In the Nusantara region (that covers Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Borneo and the southern Philippines), various forms of the performing arts developed and came into existence. Over the centuries, much of it underwent changes or assimilated the traditional performing arts of other countries. These influences came from the immigrants who came to the area from countries like Burma (today Myanmar), India, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Pakistan, Arabia, Iran and China, all of which had their own strong, thousands of years old arts and cultural backgrounds.
The development of the modern art and technique of cinema in the latter part of the 19th century and its arrival in the Nusantara region beginning in 1897 was, however, not entirely alien to the population. The cinematic apparatus, i.e., the methods and techniques for telling a story through film, was all there in their traditional artforms. The beginnings of Malay cinema in the 1930s saw actors from bangsawan (Malay opera) being cast as heroes and heroines. Introduced to the new medium, audiences, however, saw the familiar faces of actors and the well-known stories of bangsawan with their recurring themes of family, romance and royalty - and replete with the same song-and-dance sequences. The link with the historical and cultural past was thus maintained and so the arrival of cinema did not result in a cultural shock for the locals.
Like the other countries in the Nusantara region, Malaya (as it was known prior to 1963) was a potpourri of people of many races and cultures. With the influx of foreign films into the country at the beginning of the 20th century, Chinese entrepreneurs began to see the potential of entertainment and soon set up amusement parks that catered initially to the working class. The making of the first film, Leila Majnun (Lovestruck Leila, B.S. Rajhans) in 1933 heralded a new medium of entertainment that was to become a money-earner some decades later but it must be emphasised that there was not yet the beginnings of a Malay cinema. Leila Majnun was only a film in the Malay language produced and directed by foreigners from India. Similarly the pre-War and post-War films (as well as those directed by A.R. Tompel and Haji Mahadi), were the products of foreign producers and helmed by foreign directors. I is of the opinion that Malay cinema per se only began with Semerah Padi (The Village of Semerah Padi) directed by P. Ramlee. In this film, the authencity of the Malay world can be discerned through the mannerisms of the characters, their traditional customs and mores as well as the visual look of the film.
A few films were made in the late 1930s but it was only after the Second World War that film production began in earnest. All manner of peoples and nationalities became involved from financiers to creative personnel, from crew to actors. Chinese, Malays, Indians, Filipinos and Indonesians all came together and worked side by side to produce narrative films in the Malay language. Logically, one would have expected to see something truly colourful then to emerge in the films stories and their treatments. Strangely, this was not to be the case. What developed in the 1950s was only a Malay cinema, one that was only in the Malay language and targeted at a Malay audience populating the Nusantara region.
The early films were a motley collection of tearjerkers, melodrama, horror, comedy and romance that were treated in a classical manner with most of them initially being in the style of the bangsawan performances that were exceedingly popular with the locals. Many film directors continued to maintain the melodramatic narratives and styles even well into the 1980s. But approaches grounded in reality had already begun to emerge in the early 1950s when some Malay film directors like the legendary P. Ramlee, Hussein Haniff and M. Amin began to helm productions that moved in tandem with the mainstream melodramas and tearjerkers.
A parallel movement was again seen when the First New Wave of alternative filmmakers appeared on the scene in the early 1980s who worked alongside the mainstream filmmakers. This group brought to the screen stories in a style that had never been seen before. They brought serious subjects and issues of a post-Independent Malaysia that was faced with new problems and new challenges. And with the Second New Wave of (digital) filmmakers beginning in the late 1990s, Malaysian cinema became even more colourful. These were young and brash people who had cut their teeth working in the arts, theatre or with the mainstream filmmakers and were eager to strike out on their own. Most of them had formal training and were exposed to world literature, music and cinema. And the low-cost of digital film equipment and its easy handling enabled them to do things that had never before been possible. New ground was broken, giving birth to what was dubbed as The Little Cinema of Malaysia.
If the1950s film industry was integrated, with many different nationalities working together to produce a Malay cinema, the millennium instead saw a fragmentation. On one hand, there was the production of quickies that rode on the wave of successful comedies, horror and gangster movies. And working within the mainstream, there also moved new groups of filmmakers catering to the same audience but with a slightly higher level of articulation, i.e., with different kinds of stories and with independent approaches, sometimes bordering on the personal. Other new directors made features with alternative approaches that were successful locally as well as at international film festivals. Some of the digital filmmakers also moved into the mainstream while others kept on with their own personal styles of filmmaking. Even though these films did not really draw a local audience, they, nevertheless, were happy that many of their films had screenings at prestigious international film festivals.
The beginning of the millennium also saw a major shift in Malaysian cinema. Films began to be made not only in Malay, the lingua franca of the country but also in three of the major languages of the country English, Tamil and Chinese. Many of the films produced became truly Malaysian in look and feel, i.e., featuring stories, themes and situations that spoke of the problems and issues of not only the Malays but also of the Chinese and Indians. The bottle that had once contained only one kind of content, now spewed forth a colourful collection of stories and subjects that reflected the diverse, vibrant and evolving nature of a cosmopolitan Malaysian society with all its quirks and idiosyncracies.
Lets start at the beginning to explore how this interesting change came about and also of how some of the elements found in the traditional performing arts were absorbed, assimilated, became reflected and even became the subject in Malaysian cinema today.
