History of Malaysian Cinema

The history of Malaysian cinema is pretty young. The concept of Malaysian cinema began with the screening of the movie Laila Majnun in the year 1933. This well known Sanskrit play of two ill-fated lovers was directed by B.S. Rajhans and produced by the Singapore-based Motilal Chemical Company of Bombay.

The Malaysian people were very much fascinated by the maiden effort and as a consequence, in 1937 two brothers, Run Run and Runnie Shaw, were prompted to import some equipment from Shanghai and stated the production of Malay films from their small studio in Singapore. But due to the Japanese invasion in 1941 they had to restrict their production up to six movies. Again in 1945 following the end of the World War II Shaw Brothers resumed production in 1947 with a Rajhans-directed film called 'Singapura Di Waktu Malam (Singapore by Night) starring Siput Sarawak. The film was an instant success and Shaw Brothers went on to produce many more films by introducing one after another new faces.

The success of their film company Malay Film Productions prompted other people to come forward and produce films. Following this in the year 1951 Nusantara Film Company was established by Hsu Chiu and Ho Ah Loke started Rimau Film Productions in the following year.

During the initial years of filmmaking the films were mostly black and white. The scripts of these movies were based on folk tales, stage plays and legends of fictional or real historic events or personalities. Just after that the coloured movie era entered in Malaysian film industry.

The era of 50s, was marked by the Indian directors in Malaysian film industry. B.S Rajhans, S. Ramanathan, L. Krishnan, B.N Rao and Phani Majumder were the few directors who had been imported from India for their movie making skills. Hang Tuah is one of such movie which done in Eastman Color and was directed by Phani Majumdar, who was specially brought in to ensure that the film made it to the East Asia Film Festival. P. Ramlee acted as Hang Tuah and also composed the background music, for which the film won an award. In the year 1958 the Ho Ah Loke's company merged with Cathay Organization and was renamed as Keris Film Productions. Following this, Shaw Brothers and Ho Ah Loke also produced color films like Ribut, Berisong, Buluh Perindu and many others.

Despite of such advancement in Malay Film Industry, it experienced a fall with film companies wrapping up owing to the huge production costs and steep decline in audience. But later in 1981, the National Film Development Corporation of Malaysia was established and that improved the Malaysian cinema. The quality was improved with the initiative taken by the Corporation both technically and financially.

Beginning of television shows marked another remarkable development that further improved the morale and self-confidence of the local film makers in Malaysia and were invited to make television programmes either in film format or video format.

Although the Malaysian films are not allowed to show support for gay lifestyles and the country still maintains a law against this, the first homegrown movie with gay themes in Malaysia has proved an unexpected box office success this year in this conservative country. This movie Dalam Botol offers a non-explicit vision of gay romance, which raked in one million ringgit in its opening weeks.

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