Cinema in Singapore from 1896 to 1910

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Annice Ward
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1 Cinema in Singapore from 1896 to 1910 Erik HOLMBERG Department of History, National University of Singapore The story of early cinema in Singapore offers a case study of technological and cultural diffusion in colonial-era Southeast Asia. This paper will explore the evolution of cinema in Singapore from its early reception in the 1890s as a strange and exciting novelty, towards its rapid establishment as an everyday element or institution of the local entertainment sector in the opening years of the twentieth century. The rapid diffusion and social acceptance of technology is a characteristic of the modern, globalised world; no matter how strange a new technology may seem when it makes its first appearance, it can quickly become everyday, routine, and even taken-for-granted, once it becomes on object of mass consumption. This paper will take a social historical approach to the topic, drawing on the evidence of primary sources to consider what the advent, diffusion, and rapid acceptance of cinema in Singapore around the turn of the twentieth century can tell us about the interactions between members of different ethnic communities and social classes here at that time, and, more broadly, to shed light on the nature of the colonial plural society. Erik HOLMBERG is a PhD Candidate with the Department of History of the National University of Singapore, which has accepted his PhD dissertation entitled A Community of Prestige: A Social History of the Cosmopolitan Elite Class in Colonial Singapore. He specializes in the social history of colonial Singapore, which he has studied since he moved to Singapore in He has a Master of Arts degree in History from NUS and a Bachelor of Arts degree in History from the University of Hawaii at Hilo.

2 "World" Cinemas in Singapore before World War II Timothy P. BARNARD Department of History, National University of Singapore HO Hui Lin Department of History, National University of Singapore The "Worlds" amusement parks featured a variety of entertainment, including cinemas. This paper will focus on the cinemas in New World and Great World prior to World War Two, and how they fit within the larger entertainment venues. In addition, emphasis will be placed on the films shown at these cinemas and how they reflect subtle differences in the audiences that the Worlds hoped to attract. S Timothy P. BARNARD is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at the National University of Singapore. His main area of research is on the cultural and environmental history of Southeast Asia, with particular attention to the Malay world. He has published a number of articles and book chapters on Malay film in Singapore, and is currently working on a book on the history of the Komodo dragon. HO Hui Lin is a graduate student in the Department of History at the National University of Singapore.

3 The Yangtze Charles LEARY Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore Currently under renovation, the Yangtze Cinema has been a unique place for film culture in Singapore. The Yangtze began operation in the late 1970s, screening Chinese language films, mainly of the martial arts genre, and then in the mid-1990s began screening erotic films. And, as theatrical screenings of such films, especially on celluloid, have declined across the world with video stores, cable television, and particularly the Internet becoming the main points of access the Yangtze Cinema is, I argue, a unique site in global film culture. The Yangtze Cinema is located in Singapore s Chinatown district, in a shopping complex with discount stores operating on the first floor during regular retail hours, while when night falls, operations on the upper floors karaoke lounges, massage parlors, and discos begin their more profitable working hours. The Yangtze Cinema also features another bygone element of film culture that one rarely sees today at cinemas: hand-painted billboards, with new signs mounted every week. At the end of Chinatown s main thoroughfare, one may find displayed across three stories, hand-painted posters of erotic films in Chinese, Japanese, Tagalog, Korean, French, or English languages. These billboards, I believe, serve to open up the umbrella of art-house cinema to be attributed to films shown, hence the Yangtze Cinema s screening of films rated R(21) (and the now defunct rating of R(A)). Thus the Yangtze Cinema shows not only films that one might characterize as pornography, but also films like Summer Palace, the controversial Chinese film by independent filmmaker Lou Ye, who received a temporary ban from filmmaking by the Chinese government as a result of this production. Other examples of films shown at the Yangtze that circulated across global art house circuit include Wong Kar Wai s Happy Together and Kim Ki-duk s Bad Guy. My main objective is to gauge the history of its programming and to celebrate the Yangtze Cinema s special contribution to Singapore film culture. Charles LEARY is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the National University of Singapore s Asia Research Institute. He is currently conducting research on the Cold War politics of Hong Kong cinema.

4 Performing Des [Home] in a Jaded Space Anjali ROY Asia Research Institute & Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur arianjal@nus.edu.sg; agera_2005@yahoo.com While the Jade cinema in Singapore with its frayed interiors, faulty air-conditioning, poor projection facilities and dirty toilets offers a study in contrast to the plush cineplexes in Singapore s upmarket neighborhoods, it is South Asians favorite weekend haunt. On a typical Saturday evening, South Asians, undaunted the relative discomfort of the theatre complex, may be viewed crossing national, regional, sectarian, gender and linguistic divides to converge on the pleasures of the popular Hindi film. While filmgoers have recently articulated their unhappiness over the third world ambience of a theatre in a first world city, the third worlding of Jade appears, to a certain extent, the source of its appeal for a diverse group of filmgoers. Both Tamil, Punjabi, Sindhi, Gujarati and Hindi speaking Singaporeans and new and temporary migrants ranging from Nepali maids and security guards to young Indian students and professionals return to Jade for reenacting memories of home precisely through the maddening confusion that permits effusive greetings, noisy conversation, relaxed posture and loud comments before, during and after the screening. Within the precincts of the Jade complex, a desi[south Asian] space that disrupts the regulated places of the planned city of Singapore may be produced. Borrowing Henri Lefebrve s notion of space, this essay will focus on the reproduction of Jade as a South Asian space within the city of Singapore from its inception and its appropriation by filmgoers for the performance of desi identity. The interaction of these two spatialities gives way to the many spaces of representation created within the context of Jade and how users of Jade create and recreate the space for the formation and performance of South Asian identity, as well as a space of diasporic belonging. Anjali ROY is a Professor in the Department of Humanities of Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur and is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the National University of Singapore s Asia Research Institute. She has published essays in literary, film and cultural studies, translated short fiction from Hindi, authored a book on African fiction, edited an anthology on the Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka and co-edited another on the Indo-Canadian novelist Rohinton Mistry. She has recently coedited with Nandi Bhatia a volume of essays, Partitioned Lives: Narratives of Home, Displacement and Resettlement, on the Indian Partition of Her latest book is the forthcoming Bhangra Moves: From Ludhiana to London and Beyond.

5 The Cathay WONG Seng Chow Freelance Journalist This presentation offers a personal reminiscence of growing up as a child in the Cathay building. Once the city s tallest building, The Cathay Building was one of Singapore s most recognizable landmarks, and today has been redeveloped to feature a reconstruction of the original façade. The Cathay Building served as ground zero for the operations of the Cathay Organisation, one of the major film companies operating in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong and Taiwan during the 1950s and 1960s. The building housed the popular Cathay Restaurant, the Cathay Hotel, and the Cathay Cinema, the centerpiece of Cathay s extensive film theater circuit. WONG Seng Chow s recent book, Rice Wine and Dancing Girls, adopts the prose style of a memoir to recount the life of his father, Wong Kee Hung, who managed cinemas in Singapore and across Malaya during the 1950s and 1960s.

6 Patron s Portions: Movie Tickets from the 1980s and 1990s LAI Chee Kien Department of Architecture, National University of Singapore akilaick@nus.edu.sg Before computerization changed institutional operations in the late 1990s, the movie ticket was an essential part of the cinemagoing experience in Singapore. Besides being a voucher for admission into the theatre hall, its procurement required the patron s physical presence at the ticketing booth, in the era before telephone or internet bookings became popular. This presentation examines a collection of such tickets in the 1980s and 1990s, and through it; the particularities of the ticket form, elements, as well as to the cinemas and theatres which issued them may be discussed. LAI Chee Kien is Assistant Professor at the Department of Architecture, National University of Singapore. He is a registered architect, and graduated from the National University of Singapore with an M Arch. by research, and then a PhD in History of Architecture & Urban Design from the University of California, Berkeley. He researches on histories of art, architecture, settlements, urbanism and landscapes in Southeast Asia. His publications include A Brief History of Malayan Art (1999), and Building Merdeka: Independence Architecture in Kuala Lumpur, (2007).

7 Cine Odeon and Community Building: Bringing Cinema to the People Bee Thiam TAN Asian Film Archive The Asian Film Archive is a non-governmental organization founded to preserve the rich film heritage of Singapore and Asian Cinema, to encourage scholarly research on film, and to promote a wider critical appreciation of this art form. The Archive is the winner of the New Non-Profit Initiative Award at the annual National Volunteers and Philanthropy Awards 2007 (Singapore), which recognizes organizations for their originality, sustainability, impact and best practices. The Archive is an affiliate of the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) and a member of the Southeast Asia-Pacific Audiovisual Archives Association (SEAPAVAA).

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