A film director and animator has called on filmmakers of all races to support one another’s work, to help foster greater unity in the creative sector.
Hassan Abdul Muthalib claimed that there was a tendency for Chinese, Indian and Malay filmmakers to work among their own ethnic circles.
This has led to the local film industry being fragmented, he told FMT.
“The film industry is in a mess. The Chinese, Indians and Malays are doing their own thing, and that’s not good,” Hassan, who is known as the “Father of Malaysian animation”, said after attending the launch of a book titled “The Malayan Emergency in Film, Literature & Art”.
Hassan, whose works include “Silat Lagenda”, said a simple way to foster unity among people in the industry was through “cross-cultural attendance” at film premieres.
“Whenever there’s a Chinese film premiere, the Malays and Indians should be there. The same goes for the others.
“By watching each other’s films, we learn how others think and how we can come together,” he said.
He said the disunity in the creative sector reflected a broader national failure to confront history honestly.
The Emergency, from 1948 to 1960, was a guerilla war between the communist-led Malayan National Liberation Army and British-backed forces, with the communists seeking independence, and the British working to suppress the uprising.
The book that was launched today examines film, literature, and art produced both during and after the Emergency to show how these works can both reinforce and challenge official accounts.
It is a collection of articles by different writers but compiled and edited by anthology editors Jonathan Driskell, Marek W Rutkowski and Andrew Hock.
