Southeast Asian film: A celluloid trove of culture

Dewi Anggraeni, Contributor, Melbourne, Australia

Film in South East Asia: Views From the Region; Edited by David Hanan; Published by South East Asia-Pacific Audio Visual Archive Association (SEAPAVAA), Vietnam Film Institute and National Screen and South Archive of Australia, November 2001; Paperback, 320 pp

It is safe to assume that, while a fair number of people like watching good films, they are not necessarily all film buffs. Apart from coffee-table books with pages and pages of colorful pictures of movie scenes, books about the historical development of the cinema in a particular country mostly appeal to a small minority of readers.

Yet, in terms of appeal to general readers, this recently launched book has some advantages over the more specialized books about film. To begin with, it paints a larger landscape generously luminescent with colors, figuratively speaking. The book encompasses Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, the Philippines, even Australia and New Zealand.

The fact that each part was written by a film practitioner from the relevant country adds to its attractiveness. Film is so intricately linked to a nation's political ambience and cultural nuances that it would hardly be viable for a single writer to research each country in the region in order to write one book.

The book was a very ambitious project, but it has paid off. The writers tell how their respective countries came into contact with film and how in the cradle of its culture this particular art form developed into its current shape. In doing so they paint the country's history, social structure and cultural spectrum. And since they are not writing historical or sociological theses, their own preconceptions often come through in the telling, which lends depth in a special way, while adding colors and shades to the descriptions.

Behind the layers of the kaleidoscope, common patterns come to the surface. With the exception of Thailand, all the countries in the region were colonized by a Western country. And this fact plays an important part in the initial development of film.

At the turn of last century, the struggle for independence became a dominant theme across the region, and in the meantime, the colonial authorities' strong arm strategy, manifested in a ruthless form of censorship, was the filmmakers' sword of Damocles, which in many cases spelt their subsequent bankruptcy.

Survival demanded, apart from a pas de deux with the authorities, an interplay of an acute business sense, an ability to fund it, and a willingness to take the risk.

Interestingly but not surprisingly, the beginning of cinematic art in the region came with the documentary genre, and was initiated by filmmakers from Europe or the United States. This may have a great deal to do with the ethics movement which spread across Western Europe in the late 19th century. Some indigenous groups had begun to develop aspirations for their own independent nations.

News about their activities aroused further curiosity in Europe and the United States. Many writers and journalists became aware that the colonies indeed had their own cultures, and their lives followed particular structures very different from their own. The subsequent curiosity finally drove them to record and chronicle these lives.

Each of the countries represented in the book, however, responded in their own way to the birth of the cinema. And its subsequent growth then depended very much on the social and political self-perception and preconceptions of the population of each particular country.

In the chapter on Indonesia for instance, written by the well- known H. Misbach Yusa Biran, translated by the editor, David Hannan himself, the development of the fabric of the Indonesian community is reflected in the choice of films they viewed throughout the last century until current times. Misbach's own contribution to the development of film in the country qualifies him as not only an observer from inside, but also someone who has ridden the turbulent current and arrived on the other side in one piece.

Another quality of the book, perhaps unintentional, is the individual style of writing in each chapter, which made the book a rich medley of different musical numbers, each one ringing with the particular country's personality. Deb Verhoeven's accounts, couched in a dry sense of humor, resplendent with self- deprecation, could only be about Australia and Australians.

Dissimilar as they are in many respects, Indonesians and Australians at least shared one common trait during the early stages of the development of cinematic art in their respective countries: they under-appreciated domestic productions, preferring instead to watch overseas-produced films. Maybe this phenomenon reveals some deep-seated inferiority complex which both countries are beginning to overcome.