Kuala Lumpur, 12 August 2008 - Director, Mr. Praveen Morchhale’s face lit as he shook hands for the first time with Rizal Shahputra, survivor of the 26th December 2004 Tsunami, and now full-time student at UCSI. “My new movie is inspired by you,” he says. He arrived at UCSI today together with producer, Mr. Anish JS Mehta and actor, Dr. Anuj Saxena. They were here to meet Rizal to hear his account of drifting at sea for nine days after the tsunami struck Aceh before he was rescued. The group, from Filmmakers, a movie company in India, is in Malaysia to conduct research for their upcoming movie in collaboration with FINAS (Malaysian National Film Development Corporation) and a leading Malaysian film production company. The movie that would also feature Malaysia’s leading actress, Vanida Imran

When asked what inspired him to do a movie about the tsunami, he said that while flipping through TV channels one day, he chanced upon a BBC report featuring Rizal and his ordeal, and his life as a student at UCSI. “I was truly inspired by his story, and wanted to do a movie that not only depicts the tsunami, but also shows the strength of human spirit in adverse conditions and inherent human kindness that transcends racial and religious barriers,” he says. Mr. Praveen said that he started writing the screenplay that same day. Fresh from another meeting with FINAS, he said he looks forward to having Rizal as a consultant to the project. “We plan to have him fly over to India and view the final version of the movie which will be bilingual, and hear his comments, because we want it to be as realistic as possible,” Mr. Anish says.

The collaboration is also good news to Mass Communications students at UCSI. Both producer and director have expressed their desire to hire UCSI students as interns in the production crew or even as extras in the movie. Student involvement in this film project then truly fulfills one of UCSI’s core strategic goals, which is to establish smart partnerships between the university and industry, and in this case, one which transcends national borders. This would in turn broaden students’ knowledge and perspectives, and more than this, initiate them into the international arena.

In the larger context, this collaboration also positively cements Malaysia – India relations in terms of fostering greater intercultural and inter-religious understanding, apart from the obvious mutual economic benefits such a movie enterprise generates. At the global level, this tsunami movie project provides world communities a better understanding of the tsunami and its impact on human lives.

The shooting, which will be done in Langkawi by November 2008, would be featuring a lot of Malaysia’s beautiful tourist spots. “We know Malaysia by its Petronas Twin Towers and many other famous landmarks, but we also want to feature its beautiful people and its unique culture in the movie,” Mr. Praveen explains. 

The two-hour meeting was arranged by Prof. Dr. Norfadzillah Hitam, UCSI’s Vice President for Corporate Affairs whom Mr. Anish JS Mehta contacted a few weeks earlier, and attended by En. Abu Bakar bin Jalaludin, Group Legal Advisor, and Puan Roslina Latiff, Associate Dean of the School of Social Science and Liberal Arts.