The role of Malay film, and its icons, is a complicated one in Singaporean art and culture in the twenty-first century due to the society’s relationship and understanding of its past. Between 1940 and the early 1970s Singapore was home to film studios that produced works of art, entertainment and – often – unending silliness that is still appreciated beyond its own borders. The more than 250 films produced during that era still resonate in all aspects of society, with references appearing in song, language, and any other form of communication. Collectively, these films constitute one of the great texts produced in Singapore.
The complications related to these films lies in the politics and culture of Separation. When Singapore became an independent nation in 1965, the role of Malay language film in the nation-state became an anomaly. Originally, these films were a vehicle for owners of theatres to have local product for their audiences in a period when Malay – as is still true – was the national language of Singapore and Malaya, and a tool for unifying disparate ethnic groups. Following Separation, the Malay language, and its films, would be seconded as the society focused on English as a unifying tool of communication, and economic and security issues took precedent. It was also during this era that other forms of entertainment – principally television – made cinema going less popular.
Two studios produced almost all of the films created in Singapore between the 1940s and the early 1970s. The first studio, Malay Film Productions (MFP), was located on Jalan Ampas and was an offshoot of the Shaw Brothers’ theatre and amusement park business. MFP began production in 1940 and 1941 with eight films. Although it closed during the Japanese Occupation, production returned in 1947 and MFP dominated the market until the mid-1950s. By that time there were several other studios – such as Nusantara – operating, but the main competitor to emerge was Cathay Keris, which began producing films in 1953. By the late 1950s both of these studios were producing up to twelve films a year. This era, between 1956 and 1964, was a “golden age” for local cinema. Cinemagoers could attend films that not only entertained their audiences, but also touched upon issues and debates in society. It was an era in which artists – in front of and behind the camera – poured their ideas and hopes into film, reflecting the possibilities that Merdeka (Independence) and Merger held in their lives.
Film production in Singapore went into decline by the early 1960s due to a variety of factors. The industry had been beset with labour strikes, and work in other industries – such as journalism – often drew away talent. Administratively, the studios had difficulties replacing charismatic figureheads who migrated or passed away. At MFP, there was a shift of film production to Kuala Lumpur after Run Run Shaw moved to Hong Kong in 1959. The death of Loke Wan Tho, the head of Cathay, in an airplane crash in 1964 was one of the key turning points at the other Singapore-based studio, which went into further artistic decline following the death of influential director Hussain Haniff. The last film made during this era was in 1972, although production had slowed considerably by the mid-1960s as much of the talent migrated to active studios in Kuala Lumpur or sought employment in other industries.
The two Malay film icons featured in this exhibition represent this era of film production between the 1940s and 1970s. Their works are known to an audience disparate in age and geography, with their films more easily accessible today; they are shown on an almost continual loop on Malaysian cable channels, while in Singapore and Indonesia their works are usually seen on VCD. In many respects, P. Ramlee and Mat Sentol are honoured more today than during their filmmaking heydays. Their legacy in the artistic community and larger society is a thread that connects Singapore to its pre-Independence past. The actual content of their contribution, however, is often obscure – just as the artist Khairuddin Hori has aptly depicted.
P. Ramlee is the dominant icon of Malay cinema. Born in Penang in the late 1920s, P. Ramlee arrived in Singapore as MFP was renewing production following the Japanese Occupation. He began his career as a musician in the studio band, dubbing the singing voice of other actors while also occasionally appearing as a supporting actor. Ramlee soon grabbed the attention of those at the studio, and the wider audience, and quickly became a star. By the early 1950s he was featured in a variety of roles, and his numerous talents – singing, songwriting, acting – soon made him the biggest star in the Peninsula. By 1955 P. Ramlee parlayed his fame into production. He used his position to force the studio to allow him – and his nationalist friends – to write and direct films. Beginning with Penarek Bechak (The Trishaw Driver – 1955) Ramlee directed a series of comedies and dramas that were not only profitable monetarily but also artistically.
Among the most important films of this era was Semerah Padi (1956). The film tells the story of a community in Sumatra in the pre-colonial era. Using a standard plot of a love triangle, P. Ramlee subtly touches on a variety of issues such as the lack of cultural boundaries between Indonesia and Malaya as well as the role of Islam as a unifying belief. The themes present in the film, which many seem to have forgotten amidst the love triangle and the distance of time, leave Ramlee as an icon that reflects back upon the audience. Khairudin has captured this phenomenon through pixilation. It suggests not only the blurring of such themes in Ramlee’s work – as well as many of the films of the era – but also the willful amnesia of his cultural and social milieu. Ramlee and his colleagues were making films that challenged the audiences understanding of a variety of subjects, ranging from elitism and poverty to the role of the individual and religion in society. That Ramlee is mostly remembered for his wonderful singing voice, or his mastery of mise-en-scène in his films, is a shame. The audience should look beyond its own uncertainty over his status, beyond his star power, to bring more clarity to his contribution to the cultural and political debates of the time.
When Ramlee moved to Kuala Lumpur in 1964 it was an end of an era in Singapore-based film. It was also the beginning of the influence of Mat Sentol, who faced a period of declining budgets and audience. Mat Sentol had been involved in film production for years, usually appearing as a background player. With the industry in flux by the early 1960s, Mat Sentol parlayed his unique talents into farce, when he began headlining a series of “Mat” films. The first film – Mat Tiga Suka (Crazy Mat) – was made for $10,000, cheap even in that era. The film was originally planned as a pilot episode for television, but the production was more than the fledgling Television Singapura could afford. By the late 1960s and early 1970s Mat Sentol starred in a dozen films in which his
“Mat” character fell down, was misunderstood, and eventually backed into a successful conclusion; all were made on extremely limited budgets. Although rough around the edges these productions have a charm that overproduced films of today rarely have.
The limited budget that Cathay Keris provided for the “Mat’ films required innovation. Mat Sentol responded through the development of his own unique form of special effects, often appearing to be hand-drawn cartoons to depict explosions or flying objects. His appearance on the edges of everyday life in the works of Khairudin Hori reproduce how Mat Sentol would appear in his own films. His presence in our lives, as is true with his films, is one in which he is both part of the scene and outside of it.
The role of Malay film in Singaporean art and culture is often forgotten. In a citystate that focuses on the future and economic development, the presence of artists from an earlier era is often blurry, or a startling, out-of-body presence in our collective memory. These works force us to imagine, and revisit, this earlier era of production when artistic debates were centre stage in the most popular form of entertainment and when the artists had to work with increasingly slim budgets in a newly independent state. May it shine a light, and reconsideration, of their position as pioneers of the Singaporean art scene.
Mr Timothy P. Barnard
Associate Professor
Department of History
National University of Singapore
Tuesday, August 09, 2011
MAT RAMLEE: An appreciation, a look back
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Wednesday, February 02, 2011
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Reconstructing Sentol 2011: coming soon!
I heard an exhibition featuring myself is happening. Where is it?!
Friday, November 26, 2010
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Khairuddin Hori: Us and Them and You, by June Yap
Race, we are given to believe, is a sensitive topic, a subject to be dealt with, with kid-gloves. The story of the delicate incidents of racial riots from Singapore’s 1964 past has been told and retold, as a bulwark against possible future conflict, although more as a bogeyman, with its crux generally left untouched — that of strategies for the negotiation of difference. It is clear that ethnic difference is a potent subject, as it has been the basis for hasty profiling and the rationale for violence; but it is also this same identity politics that binds communities — invigorating struggling nationalisms in the spirit of Franz Fanon, or alternatively, triggering a crippling colonial imperative, or equally incapacitating postcolonial compunction, à la Rudyard Kipling’s poem, The White Man’s Burden. The series of works presented in Khairuddin Hori’s Us and Them and You, titled after the Pink Floyd song of 1973 from their Dark Side of the Moon album, with the addition of ‘you’ (appearing to point to its public), however is less about race per se, as it is about the more general notion of difference, but a difference that is connected to the dynamics of identity production by and within a community.
Described as a series of photographs of ‘real-life characters from the Singaporean Malay-Muslim community’, according to the artist, here, ‘us’ refers to a sense of fraternity and shared identification with a majoritarian characterisation of what the self is to correspond to within the community, and where ‘them’ then refers less approvingly to those who deviate from this standard and are seen as ‘outsiders’ of the dominant identity. The coupling of ‘Malay’ and ‘Muslim’ secures both race and religion into one, and for most part within Singapore the two are conflated, seen to be interchangeable and referring to the same, with policies supporting and effecting the relationship between the two. Within the broader context of local census however, the Malay-Muslim community is in a minority, and thus Khairuddin’s interest in difference within the community may be read not only as a reflexive gesture against easy but narrow preconceptions of minorities within the minority, but an occasion for discussion and negotiation.
The characters depicted in Khairuddin’s series are real, in the sense that they are as they are portrayed in his images, their representations of themselves unaltered by the artist, other than their being selected by him. They too are members of the Malay-Muslim community, but who may not appear to conform to the relatively conservative identity and representation that is in favour. Superficially, their appearances as tattooed, pierced, heavily made-up, bearing dreadlocks or just baring themselves, may seem transgressive, but no more so than such style and fashion accoutrements, in any extreme would be within a broader contemporary social context — such as committed goth, punk and rastafarian lifestyles and appearances undertaken within communities of other ethnicity — may startle. However there arguably is a particular expectation, that is due to the coupling of race and religion, and that causes these images to appear more fraught. They represent what is usually not encountered, if for no other reason than a reduced probability as a minority, and assembled together, their presence cannot be overlooked. Yet, it would be naive and disingenuous to imagine that presenting their portraits would evince some transformative change in their status within the community. Moreover for the individuals portrayed this is who they are in their lives, and their families, friends and those in their personal spheres would already be aware and familiar with their expressions of themselves, so any disquiet would only come from a non-personal public, and even then, would it be an unanimous response?
The series of images is part of the artist’s project to document a variety of personalities from the Malay-Muslim community, and the selection presented in this exhibition are in fact of individuals who are from the more public sphere of culture, entertainment and the arts. They are performers — model and fire player; and producers — creative director, event and concert manager, DJs, record producer, tour guide, make-up artist, tattoo artist and fashion designer (with Khairuddin himself also as a curator at the Singapore Art Museum). To assume that the Malay-Muslim community is a through and through homogenous one would be somewhat unsophisticated, and the differences that these individuals draw attention to, complicate the Malay-Muslim identity, even if it is of an interruption by professional pursuit. Furthermore, these aspirations perhaps are not so different from that of more nationally recognised figures, such as Najip Ali or Anita Sarawak, and in fact one of the individuals was previously from the popular 80s and 90s Malay children’s television series Mat Yoyo (or Aksi Mat Yoyo). But more precisely, the singling out of their difference from within the community points to a negotiation not merely of appearances, but of culture, race, religion and globalised market economy, an encounter that they are evidence of, rather than cause. Their representation in the gallery space thus symbolise the various contestations and contradictions within and faced by the community, society and world they are essentially a part of.
Khairuddin’s portrayal of these figures in front-facing and larger-than-life form is intended to produce a sense of confrontation with its public, a strategy that has been used in his earlier works as well, such as Badang (2005) and K & A (2006), both produced in collaboration with artist Ahmad Abu Bakar. It is in a way inevitable that these figures appear as role-models of some sort by their presence, and by their ability to realise their chosen professions, but because they are of a minority, they also suggest further consideration of the navigation of the Malay-Muslim trope, that the artist is familiar for, in a more nuanced fashion than merely that of appearances. More importantly, and in the same vein of seeing beyond superficial impressions, Khairuddin’s work represents not merely issues of being Malay-Muslim, but also of race, religion and society at large for other ethnic communities locally. The question isn’t then of whether one stands as ‘us’ or ‘them’, but that there is the possibility of another position that would not quietly acquiesce to the simple binary, and one that here is made possible with the addition of ‘you’.
June Yap is an independent curator and art historian based in Singapore.
Saturday, November 06, 2010
US AND THEM AND YOU
Hi all,
New solo exhibition coming up soon at The Substation. Please do come for the opening on 29 Nov at 7pm if you can.
Opening on 29 Nov 2010, 7pm
Exhibition runs from 30 Nov - 19 Dec 2010
Venue is The Substation, 45 Armenian Street, Singapore
Friday, January 08, 2010
Artwork for Berita Harian 2
Title: "Aku bukan binatang jalang yang dari kumpulannya terbuang," Nazri, b. 1982
Size: 2 x 3 meters
Medium: Photography & digital print on PVC canvas
Year: 2010
Nazri, born in 1982, is Singaporean Malay. He has five stars tattooed on his body, an embodiment of the five stars in Singapore's national flag. Nazri is a professional costume designer and make-up artist and is a fashion school graduate.
