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(STF) - Kampung Boy - the signature work of cartoonist Lat - has evolved into an international award-winning animated TV series. Theresa Manavalan speaks to its creator about the selling of a local favourite.
"PONTIANAK scared the hell out of me," says Datuk Lat. "Chinese ghosts and Dracula don't come after small Malay boys. Only pontianak. Ah, that's Malaysian life. That's how things work."
And that, precisely, is what gets an award-winning story going in Kampung Boy, The Animated Series, which last month won top spot for a TV series of 13 minutes or more at France's Annecy International Film Animation Festival, the oldest and largest animation fest in the world.
Lat is beaming at the idea of an Annecy, a much-desired showbiz accolade from the highly competitive animation market. The episode fielded for competition, titled Oh, Tok!, featured superstition as a theme and a spooky banyan tree with long, long vines trailing in brackish water as the backdrop for a lesson on getting real about ghosts.
The opening scene: outdoor cinema in the school padang, courtesy of the Malayan Film Unit or an aggressive medicine seller, and a really scary pontianak stealing the show from Maria Menado. That's the stuff Lat, real name Mohamed Nor Khalid, grew up on in his kampung outside Ipoh.
How that village boy is going places.
The hilariously funny Kampung Boy series for TV is crafted in warm colours and a soft, cuddly feel with stories that will make any parent feel tightly secure about what their children are watching.
The series, created by Astro, the satellite broadcaster, took four years to develop from scratch and got the personal attention of T. Ananda Krishnan, chief of Measat Broadcasting Sdn Bhd which owns Astro.
Pontianak is not the only theme. Each episode in the series singles out an adventure of a village kid named Mat: getting lost, being found, helping around the house, school, visiting the city. That sort of thing. Each one captures true-blue Malaysian elements like a coconut-plucking monkey and how modern-day things like electricity, appliances and mail- order have their place even in a village.
Kampung Boy is the work of talented people in four countries: Malaysia, where the idea originated of course, the US where that...