Dr. No: An examination of Burmese cinema
It was a thrill to a chance to talk with Kenneth Wong about the last several decades of Burmese filmmaking. Combining his childhood memories with a careful examination of how some of the greatest Burmese artists were silenced rather than supported, he also gets into how Burmese creatives opened up during the transition period of the last ten years.
“There were a lot of people who, if they had been given the chance, they could have made great films that were on par with foreign films, but they just weren’t able to.”
“Bollywood, Indian films, and Hollywood blockbusters were regularly screened in many of the major cinema houses [in Yangon], on the main street that leads towards Sule Pagoda. I remember as a kid, going there watching movies with my dad, because my dad also loved watching English language films. Thamada and Upawin were the two big cinemas where foreign films were regularly screened.
James Bond movies were big events! When a James Bond movie was screened, you would normally see a queue align that is 10-20 times longer than a line that you would normally see lining up to go into a Burmese film. I think it's just because people see the difference. People see the difference in those movies where characters are obviously acting with more freedom, and they are living live with a lot less restraint, and they have a lot more opportunities.
There were a lot of stories that they watched in those films about how people from lower classes could actually, through merit, work their way up and become successful. These are almost fantasies for average Burmese movie-goers, because it wasn't part of their reality. It would be the sort of stories that they could rarely see realistically depicted, in the kind of formulaic Burmese films, so people who have a yearning for good sophisticated storytelling and artistically-made foreign films, or just escapism as blockbusters but made with a big budget and made with much better special effects, they had the opportunity to go see these foreign films.
So there was some sort of influences, I must say, however, in those days making a film wasn't as easy as just bringing your digital camera and shooting on the street, or aiming your camera at somebody and telling them, ‘Okay, stop talking!’ Because you have to apply for a permit, you have to do it by the physical kind of film that were limited and rationed, because it costs foreign exchange for the government to buy them.
This was the situation under the Ne Win quasi-socialist authoritarian government.
I have a feeling that there were a lot of people who, if they had been given the chance to make films, they could have made really great films that were on par with foreign films, but they just weren't able to. They just weren't given that kind of opportunity. So you ended up with only the handful of commercial film producers who keep producing the formulaic films that they were safe to be produced.”