her movie - the patriotic potrait of two Malaysian leaders.

To this, she said: “Historicals, or in fact any film, invite people to reflect on the past and on themselves.”

“That's what films are for - to bring people together. Patriotism means putting your country’s needs first. Controversies, well, they come with the territory.”

Shuhaimi declines to explain urinating scene