How Malaysian filmmaker Jared Lee plans to use his success for the local content creator community

Does that mean that the long-form version is an extension of the short?

I think... it’s a brand new version but with the same concept that was woven into the short whereby time is transactional, in a sense that we have to trade lives. People might say, “Oh, there have been concepts like these done in the past,” but it was never done in a way where lives were traded and one grows younger but the other grows older.

How do you think your success will be able to pave the way for the younger ones in the content creator community? Have they been coming up to you?

They have. I'm actually giving workshops this month and next month. For the longest time, I never thought that there was anything to learn from me. Having gone to the festivals, I felt like I was late to the game. I want aspiring filmmakers to know what it's like out there and that we’re not trapped in this small little bubble called Malaysia. While I want to progress the film level in Malaysia, along with many others. I hope that I can give a glimpse of what it's like—there’s more to this than whatever we see here.

Hopefully, I can even start a small little festival and do it right with workshops, people from neighbouring countries submitting films and coming together to watch films and learn from each other—that environment empowers people and at the same time, guides them. I wish that as a fresh grad out of high school, I experienced that too.

Another message that this sends to aspiring filmmakers is that it's never too late. You're never too old and it's never too late.

Yeah. One of the things that Jin mentioned which was quite true was when he said, “I too want to aim for Cannes" and I said, “Yeah!”. Before Horologist got anywhere, some festivals just seemed out of reach, like a unicorn to us. So, seeing your peers make it, it's like, "Actually can lah!”, right? That's one of the great things happening for filmmakers. And as this story goes out, it’ll make everyone feel like, “Yeah I'm working on my thing now and aiming for Comic-Con” which is very good because we're now open to at least trying.

For the people who will probably want to know, when can they watch Horologist?

I still can't screen it in public but I'm actually hoping to hold a private screening this year, if I can, and maybe give priority to those who bought the comic or own the comic. We can do a get-together and just watch the short. To set expectations, Horologist is only a six-minute short but what I'm planning to do is to make the meet-up worth it. I have another science fiction drama film so I’ll screen that too and all in all, it’ll be a total of maybe 45 minutes. It'll be a nice little screening and some networking.

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