First presented in the Toronto Film Festival in 2008, Chris Chong’s Block B is an award winning short film that has been received with critical acclaim during its numerous screenings. The film pushes the limits of documentary fiction and observational cinema. In doing so, Chong invites viewers to peer into the myriad of happenings at Block B – a locus of cultural interactions intersecting different age groups, religions, social statuses and changing living conditions in the Brickfields neighbourhood of Kuala Lumpur. The film rewards the patient viewer. Neatly encapsulated within each compartment of the abstractly composed grid is its own drama – yet they are all at once connected through stairwells and corridors, highlighting the inter-connectedness of modern living. Nonetheless, the drama present in Block B is one of subtlety, relying on sound artist Yasuhiro Morinaga’s to draw the audiences’ attention to the key moments of heightened tension that makes that sensation of voyeurism all the more tantalizing.
