Ho Chi Minh in France: An Early Independence Newsreel

Dean Wilson continues the investigation of colonial Vietnam by focusing on the film Ho Chi Minh in France (dir. Mai Thu, Tan Viet, 1946). This documentary was produced by two Vietnamese émigrés living in France and combined three short newsreels about nationalist political leader Ho Chi Minh’s visit to France on the eve of the First Indochina War, a war which eventually led to the withdrawal of French colonisers from Vietnam in 1954. By presenting the social and film historical context in which the film was produced, Wilson demonstrates how this first indigenous attempt in documentary film-making created a strong visual and ideological connection between political leader Ho and the Vietnamese, projected the possibility of an independent Vietnam to the Vietnamese audience, and thus served the project of decolonisation and independence.

Conversion, Salvation and the ‘Civilising Mission’: Christian Missions and Documentary Film in India (1900–60)

Emma Sandon explores documentaries produced by English and Scottish Christian missions in India in order to highlight similarities and differences in the definition of a ‘civilising mission’ adopted by these missions. While, for example, some focused on means of reaching salvation, others believed in the use of education to both bring about social development and instil Christian values. Sandon also discusses specific previously under-researched films in relation to these issues.

Merdeka for Malaya: Imagining Independence across the British Empire

In his chapter on ‘Merdeka for Malaya: Imagining Independence Across the British Empire’, Tom Rice explores how this film produced by the Malayan Film Unit in 1957 portrays Malaya’s path to independence. Through this case study, Rice brings relevant nuances to the accepted discourse of change between the colonial and post-colonial periods. He demonstrates that both the film and the film infrastructure reveal a continued British influence, although they also validate the transition to an independent state. In his argument, the process of independence as it is recorded on film remains mainly idealised and conceals tensions for the sake of the project of imagining the new nation. Rice also Focuses on the period of the Malayan Emergency (1948-1960), and the Malayan Film Unit.

The People’s Action Party Government of Singapore and Berita Singapura

In his chapter on the Singaporean official newsreel series Berita Singapura (1963-1969), Ian Aitken explores how this film series embodied and propagated the ideas of the Singapore People’s Action Party (PAP), and those of the Party’s leader, Lee Kuan Yew. Aitken provides an outline of the political context involving Britain, Malaya and Singapore which led to the ascendancy of the PAP, and also relates the films of Berita Singapura to particular key PAP policies, such as housing and education. Aitken also shows how the films presented the authoritarian capitalist agenda of the PAP within a visual rhetoric of ‘modernisation’, and describes tensions which arose between the film producers, who were European expatriates, and the authoritarian and interventionist PAP leadership.

Archives of the Planet: French Elitist Representations of Colonial India

In ‘Archives of the Planet: Elitist Representations of Colonial India’, Camille Deprez investigates films sponsored by French patron of the arts Albert Kahn and shot in the princely states of India in the late 1920s. She demonstrates that, at the peak of French colonialism, this idealist project of intercultural understanding and cooperation was supported by strong associations with carefully selected members of the Indian elite and that this led to a staged and biased representation of India. She also argues that the films eventually overestimated the power of the traditional socio-political order of India in relation to that of the British colonisers and of other rising forces of decolonisation in the country.

Two Films and a Coronation: The Containment of Islam in Flores in the 1920s

In his chapter, Sandeep Ray explores two films shot in 1926 in the under-studied region of Flores in eastern Indonesia by a Dutch catholic priest turned film-maker. In addition to setting out the more predictable propaganda deployed by these evangelical films in a local context of fierce confrontation between Catholics and the Muslims to gain religious control over the native population of Flores, and against the larger background of Dutch colonial expansion, Ray also argues that this only surviving visual record of the events that took place provides a unique source of insight into the modes of evangelism deployed in the area, as well as into details of local customs and mores.

Figures of Empire: American Documentaries in the Philippines

In his chapter, J. B. Capino demonstrates how a variety of official and private documentary films were deployed to serve American imperialist interests while also documenting the Philipinos’ daily life under direct US imperial rule (1899-1946), and over the post-independence period. This contribution highlights the specific filmic elements employed to both acknowledge and belie US imperialism in the Philippine, and demonstrates how specific documentary forms were influenced by the history of American imperialism in the region and, reciprocally, how non-fiction forms also forged significant aspects of imperialism.

Paradoxical Legacies: Colonial Missionary Films, Corporate Philanthropy in South Asia and the Griersonian Documentary Tradition

In her chapter, Annamaria Motrescu-Mayes investigates the paradoxical legacies of British imperial culture based on a comparative study of a missionary film shot in India in the late 1920s-early 1930s by the Fathers of the St. Joseph’s Missionary Society and a 2013 Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank Corporation television advertisement. Her study illuminates the documentary and anthropological merit of the early missionary film, despite its larger propagandist function. By looking into the heritage of Grierson’s principles of social and cultural engagement, she also more unexpectedly demonstrates that the 1920s film resists the stereotypification of race and colonised people that predominated at the time, whereas the 2013 commercial tends to perpetuate that.

The Language of Counterinsurgency in Malaya: Dialectical Soundscapes of Salvage and Warfare

In his chapter, Peter Bloom elaborates on the process of decolonisation in this region and the complex relationships between the coloniser and the colonised that process entailed. In his chapter, he analyses how the mobilisation of official documentary film, radio language and sound effects became a critical site in authenticating the legitimacy of the British-led campaign against the communist insurgency, and the extent to which these also contributed to Cold War realignments during the post-war era.

‘Sufficient Dramatic or Adventure Interest’: Authenticity, Reality and Violence in Pre-War Animal Documentaries from South-East Asia

In his chapter, Timothy Barnard explores issues of authenticity and the close relations that always existed between documentary and narrative cinema. Focusing on American films about Komodo dragons shot in Borneo in the 1920s and 1930s, he presents animal documentaries as a popular site where western film-makers showcased supposedly realistic images of animals that ironically led to exotic and fantastic film depictions of animals. He also argues that these films created a space where western (American) desires, cultural tensions and anxieties about the perceived savagery and violence outside of western civilisation could be projected.