Cinema of Malaysia
| Cinema of Malaysia | |
|---|---|
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| Number of screens | 639 (2011) |
| • Per capita | 2.4 per 100,000 (2011) |
| Main distributors |
Les' Copaque Production MIG Movies Sdn Bhd Tayangan Unggul Sdn Bhd |
| Produced feature films (2009) | |
| Fictional | 26 |
| Animated | 1 |
| Documentary | - |
| Number of admissions (2011) | |
| Total | 59,500,000 |
| National films | 13,130,000 (22.1%) |
| Gross box office (2011) | |
| Total | MYR 602 million |
| National films | MYR 125 million (20.7%) |
The cinema of Malaysia consists of feature films produced in Malaysia, shot in the languages of Malay, Chinese and Tamil.
Malaysia produces about 20 feature films annually, and between 300–400 television dramas and serials a year apart from the in-house productions by the individual television stations. Malaysia also holds its own annual National Film Festival. There are about 250 cinemas and cineplexes in Malaysia, showing not only local films but also foreign films. Foreign film producers are welcome to shoot on location in Malaysia, undertake film co-production ventures so that local artistes and technicians have the opportunity of gaining exposure and experience.
Malaysian cinema began in 1933 with Leila Majnun, based on a classical Persian story of two ill-fated lovers. Directed by B.S. Rajhans and produced by the Singapore-based Motilal Chemical Company of Bombay, the cast was derived from a local opera group. Observing the success of this project, two brothers, Run Run and Run Me Shaw, were prompted in 1937 to import some equipment from Shanghai and start the production of Malay films from their small studio at Ampas Road in Singapore. However, they only managed to produce five or six movies prior to the Japanese invasion in 1941.
In 1941, when the Japanese occupied Malaysia, the first Japanese film companies found local film production to be extremely limited and noted that it was mainly an exhibition market dominated by "overseas Chinese" namely, the Shaw Brothers. Ironically, the Japanese would exploit Malaysia for exactly the same purposes even obtaining the help of the Shaws to break into their extensive Southeast Asian film exhibition network. Although Malaysia never became a major film production center under the Japanese, it was a strategically important film market for Japan and a convenient outpost for moving films into and out of Southeast Asia.
The Japanese film studios shot a number of films in Shonan (what the Japanese renamed Singapore during the occupation) depicting the area as a sort of Japanese frontier. Films such as Southern Winds II (続・南の風, 1942, Shochiku Studios), Tiger of Malay (マライの虎, 1942, Daiei Studios) or Singapore All-Out Attack (シンガポール総攻撃, 1943, Daiei Studios) presented the area as a land rich in resources, occupied by simple but honest people, and highly exotic. Japanese colonial films also associated the region with sex as many "Karayuki-san", or prostitutes had been either sold to brothels or chosen to go to Southeast Asia to earn money around the turn of the century. Karayuki-san (からゆきさん, 1937, Toho Studios), Kinoshita Keisuke's Flowering Port (花咲く港, 1943, Shochiku Studios), and Imamura Shohei's Whoremonger (女衒, 1987, Toei Studios), which were all or at least partly shot on location, are examples of the extent to which this subgenre dominates the representations of Malaysia in Japanese cinema.
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