A 67-year-old man fights time with ink and paper — and wins your heart in 5 minutes.
Low Kok Kee is 67. He runs a print shop in Chinatown, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Foto Pak Tai has been faithfully serving the photography and printing needs of the local community since the 1940's. With the advent of the digital age and a rapidly fluctuating appetite of the young and hip, Pak Tai is a business in decline.
Cinematography
Patient, loving observation of hands at work.
Direction
Directors disappear; Low Kok Kee fills the frame.
Director
Cho We Jun
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Foto Pak Tai represents countless family businesses erased by Malaysia's rapid digitization; this film is now primary documentation of a vanishing trade.
The title's irony: we never see an apprentice, only a master with no one to teach. The film itself becomes the apprenticeship.
US
