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Jubilation as ‘Pride of Malaysia’ Yeoh Wins First Oscar

Michelle Yeoh with her Oscar for Best Actress for "Everything Everywhere All at Once" in the press room during the 95th annual Academy Awards ceremony at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA, 12 March 2023. (EPA)
Michelle Yeoh with her Oscar for Best Actress for "Everything Everywhere All at Once" in the press room during the 95th annual Academy Awards ceremony at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA, 12 March 2023. (EPA)
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Jubilation as ‘Pride of Malaysia’ Yeoh Wins First Oscar

Michelle Yeoh with her Oscar for Best Actress for "Everything Everywhere All at Once" in the press room during the 95th annual Academy Awards ceremony at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA, 12 March 2023. (EPA)
Michelle Yeoh with her Oscar for Best Actress for "Everything Everywhere All at Once" in the press room during the 95th annual Academy Awards ceremony at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA, 12 March 2023. (EPA)

Family and friends of Malaysia's Michelle Yeoh responded with screams, jubilation and pride on Monday at her winning the Academy Award for best lead actress, Asia's first ever winner in the category.

There were ecstatic roars and fist-pumps as her triumph was announced at an Oscars viewing party in Malaysia's capital Kuala Lumpur, with all eyes on her surprised and delighted mother, Janet Yeoh.

"She's a very hardworking girl, you know. Everybody knows it," she told a news conference afterwards, in front of a poster of her daughter that said "Pride of Malaysia".

The actress's niece, Vicki Yeoh, looked equally stunned as the announcement was made, clutching her face and letting out a huge scream as the tears welled up.

"Jaw dropping moment ... I was speechless I cried, it happened so quickly and we are so happy that she won, that our auntie won," she said.

Yeoh, 60, won the award for her portrayal of a Chinese American laundromat owner Evelyn Wang, dealing with family turmoil in the science-fiction kung fu comedy "Everything Everywhere All at Once".

It was Yeoh's first Oscar nomination and she had been widely regarded as the front-runner.

Yeoh made her Hollywood breakthrough when she was cast as the first ethnic Chinese Bond girl in 1997's "Tomorrow Never Dies" opposite Pierce Brosnan. She has also starred in martial arts movie "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon," the 2005 period drama "Memoirs of a Geisha" and the 2018 romantic comedy "Crazy Rich Asians".

Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim lauded Yeoh's success and said her career was illustrious and exemplary and would continue to inspire Malaysians.

"In creating history by being not just the first Malaysian but the very first Asian actress to win in this category, we take enormous pride in her achievement, adding to a long list of successes and capping a critically acclaimed acting career spanning decades," Anwar said in a statement on his Facebook page.

Family friend Derrick Lee described her as an inspiration.

"The efforts that she put in for this film is extraordinary," he said at the party.

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In Show Stretched over 50 Years, Slovenian Director Shoots for Space

The first performance took place in 1995, and the last one will be in 2045. Jure Makovec / AFP
The first performance took place in 1995, and the last one will be in 2045. Jure Makovec / AFP
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In Show Stretched over 50 Years, Slovenian Director Shoots for Space

The first performance took place in 1995, and the last one will be in 2045. Jure Makovec / AFP
The first performance took place in 1995, and the last one will be in 2045. Jure Makovec / AFP

In an innovative show directed by Slovenian artist and space enthusiast Dragan Zivadinov, a crew of actors is putting on the same play once a decade over 50 years.

And if they die before the half-century run of performances ends? They are replaced by satellite-like devices that the director says will eventually be launched into space.

"If you ask me who will be the audience of these emancipated, auto-poetic devices -- it will be the Sun!" Zivadinov, 65, told AFP after the latest staging in the remote Slovenian town of Vitanje last month.

The first performance in the series took place on April 20, 1995, in the capital Ljubljana; the second was in Star City, a town outside Moscow that has prepared generations of Soviet and Russian cosmonauts. And the last one will be in 2045.

This time, 12 actors, most of them in their sixties, took part, wearing futuristic monochrome coveralls and dancing along a spaceship-like cross-shaped stage made of monitors.

Two so-called "umbots" -- artistic satellite-like devices emitting sounds -- replaced actors who have died since 1995.

'Makes you think'

Hundreds turned up to watch the play, "Love and Sovereignty", a tragedy set in the early 17th century by Croatian playwright Vladimir Stojsavljevic. It deals with power and art and features English playwright William Shakespeare as a character.

"It is an interesting experience, makes you think," Eneja Stemberger, who studies acting in Ljubljana, told AFP after watching the packed show.

Tickets offered for free online quickly ran out, but the organizers allowed even those who came without tickets to watch the show, standing or sitting on the floor.

German art consultant Darius Bork told AFP that he had already seen the play 10 years ago, describing Zivadinov's work as "absolutely fantastic".

Zivadinov became internationally recognized in the 1980s as one of the founders of Slovenia's avant-garde movement Neue Slowenische Kunst (New Slovenian Art), which criticized totalitarian regimes in then-Communist Yugoslavia.

At the end of the century, Zivadinov turned to develop "post-gravity art".

He also helped set up a space research center in Vitanje, named after the early space travel theorist Herman Potocnik, who went by the pseudonym of Noordung and whose work inspired Stanley Kubrick's film "2001: A Space Odyssey".

The Center Noordung hosted this year's and the 2015 performance.

The "Noordung: 1995-2025-2045" project's final performance will feature only "umbots" and so be "liberated from human influence", Zivadinov said.

At the end of the project, the "umbots" -- containing digitalized information, including the actors' DNA -- will be propelled into space to "culturize" it, he added, without detailing how he would do that.

"They will all be launched simultaneously, each one into a different direction, deep into space," he said.