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The restoration of a 1934 black and white action film, famous for its majestic aerobatics, including a hot air balloon escape and a jungle shootout against teak thieves, spurred the Myanmar's declining film heritage. 19659002] The survival of Myanmar's first film, "Mya Ga Naing" (The Emerald Jungle), and its rise to the international scale is perhaps as unlikely as its triumph over pythons and bandits with bare hands.
The once flourishing film scene of the Southeast Asian country experienced a major setback with the arrival of a military junta in 1962 which imposed a rigorous censorship and emptied the country. economy for 50 years. the heat, torrential rains and stifling humidity wreaked havoc on delicate film reels in a country that had neither the resources nor the know-how to store them properly.
Some reels have been recycled to save money. black and white images remain
"Mya Ga Naing", originally a silent movie that later had music and printed title cards, is the oldest to have been found up to # 39, now.
He languished in state archives for decades before Italian specialists spent a year editing the film frame by frame, projecting the restored version in 2016.
Experts passed Hundreds of hours at the laboratory of L'Immagine Ritrovata (The Rediscovered Image) in Bologna removing all the little scratches and stains from the film and scanning using various resources, including a film found in the archives of Berlin – a testimony of the distance traveled by the original film.
"Every time the restoration progressed, it was like a new birth for the film," said Severine Wemaere, co-founder of MEMORY! The cinema, who oversaw the restoration and raised funds from donors for the price of $ 100,000
"It was very moving because we could say that we were in a country of cinema."
– Sound or Color? –
The Classic 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. was added in 1954 to blend local traditional music and western jazz.
The film gained international fame this year after UNESCO granted the film a place on the list of documentary heritage of the year. Asia-Pac only in the cinema, but also in the Myanmar film tradition
See also: Myanmar banned the Rakhine documentary from the film festival
The first film of the country was screened in 1920. [19659002] The 1950s, the industry was at its peak with Myanmar filmmakers pumping dozens of feature films each year.
But the plot turned in the second half of the 20th century as military leaders crushed creativity and closed the country abroad. n influences and technology.
While almost all early films were lost, the successful renaissance of "Mya Ga Naing" stimulates a movement to preserve what remains.
The next film to be restored in 2017 was Pyo Chit Lin (My Darling), a 1950 comedy shot on such a tight budget that director Tin Myint had to choose between sound and color.
He opted for this latest film, becoming the first surviving color film in the country. – Every second counts –
Maung Okkar, contemporary filmmaker of Myanmar, plays a leading role in the effort to save the classics of his country. Few could be better placed – the 31-year-old has made movies with his father and grandfather.
In 2012, Maung Okkar realized with horror that some of his family's original coils had been damaged.
"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 was After being trained in the techniques of restoration and archiving in Italy, he launched" Save Myanmar Film "in 2017 with a group of filmmakers.
Their slogan is "Every second count!" and they aim to find and preserve as many old reels and other movie props – cameras, projectors and movie posters – as possible.
Some two thousand people saw an exhibition and screenings organized by the group in May in Yangon's former parliament building, and plans are underway to restore a third film
The clock turns, with all the films still alive in metal boxes in the ruined archive building of Yangon
. air conditioning is an improvement from the past, but the temperature, at 16 degrees Celsius (61 degrees Fahrenheit), is still far above the optimal level of four degrees C.
Actress Grace Swe Zin Htaik, 65, played in many countries of Myanmar The greatest movies in the 70s and 80s and faces the challenge of organizing the next 100th anniversary of the country's film industry.
"People in this country have no idea how to rate old movies," she said wistfully whil She traces her finger along the dilapidated shelves that are home to the remains of the film's cinematographic legacy country.
"Thanks to old movies, we can see our history, we can see our culture, we can see our identity and our values.
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