Given the heterogeneous geographies and disjunctive histories of Southeast Asia, any attempt at discussing the region's cinema must always err on the side of the plural. In turn, discourses on its independent cinema must attend to contesting notions of independence. Through what forms of relationality can cinema become independent? And independent of what? Such questions are posed by both Southeast Asian independent cinema and Glimpses of freedom: Independent cinema in Southeast Asia, the first two published collections of literature devoted exclusively to the study of the field. The appearance of the two titles within the same year marks a milestone not only for the region's independent cinema, but also its screen culture as a whole, considering that previous discussions of Southeast Asian films were mostly framed within the larger context of Asian cinema. Comparing the two collections to earlier titles such as Being & becoming: The cinemas of Asia (ed. Aruna Vasudev, Latika Padgaonkar and Rashmi Doraiswamy, Macmillan India, 2002) and Contemporary Asian cinema: Popular culture in a global frame (ed. Anne Tereska Ciecko, Berg, 2006) also reveals the shifts in approach, for their chapters are titled not after countries but issues and ideas — a reflection of the post-national paradigm in which Southeast Asian independent cinema operates today.
Southeast Asian independent cinema is divided into three sections: ‘Essays’, ‘Documents’ and ‘Interviews’. The first two essays by John A. Lent and editor Tilman Baumgärtel give a broad overview of the region, foregrounding the affinities shared by the independent filmmaking practices of its different countries. Lent's ‘Southeast Asian independent cinema: Independent of what?’ identifies three forms of independence: of government control, of the studio system and of traditional film aesthetics. While his arguments are mostly cogent, the attempt at designating aesthetic independence as a category in itself is questionable, for it obscures the social realities and economy of means from which ‘independent’ aesthetics often emerge. Meanwhile, Baumgärtel's ‘Imagined communities, imagined worlds: Independent film from Southeast Asia in the global mediascape’ takes as its key theoretical reference Arjun Appadurai's concept of ‘imagined worlds’. Theorised by Appadurai as transnational relational fields through which people, media, technologies, finances and ideas circulate, these ‘imagined worlds’ are insightfully posited by Baumgärtel as ‘zones of territorial and cultural disjuncture’ (p. 31) in which independent films in the region are made, challenging the Andersonian ‘imagined communities’ formed through mainstream, state-sanctioned cinema.
Another notable essay is Alfian bin Sa'at's ‘Hinterland, heartland, home: Affective topography in Singapore films’. Analysing films such as 12 Storeys (1997), Eating Air (1999) and Singapore Dreaming (2006), Alfian puts forth a compelling thesis on how the heartland, referring to the neighbourhoods of high-rise public flats where most Singaporeans live, operates as an imperfect hinterland for a country with none to call its own. Less convincing is the added claim that such images of the Singaporean heartland bear the traces of the kampungs as depicted in Malay films of the sixties, which smacks of romanticism and retroactive rationalisation.
Intan Paramaditha's ‘Cinema, sexuality and censorship in post-Soeharto Indonesia’ also offers keen insights. Through a historical examination of the uneasy relationship between cinema and public morality in Indonesia, Paramaditha illustrates how the shift towards a post-Soeharto institutional environment did not ease censorship laws concerning cinematic depictions of gender and sexuality, but merely transferred the power to oppress from a paternalistic regime to a social climate governed by revived Islamic values. Further complicating this trajectory of events is Tito Imanda's ‘Independent versus mainstream Islamic cinema in Indonesia: Religion using the market or vice versa?’, which draws a distinction between independent and mainstream Islamic films, with the former perceived as offering a more authentic representation of Islam.
The ‘Documents’ section is the most peculiar part of the volume, consisting of a small collection of manifestos, production notes and a polemical press article enumerating the shortcomings of digital film. Some of the opinions expressed, such as the almost Luddite view that digital film can never look as good as its 35mm counterpart, are clearly dated, but at the very least, they allow a precious glimpse back at a time when digital film was still an emergent phenomenon.
More problematic is the ‘Interviews’ section of the book. Despite the fact that most of the interviewees, like Brillante Mendoza and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, are seminal figures of Southeast Asian cinema, there is surprisingly little insight or charm to be found in their interviews. The interviews are simply too short and the questions too formulaic, at times even perfunctory.
Considering the volume as a whole, there is the conspicuous absence of a discussion of Vietnamese independent cinema. This is probably because of the editorial decision to focus on the digital film revolution, to which Vietnam has played only a marginal role. This is a pity, for the opportunity to examine the diasporic filmmaking practices of the việt kiều (overseas Vietnamese), a form of independence in itself, is thus omitted. Also missing is a more in-depth examination of Malaysia's independent filmmaking scene. While Baumgärtel's piece on ‘imagined worlds’ does describe some of the practices adopted by the country's independent filmmakers, more effort is needed to contextualise them in relation to the state's social and cultural policy.
Glimpses of freedom is easily the more comprehensive volume of the two. Ignoring the fact that it is organised into three rather arbitrary sections — ‘Action’, ‘Reflection’ and ‘Advocacy’ — the texts boasts a lively diversity, including among them theoretically-grounded commentaries, close readings of films, personal reflections, anecdotes and interviews. As compared to Southeast Asian independent cinema, its conception of cinema is, in general, more rigorous, with a more thorough consideration of networks of film production and circulation and cultures of reception.
Benedict Anderson's ‘The strange story of a strange beast: Receptions in Thailand of Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Sat pralaat’, for one, offers incisive observations on the politics of reception in the curious case of Apichatpong's award-winning Sud pralaat (2004), an experimental film set in rural Thailand. Anderson highlights the resonance felt among the chao baan (villagers) towards Apichatpong's film as a way of repudiating the luk jin's (people of Sino-Thai heritage, typically middle-class) dismissal of the film as being ‘meant for Westerners’ (p. 158), in the process revealing how the luk jin's hostility actually stems from the anxieties of being confronted with a vision of Thai-ness that they cannot relate to.
Several other texts also demonstrate a sophisticated understanding of independence that goes beyond the oppositional models proposed by Lent's essay, refiguring independence as ‘negotiated dependencies’ (p. 4). Mariam B. Lam's ‘Circumventing channels: Indie filmmaking in post-socialist Vietnam and beyond’, for instance, points out how the international success of films made by việt kiều has led the state to change its official stance on the national film industry, welcoming back việt kiều as ‘aesthetic co-creators with Vietnamese nationals’ (p. 95). A similar process is happening in Thailand, as identified by editor May Adadol Ingawanij in ‘The Thai Short Film and Video Festival and the question of independence’, in which she details how the legitimisation of the short film as a cinematic form by the Festival has led to its appropriation by commercial and state projects, though not all the time to the benefit of the filmmakers. Meanwhile, John Torres’ ‘Piracy boom boom’ examines another form of negotiated dependency — between independent filmmakers and pirates. Engaging, ironic and peppered with revealing cultural insights, filmmaker Torres’ vivid account of how he attempted to get his films distributed via the piracy network in the Philippines is a reminder of how the pursuit of independence often demands the forming of the most unlikely alliances.
Other worthy reads in the volume include editor Benjamin McKay's ‘Auteur-ing Malaysia: Yasmin Ahmad and dreamed communities’, which construes Ahmad's films in terms of a humanist re-imagining of contemporary Malaysian society, and Gaik Cheng Khoo's ‘Smoking, eating, and desire: A study of alienation in the films of James Lee’, which attempts a semiotic analysis of Lee's films through Lacanian and Marxist perspectives. A special mention must also go to ‘Independence and indigenous film: The framing of Timor-Leste’, Angie Bexley's urgent commentary on political functions of independent film in the young nation of Timor-Leste which has been too often ignored in sweeping surveys of the region.
Although both Southeast Asian independent cinema and Glimpses of freedom contain rich and varied material, it is the latter that provides a more complex set of readings that successfully conveys the cultural diversity of the region and the historical vicissitudes it has undergone. Nevertheless, it is worth reading the two together, for it does seem that whatever gaps left by one are felicitously filled by the other. But of course, the picture pieced together by the two volumes of the region's independent cinema is far from complete, and necessarily so, for many filmmakers are still testing the waters, negotiating the meanings and limits of independence.
