Southeast Asian film: A celluloid trove of culture

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.