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The once flourishing film scene in Myanmar experienced a major setback with the arrival of a military junta in 1962 that imposed strict censorship and emptied the economy during a 50-year reign . (AFP Photo)
YANGON: The restoration of a 1934 black and white action film, famous for its majestic aerobatics, including a hot air balloon flight and a shootout in the jungle against teak wood thieves,
The survival of Myanmar's first film, Mya Ga Naing (The Emerald Jungle), and its international popularity are perhaps as improbable as the triumph of its role principal on pythons and pythons.
The once flourishing film scene of the Southeast Asian country experienced a major setback with the arrival of a military junta in 1962 that imposed stringent censorship and emptied the country. Economy during a 50-year reign
. the withered creative climate, the ruthless heat of Myanmar, the torrential rains and the sweltering humidity wreaked havoc on delicate film reels in a country that had neither the resources nor the know-how for them. store properly.
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" Mya Ga Naing ", a silent movie that later had music and printed title cards, is the oldest
It has been languishing in state archives during decades before specialists in Italy spend a year painstakingly retouching film frame by frame, projecting the restored version in 2016.
The experts spent hundreds of hours at the laboratory of L & 39. Immagine Ritrovata (The Rediscovered Image) in Bologna removing all the small scratches and stains from the film and digitizing using various resources, including a film found in the Berlin Archives – a testimony to the distance traveled by the original film .
"Whenever the restoration progressed, it was like a new birth for the film," said Séverine Wemaere, co-founder of MEMORY! The cinema, which oversaw the restoration and raised funds from donors for a price of $ 100,000 (RM400,000)
"It was very moving because we could say that we were in a movie country . "
He has also performed at festivals in Singapore, Thailand and Switzerland, and has also regularly screened at home in Myanmar.
A group of musicians attended a sold-out performance in Yangon. 1954 that mixes local traditional music with western jazz.
The film gained international fame this year after UNESCO granted the film a place on the list of "documentary heritage of influence" of the Asia-Pacific. but also to the film tradition of Myanmar.
The country's first film was screened in 1920.
In the 1950s, the industry was at its peak, with Burmese filmmakers pumping dozens of feature films each year. the picture turned in the second half of the 20th century when military leaders crushed creativity and closed the country to foreign influences and technology.
While almost all early films were lost, the successful renaissance of "Mya Ga Naing"
The next film to be restored in 2017 was Pyo Chit Lin (My Darling), a comedy shot in 1950 on a budget so tight that director Tin Myint had to choose between sound and color. [19659006Thisisoneofthemostsuccessfulfilmsinmycountry
Myanmar contemporary filmmaker Myung Okkar plays a leading role in preserving the classics of his country.
At 31, his father and grandfather make films in their blood.
In 2012, Maung Okkar realized with horror that some of his family's original reels had been irreparably damaged, while others "
" Some movies could not be restored and, for me, it was as if I had lost one of my parents, "he recalls.
"I learned that there were other old movies that"
After receiving training in restoration and archiving techniques in Italy, he launched "Save Myanmar Movie" in 2017 with a group of movie comrades.
Their motto is "Every second counts!", And they aim to find and preserve as many old reels and other movie props, including cameras, projectors and movie posters as possible.
Some 2,000 people have seen an exhibition and screenings This month of May, in the prestigious old parliament building of Yangon, plans are underway to restore a third film
Time is running out, all surviving films being still crammed into metal boxes in the Yangon archive building. Round-the-air conditioning is an improvement over the past, but the temperature, at 16 ° C, is still well above the optimal level of 4 ° C.
The actress Grace Swe Zin Htaik, 65 years old, played in many movies of Myanmar In the 1970s and 1980s, the challenge is to organize the next 100th anniversary of the country's film industry.
"The people of this country have no idea of the value of old movies," she says wistfully while tracing her finger "(Through) old movies, we can see our story, we can to see our culture, we can see our identity and our values. "
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