THE KAMPUNG BOY or LAT'S LIFE

Somewhere in Malaysia, there is a small boy.
He lives in a very small kampung (village) and he will never forget his youth there. He grows up and goes to lpoh; he even manages to finish some art school. He takes age and leaves from time to time his country for some travels outside Asia. He eventually get married and works for Malay newspapers, as a cartoonist.
Lat is a cartoonist.

He has a special talent for telling ordinary life stories and to keep deep in his heart the tender nostalgia of his young age. He is the invaluable witness of a Malaysian world submitted to profound changes. But do not think he is past orientated!
Lat keeps his eyes wide open, and if it happens that you are under his sharp scrutiny: beware... try not to be too ridiculous.

Do not be afraid, there is no cruelty in the Lat's reports; he likes too much the ones he criticizes.

The style of Lat is something unique and is surely at its best when he describes in a few pages of comic strips the real and everyday life, in the multicultural Malaysia.
No malice but an ironical smile for the stupid and a friendly one for everything that is innocently funny. His poetic vision of the daily life is far bigger than being purely regionalist or Malay. Lat hits the universal.

But do not misunderstand me. Lat is funny. Very funny. His drawing style uses the simplicity but also the efficiency. He synthesises in one or two drawings the details of a given situation with a precision that is the characteristic of the best cartoonists.
Today, Lat is more committed to the production of cartoons illustrating the daily news, but his talent is unchanged.

If you do not know the universe of Lat, rush for his books. 'The Kampung Boy' 'Town Boy' 'With A Little Bit Of Lat' 'Lots of Lat' ... and many more are the results of more than 15 years of publishing comic strips.
The illustration of his works that we are giving here is only a very small bit of his art...

E.BORGERS
( © 1991, 1996)

The LAT Scrapbbok

GOING GLOBAL
By S.Jayasankaran in Kuala Lumpur
Beloved Malaysian icon takes on Hollywood with tales of village life
Two cultures collided when Hollywood ran up against Malaysia in 1995. Lat, as Malaysian cartoonist Mohamad Nor Khalid is known, recalls sitting in an office on Sunset Boulevard, spinning stories about Malaysian village life to a Hollywood scriptwriter who sat at his feet banging away on a computer. "It was tough," grunts Lat, a near-legendary figure in his homeland. "She couldn't understand why you had to take off your shoes before you enter a house. Or that Daddy didn't kiss Mummy in front of the kids. They even wanted to make it American, yippee-ai-yo kind of thing, rodeos and so on."
Lat was in Los Angeles to develop Kampung Boy, his gentle, evocative cartoons about growing up in a Malaysian village (kampung in Malay), into an animated series for television. Despite his reservations, the series has already struck a chord outside Malaysia: In june, one episode won top honours at France's Annecy International Film Animation Festival, the oldest and largest of its kind and the industry equivalent of the Oscars.
Over the years, Lat did all types of cartooning - political, social, and gag cartoons; comic strips, commercials, and animation. His annual compilations of his strips into books were extremely successful, one, Kampung Boy, selling more than 100,000 copies. Lat's cartoons go down easy because the universality of his messages and images.
Krishnan has long believed that Lat's unique vision deserved a larger forum, and since 1986 has been encouraging the cartoonist to try his hand at other genres, writing script for a live-action film, for example. But Lat is an artist, even billionaires sometimes can't budge artists. "It was words, words, words," grumbles Lat, "I can't do words." But in 1993, Lat finally caught the bug and threw himself into the animation project full-time.
Even with the cartoonist on board, Krishnan's Astro satellite broadcaster took four years and more infusions of cash to develop the series. "It's not really a business proposition," Krishnan shrugs. "But who knows? These things are external. If kids like it and we can show it for the next 30-40 years, that's good enough."
Lat just grins the snaggle-toothed grin made famous in cartoon renderings of himself. Plump, with unruly hair, the 48-year-old is Malaysia's most famous artist; a master of the gently humorous reality beneath the surface, a cartoonist whose good-natured comments on Malaysian society draw delighted recognition or poignant rememberance; a grin, a gale of belly laughter.
"He's someone I highly respect," says Morgan Chua, a regional cartoonist based in Singapore and former creative director at the REVIEW. "He's managed to create an impressively local style while remaining original."
A former crime reporter with the New Straits Times, one of Malaysia's leading English newspapers, Lat's other skills came to attention of his employers only after the now defunct Asia Magazine published a series of his cartoons in 1974, depicting circumcision in the villages.
Even with the cartoonist on board, Krishnan's Astro satellite broadcaster took four years and more infusions of cash to develop the series. "It's not really a business proposition," Krishnan shrugs. "But who knows? These things are external. If kids like it and we can show it for the next 30-40 years, that's good enough."
But he has became a household name by crossing over - by being not just a "Malay" artist but a Malaysian one. The profession has always been donimated by Malays - who account for 58% of Malaysia's 22 million people - which meant that cartoons were drawn by Malays for Malays.
Lat changed his rules by touching benign bases with all the races, drawing Malay, Indian and Chinese characters with true-to-life, instinctive mannerisms that struck home unerringly; a genial mirror held up to society. On Lat's strips, the country sparkled; an innocently funny land, rain-washed clean of its baggage of ancient race suspicions. "We end up laughing at ourselves," says writer Adibah Amin, a long time friend.
Lat quit the NST group in 1984, an entirely amicable parting that still sees him drawing three exclusive cartoons for the paper per week. Indeed, his cartoons may be the best things going for the pro-government paper, whose circulation has slid steadily, especially in the wake of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's sacking of former Deputy Premier Anwar Ibrahim last September.
That's not to say that Lat does political cartoons, although the one featured here in the REVIEW was spiked because it was most probably considered beyond the pale. "Hey, c'mon, I get up and I'm looking at a blank page," he says, puffing on a cigaratte. "Okay, maybe I've pushed the line a little bit, but I've never got into trouble and, frankly, only a handful of my cartoons were ever spiked."
In many ways, it isn't surprising that Lat's Kampung Boy series struck a chord with the Annecy judges. The cartoonist's fans have always believed his work would have a universal appeal. "One of the reasons I thought we could really do something that would be a global success," says Krishnan, "was that children of non-Malaysian friends loved the characters, even when they had never been to Malaysia."
The series essentially revolves around Lat's childhood experiences in a village near Ipoh, 160 kilometres north of Kuala Lumpur. It features the adventures of a child called Mat - playing soccer, going to the city. The award-winning episode featured superstition as its theme and how a spooky banyan tree with long vines trailing in brackish water can really get into a kid's head.
Getting the series into award-winning shape took time. By 1993, Lasewood Studios in Canada had taken on the project and the result, two years later, was six episodes. Neither Lat nor Krishnan was happy with the result, however, and Frank Saperstein, a producer who worked for Krishnan's Matinee Entertainment in Los Angeles, was roped in. He folded tight scripting into warm colours and a soft, cuddly feel, and the result was 12 episodes Lat could live with. "He was on back all the time," says Krishnan.
Lat has returned to his roots in Ipoh, eschewing the bright lights of Kuala Lumpur for the laid-back pace of his hometown. He's a pillar of the local mosque but some things don't change: He retained his live for '60s rock music and blowing smoke rings. And he still hates praise - "I never praise anyone so I don't expect any" - and makes tracks when he hears autograph seekers may be on the way.
The series could make him world famous: Negotiations are under way with North American and European children's channels. How does that make him feel? "Ahh, life goes on," says Lat dismissively, then quickly begins a rambling tale concerning his pilgrimage to London's Abbey Road studios, where The Beatles recorded many of their albums.
Lat has returned to his roots in Ipoh, eschewing the bright lights of Kuala Lumpur for the laid-back pace of his hometown. He's a pillar of the local mosque but some things don't change: He retained his live for '60s rock music and blowing smoke rings. And he still hates praise - "I never praise anyone so I don't expect any" - and makes tracks when he hears autograph seekers may be on the way.
The series could make him world famous: Negotiations are under way with North American and European children's channels. How does that make him feel? "Ahh, life goes on," says Lat dismissively, then quickly begins a rambling tale concerning his pilgrimage to London's Abbey Road studios, where The Beatles recorded many of their albums.

Better LAT than never / by LAT M 741.59595 LAT
Budak Kampung / oleh LAT
Be serious ! / by LAT
Entahlah mak ... / oleh LAT
It's a Lat. Lat. Lat. World / by LAT
Kampung boy : yesterday and today / by LAT
Keluarga Si Mamat / oleh LAT
LAT as usual / by LAT
LAT with a punch / by LAT
LAT's lot / by LAT
LAT gets lost / by LAT
LAT was here / by LAT
Lat at large
The Kampung boy / by LAT