Terrina Hussein
Nov 28:
“Give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, he’ll eat forever.”
A WHOLE bunch of ‘mat salleh’ dudes recently flew down to KL from all corners of Europe to help apply that adage to Malaysia’s own entertainment industry.
John Smith, president of the International Federation of Musicians (FIM), Benoit Machuel, general secretary of FIM, Tomas Bolme, president of the International Federation of Actors (FIA) and Dominick Luquer, general secretary of FIA, chose Kuala Lumpur as the starting point for the Asian leg of their international seminar, The Professional, Social and Intellectual Property Rights of Performers.
The four-day seminar was organised jointly by FIM and FIA, and Malaysia was represented by Aziz Bakar, chairman of Performers’ and Artistes Rights Malaysia and Ong Peng Chu, the general secretary of Majlis Muzik Malaysia.
Representatives of GAFIM, PAPITA, AMCA, IRIM, Senima, Akademi and the Chinese Theatre Association of Malaysia also attended the seminar, held at the Parkroyal Hotel, KL.
“We move all year long, around the world, and for every country we apply a different approach,” Bolme said.
“We had to decide where to begin our Asian seminars, and we thought that Malaysian performers were so dynamic and we decided that we’d open our discussions this year here, to see how we could help find solutions to best suit their future needs.”
“We were impressed with the level of knowledge you already have here in Malaysia, but we never come to a country with a package of solutions,” Bolme added.
“More people should’ve attended this seminar,” Aziz Bakar said of the seminar’s importance and mediocre turnout. “But as Mr Benoit said to me, ‘sometimes it’s not quantity, but quality that counts!’”
“It was a big eye-opener to hear from our counterparts overseas, and it was a tremendous experience for us,” said Jennifer Thompson, who also oversaw the Malaysian contingent.
The seminar covered a wide range of topics, with the ultimate aim of guiding our Malaysian entertainment associations towards their official rights in terms of their intellectual property.
Topics tackled in the seminar last week included ‘The Main Professional Challenges Of Performers in Malaysia’, ‘How Do Performers’ Organisations Tackle Those Challenges’, ‘How Can Workers In An Informal Sector Be Organised’, ‘Social Dialogue In Malaysia: Focus On Informal Sectors’, ‘The A-B-C of Setting Up A Serviceable Performer’s Organisation’, ‘An Introduction to Collective Management Of Performers’ Rights’, and many more.
It’s a shame almost 17 important topics had to be packed into a three-day seminar.
FIM and FIA together represent performers’ organisations in over 100 countries around the world, and were given the opportunity to share their thoughts and experiences with their Malaysian counterparts.
There are many issues facing actors and musicians in Malaysia, the main one being the same major issue faced by performers all around the world – a lack of appreciation that what they do is actually a job.
“There’s one thing all us performers in every country have in common,” Bolme said. “We’re all abused, with anywhere between 50 to 80 per cent of us being unemployed at the one time.”
“Only a handful of people, the Tom Cruises and Catherine Zeta-Joneses have nothing to complain about, but 90 per cent of us get paid the minimum fee, if we get paid at all.
“It’s very hard for performers to stand up for themselves, but with these kinds of organisations, we can handle these things together.”
“The problems are basically the same faced everywhere,” Smith said, “where the very powerful, and not the performers, benefit from their work.”
Benoit added that it was important to remember that actors and musicians ‘work’ for a living like everyone else.
“They are humans, they work, they rent, they have kids, they have health and unemployment concerns, these needs are the same everywhere.”
Just like in any other career, where we’d all want to receive our credit where credit is due, the world of actors and musicians is the same. Everyone at least once during their professional lives has the credit for their work stolen from them by an all too enterprising colleague or boss.
It’s the same in the entertainment business. And with if there’s no official way to connect performers with their works, which are produced for the public in the first place, then once it’s released all the wrong people get to benefit from the work produced by these actors and musicians.
As an actor or musician, the most important part of what you do is the art you produce.
But, unlike writers, accountants, lawyers and other such occupations, where ownership of their work can be deduced in simple black and white, it’s a little different in the entertainment world.
For example, if an actor acts in a local drama series in 1995, and that drama series is re-run on TV in 2005, the TV station airing the drama will benefit in viewer ratings, the distributor may benefit from the publicity of the show, but there’s nothing protecting that actor’s rights to also benefit from the re-showing of the series he acted in.
For a Malaysian musician, the situation is somewhat similar.
If a local musician has one of their concerts filmed, and their record label chooses to air that concert on local TV, once again, the label benefits, but there’s nothing protecting the musician’s rights to claim for extensive further use of footage shot at their concert.
The members of FIM and FIA were on hand to help point out these shortcomings, and to also offer advice on how to rectify them.
It was interesting to note that it’s not just Malaysia facing such problems.
In fact, actors and musicians all around the world often face the same issues.
“The performers are the key to the success of the entertainment industry and must seek, through a collective voice, to achieve the highest level of protection that they fully deserve,” said John Smith, president of FIM.
“We seek to ensure more decent working terms and conditions, and here in Malaysia, you already have a number of organisations in place, speaking on behalf of the performers here, which is a lot better than other countries are doing,” Benoit said.
“But with so many organisations already in place, it’s time for them now to move on to the next level, and not be so fragmented, so that they can speak with one voice.”
“It’s when employers sense that fragmented weakness, that they use that to their advantage.”
The most important piece of advice they could leave us with was the notion of learning how to be self-sufficient, and stand on our own two feet.
“We’ll continue to advise, support and consult,” Smith said.
“And there are things we can do, but here on your own, there are so many things you can do yourselves too to help fight for your rights.”
“There’s still lots of exploitation of acts by record companies and the like,” Smith explained. “Things like royalties are always an issue, but I’d advise any Malaysian act to join a collective society to represent them, and to keep their eyes open, be aware of what’s going on around them.”
* For more information on how to ‘do it yourself’, log onto www.fim-musicians.com or www.musicunion.org.uk
