Southeast Asian cinemas have been historically marginalised within global screen culture. Wedged between dominant cinemas from the United States, India, Japan and China and industrially dependent upon these larger markets for raw film stock and equipment, Southeast Asia has until recent decades received limited attention on the international film festival circuit or by international critics. Although international interest in the region has grown in the decades since the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis as Southeast Asian-born directors such as Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Thailand), Lav Diaz (Philippines), Midi Z (Myanmar/Taiwan), Phạm Thiên Ân (Vietnam), Tsai Ming-liang (Malaysia/Taiwan) have received growing attention on the international film festival circuit, these filmmakers typically do so by appealing to a distinct film festival aesthetic with funding from Euro-American producers. These marginalisations are further accentuated within Southeast Asia itself, in which Myanmar (formerly Burma)1 is further restricted by and rolling political crises and decades if compound economic underdevelopment.2 Today, Myanmar has one of the lowest GDPs per capita in Southeast Asia, and has received most of its international attention over recent decades for its democratic backsliding, racial persecution of Rohingya minorities and catastrophic (ongoing) civil war.3 This critical devaluation has fed into a historical lack of high-quality scholarly engagement with Burmese cinema and film history, reinforcing a vicious cycle of marginalisation that has left much of its film history unexplored by Western scholars.

Silver Screens and Golden Dreams, Jane Ferguson’s long-awaited history of the first six decades of Burmese cinema (1920-1980s), addresses this chasm in Anglophone film scholarship. An anthropologist in the School of Culture, History and Language at the Australian National University’s College of Asia and the Pacific, Ferguson is an authority on Burmese socio-cultural history and political economy. Her research interlaces a range of interests from cinema and popular culture to Buddhism and regional counterinsurgency, contributing to the detailed and methodological approach she takes to her subject matter. 

Silver Screens and Golden Dreams presents a history of the shifting industrial, economic, cultural and political conditions of the Burmese film industry, highlighting the producers, directors, actors, institutions and audiences that defined this transformative period affectionately known within Myanmar itself as the “Black and White Classics” (p. 2). Casting such a wide net, the book describes the evolving creative ecology of Burmese cinema, providing insights into its idiosyncrasies while at the same time showing its deep connections with global technological and creative trends in global cinema at the time. Reflecting her background and expertise as an anthropologist, Ferguson uses these histories as a lens through which to understand the Myanmar’s shifting political economy over six tumultuous decades and across changing political regimes. Silver Screens and Golden Dreams is not only a history of Burmese cinema, but rather uses Burmese cinema as a witness to the transformation of Burmese society over the twentieth century, encapsulating the decline of British colonisation, the push for nationalist identity, and the violence of interethnic tensions. This socio-political focus, grounded in detailed and affectionate descriptions of Burmese films, makes the book useful across disciplines, and provides enough context and explanation to guide readers otherwise unfamiliar with the country’s history beyond its recent crises.

Methodologically, the book draws upon Ferguson’s sustained research in the region and partnerships with local stakeholders, drawing upon an extensive archive of hitherto untranslated sources that show the depth and complexity of Burmese film history and discourse, many drawn from her own archive of local film periodicals and ephemera. As in numerous other postcolonial cinemas, many Burmese films have been lost through neglect, or through celluloid decay accelerated by the tropical climate, obfuscating the diverse and extensive catalogue of films produced in the country. As Burmese films averaged only four to six prints, popular films would be played and rewound so frequently that they would disintegrate over time – in her words, “the best movies were loved to death” (p. 7). Reflecting the lack of translated material and the limited availability of films for global audiences, Ferguson organises each chapter around a handful of plot descriptions and production histories, providing charming insights into popular narratives, industry conventions, and eccentric personalities.

The book is divided into ten chapters centred on different facets of the Burmese film industry, organised in roughly linear order. Each chapter is largely self-contained and easily comprehensible in isolation, making it well-suited for university reading lists. Lateral connections between chapters are conveniently flagged, making it convenient to flick between different sections of the book. Across these chapters, Ferguson explores the evolution of several key themes: cinema’s role in the development of Burmese nationalism, struggles with colonisation and international influence, the place and creative contributions of women, and the complexities of interethnic relations between the majority Bamar and minority Karen, Kachin, Shan and Mon cultures. This sustained interest in minority representation and practice challenges grand narratives of Burmese national development by acknowledging Myanmar’s rich cultural diversity and the place of minority voices in its national cinema.

Chapter One begins with the pre-history of Burmese cinema, while the country is still a British colony. By the early-twentieth century, Rangoon (now Yangon) was a multicultural hub awash with migrant labourers brought in from all corners of the British Empire, at once stage eclipsing New York in international arrivals each year (p. 20). For Rangoon’s cosmopolitan elites, the arrival of motion pictures was part of an ongoing experiment with European modernisation and with it the arrival of leisure culture and “capitalist measures of time” (pp. 36-37). Ferguson describes Burma’s participation in global film markets through imported film reels and raw footage from suppliers in England, India, Japan and the United States, recounting in vivid detail how emerging leisure classes seized the opportunities presented by globalised consumerism while fighting to maintain a coherent sense of national cultural identity. Drawing parallels with the West, these same Burmese elites were concerned about the decline of religious (in this case, Buddhist) morality and cultural hegemony in the wake of its colonisers’ growing cultural dominance. From the book’s outset, Ferguson frames the early history of Burmese cinema as a series of negotiations between nationalism and cosmopolitanism, capitalist modernity and Buddhist traditionalism, that persist across later decades and into the subsequent chapter.

Continuing this theme of cultural contestation, Chapter Two revises the dominant view of the Myanmar motion picture industry as a male centred history organised around the “Fathers of Burmese Cinema” (p. 39) by investigating the central role of women in its early years. As in other parts of Southeast Asia, women were active agents in the Burmese colonial economy, but were marginalised in other aspects of social, spiritual and political life (p. 40). Ferguson’s account powerfully shifts focus from directors towards the whole spectrum of female participation in public screen culture – from their work as screenwriters and camera operators to their place as film critics and audiences – demonstrating the comparative agency of Burmese women in contrast to the dominant East and South Asian cinemas of the time.

This complimentary emphasis on individual artistry (embodied by her close analysis of specific films and individuals) and social viewing practices extend into Chapter Three, which examines the evolution of film sound over the same period. Ferguson explores the fascinating noisiness of cinema halls over these early decades (in a similar vein to Rick Altman’s Silent Film Sound4), exploring how exhibitors exchanged the organ or piano accompaniment of western “silent” film screenings for elaborate hsaing (Burmese traditional orchestra) performances incorporating “percussionists on gongs, cymbals, xylophone (pattala), bamboo clapper (wa lay khou), and a hne, a double-reeded aerophone or oboe-like instrument derived from the Middle Eastern and Indian Hnai” (p. 58). Bands were sometimes billed alongside their film performances and audiences would frequently sing along with the performances, transforming cinemas into rich sites of interaction and social connection (pp. 63-64).5 Chapter Three also explores interesting examples of transnational collaboration between Myanmar and Japan to show the multidirectional currents of celluloid exchange that defined this fascinating period of Asian film production.

As for many of its Southeast Asian neighbours, the outbreak of World War II led to a breakdown in international film imports to Burma, capping off a decade of imperial decline during the Great Depression that led to growing nationalist sentiment at home. In 1942, the Japanese military – working with Burmese nationalists – overthrew the British colonial government, and with it the conservative British-administered Motion Picture Censor Board (pp. 79-89). In Chapter Four, Ferguson recounts how filmmakers seized the opportunity to produce Burmese nationalist films geared towards centralised “consensus narrative” capable of unifying the disparate interests, languages and cultures that made up the Burmese body politic. Building on these themes in the post-war period, Chapter Five explores how Burma navigated its position of political neutrality between Western and Soviet blocs, even as it was embroiled in its own processes of nation building following its independence from Britain in 1948. Although the country remained ostensibly capitalist and democratic between 1948-1962, Cold War tensions, local insurgencies and the shifting social status of Buddhism posed ongoing threats to the emerging state, leading its film industry to “espouse goals of class solidarity and socialist ideology” (p. 112). These questions of national identification and unity are explored more deeply in Chapter Six, in which Ferguson deftly interweaves Myanmar’s cultural negotiation of unity and difference over the twentieth century, painting a fascinating portrait of colonial conflict and disjuncture. Despite this politically weighty subject matter, however, Ferguson’s writing remains playful and inquisitive, detailing the Burma’s anachronistic frame rate (sixteen frames per second) and taxation systems in a treasure trove of regional production history.

Chapters Seven and Eight move to discuss Myanmar’s history with international remakes, raising fascinating questions on the nature of translation and adaptation. Through analysis of Hnit Hmwa Athe (Twin Hearts, U Tin Maung and U Mya Maung, 1968) – a Burmese remake of The Parent Trap (David Swift, 1961) – Ferguson explores the cultural politics of transnational adaptation and presents a spirited defence of batha pyan (translations) of works from other nations. In the process, she powerfully challenges the conventional hierarchies of originality and adaptation that (more often than not) privilege Western authors and authorship frameworks at the expense of colonised cultural producers. Rather, Ferguson’s analysis gleans the ways through which Burmese remakes translate and indigenise foreign narratives in nuanced and interesting ways.

In 1962, the Burmese government was seized in a coup led by General Ne Win, ushering in a period of sustained military-socialist rule. In Chapter Eight, Ferguson explores how the film industry adjusted to this drastic transformation of political economy amidst the military government’s push for “Burmese socialist realism.” Reflecting the influence of Maoism, films of this style were expected to be educational and called for the depiction of reality and the lives of workers and peasants, in place of landowners and elites (p. 156). Yet despite the military’s grip on film censorship and influence on film production, Ferguson acknowledges its difficulties taking full control: “Miraculously, the government realised that its company lacked the skill to make a popular film” (p. 155). In place of domination, Ferguson acknowledges the nuanced negotiations of power between the military and (nascent) public sphere by exploring how producers navigated censorship conditions from within to maintain their profitability, rather than simply resist its political influences.

Chapter Nine returns to the tension between minority representation on-screen and Burmese cinema’s role as a national consensus narrative on the nation’s ethnic peripheries. Here, Ferguson provides a fascinating description of how minority peoples and places were orientalised within the Burmese cultural imaginary. Films from the time positioned Shanland6 as a “wild west” (p. 193), borrowing from the aesthetics of American cinema to frame their own interethnic conflicts. Ferguson writes:

Dramatizations of government soldiers in ethnic minority areas constitute a recurring archetype for Burmese socialist-era discourse about inter-ethnic relations. The army is seen as helping the local, innocent communities, acting as agents for unity and protecting vulnerable villagers from nebulous enemies (p.182).

Here, as cinema again becomes a site of cultural contestation between the centralising nation state and the diverse interests of minorities, Ferguson strives to find patterns of agency and self-determination at the margins. These themes of minority representation, female agency, technological innovation and cultural unification converge in Chapter Ten through a return to discussions of sound, music and masculinity.

Silver Screens and Golden Dreams concludes by skipping forward four decades to the present day, where its focus becomes increasingly autobiographical. Ferguson recounts her own experience serving on a jury at the 2014 Human Rights Human Dignity Documentary Film Festival in Yangon, including a photograph with festival organiser Min Htin Ko Ko Gyi. Five years later in 2019, Min Htin Ko Ko Gyi was arrested for a Facebook post criticising the military-drafted 2008 constitution. Similar stories have proliferated since the Tatmadaw overthrew the democratically-elected government in 2021 and cast the country into social, political and humanitarian crisis.

 Ferguson’s presence at the conclusion of her own book powerfully recontextualises the preceding chapters. Although she notes in the introduction that she hopes to move away from the dominant international associations of Myanmar with violence, repression and catastrophe, her return to the sombre realities of the present instils a sense of loss in her unfolding history, the tragedy of the present rooted in nostalgia for a rich and glorious past. And yet, despite the tragedy of the country’s current crisis, Ferguson’s nostalgia is tinged by the optimistic belief that Myanmar will emerge from its present crisis with a new generation of talented, conscientious filmmakers.

For these reasons, Silver Screens and Golden Dreams is an extraordinary book, and a substantial contribution to Southeast Asian screen studies. In practical terms, Ferguson’s historiographical shift from strict twenty-five year anniversary segments  – Silver Age (1920–1945), the Golden Age (1946–1970), the Diamond Age (1971–1995) and the Ruby Age (1996–2020) – to a more dynamic timeline organised around shifting institutional conditions – the Colonial Period (1920-1947), the Parliamentary Democracy Period (1948-1962), the Socialist Period (1962-1988), the State Law and Order Restoration Council Period (1988-2010), the Quasi-Civilian Government Period (2010-2021) – provides excellent grounding for future studies of Burmese cinema by other scholars. It is remarkably well-researched, accessibly written for diverse academic audiences, and highly original in its subject matter. The sheer breadth of translation alone sets this book apart from comparable volumes, and are cleanly and confidently incorporated into her argument. Silver Screens and Golden Dreams provides an excellent resource for film programmers, students and cinephiles to understand and engage with Myanmar’s rich cinema history beyond the country’s contemporary political crises.

The book does, naturally, have limitations. Reflecting Ferguson’s background as an anthropologist and the book’s straddling of multiple fields (political economy, film studies, Burmese social history), the book’s engagement with concepts from film theory is comparatively light. In Chapter Six, for example, she provides a broad overview of minority representation in different national contexts, including discussions of queer visibility in Western cinema through reference to Vito Russo’s The Celluloid Closet (1986) (p. 117). While these theoretical discussions provide useful grounding for readers outside of film studies, they may come across as cursory for readers more heavily steeped in academic film studies. That said, further in-depth theoretical or representational analysis would have very possibly undermined the book’s coherence and accessibility for a broader readership, for whom these in-depth discussions are secondary. Consequently, within film studies this book should be viewed as the foundation for future in-depth discussions of Burmese cinema, rather than a “final word” on its analysis. Despite these modest limitations, Silver Screens and Golden Dreams makes a substantial original contribution to the discipline of Southeast Asian screen studies, and will provide a critical resource for future studies of Burmese cinema.

And yet, where Silver Screens and Golden Dreams shines most is in Ferguson’s compassion for the subject matter. The characters that populate its pages – from Hsan Ni, a taxi mogul turned nationalist film producer, to Mary Myint, a Shan-Chinese actress who burst ethnic stereotypes yet tragically passed away at age twenty-eight – are fascinating and deeply human. Her detailed plot descriptions are vivid and exciting, introducing these largely unknown films as products of invention, imagination and dignity.

Jane M. Ferguson, Silver Screens and Golden Dreams: A Social History of Burmese Cinema (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2024).

Endnotes

  1. The country now known as Myanmar was known as the Union of Burma from 1948 to 1989, at which point the country was renamed by the military government. For technical accuracy, Ferguson uses names according to their respective periods.
  2. International Monetary Fund, “GDP Per Capita, Current Prices,” April 2024.
  3. The Rohingya are a Muslim minority based predominantly in Rakhine State in southwest Myanmar. Beginning in August 2017, the Rohingya were subjected to atrocities by the Tatmadaw (Burmese military), culminating in the expulsion of 730,000 Rohingya into Bangladesh and the ongoing persecution of its populations. In 2021, a military junta deposed the Aung San Suu Kyi-backed (partially) democratic government, precipitating an ongoing civil war that has led to thousands of deaths and further diminished the struggling Myanmar economy. See: Human Rights Watch, “Myanmar: No Justice, No Freedom for Rohingya 5 Years On,” 24 August 2022.
  4. Rick Altman, Silent Film Sound (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004).
  5. Asian cinema has a long history of noise and audience participation. For further discussion, see: Shai Heredia and Oliver Husain (eds.), “Loud Mess,” Nang 8 (2020).
  6. The name “Shanland” is a contested term used to describe the Shan State, a large multi-ethnic region in eastern Myanmar. Ferguson uses this term to accurately reflect the terminology of the periods of her study, and I use the term here to reflect the terminology used in the book.

About The Author

Duncan Caillard is a Research Fellow at Auckland University of Technology. His research investigates transnational art cinema in the Asia-Pacific, concentrating on works of anti-authoritarian and decolonial art practice. His current research project investigates the history of independent filmmaking in Hawai’i, with a focus on how communities use moving images to negotiate politics, place and identity.

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