Silver Screens and Golden Dreams

Please join the Centre for Southeast Asian Research (CSEAR) and the Myanmar Initiative at the Institute of Asian Research for a special book talk and film screening, featuring Dr. Jane Ferguson, associate professor at the Australian National University.

Prof Ferguson will first speak about her recently published social history of Burmese cinema, Silver Screens and Golden Dreams (U Hawaii Press, 2023). Following the book talk and a Q&A period, we will be screening the award-winning Tender are the Feet ခြေဖဝါးတော်နုနု, directed by groundbreaking Burmese director Maung Wunna မောင် ဝဏ္ဏ in 1973. Tender are the Feet is a representative film of the Golden Age of Cinema in Burma, under constraints of the military dictatorship, that blends traditional Burmese theatre aesthetics with cutting-edge artistic cinematography. The film was restored by Yangon Film School for its international premiere at the 2014 Berlin Film Festival, and will be screened for the first time in North America right here at UBC.

All members of the UBC community and the general public are welcome; popcorn and other movie snacks will be provided.

Silver Screens and Golden Dreams traces the veins of Burmese popular movies across three periods in history: the colonial era, the parliamentary democracy period, and the Ne Win Socialist years. Author Jane M. Ferguson engages cinema as an interrogator of mainstream cultural values, providing political and cultural context to situate the films as artistic endeavors and capitalist products. Exploring how filmmakers eschewed colonial control and later selectively toed the ideological lines of the Burmese Way to Socialism, Silver Screens and Golden Dreams offers a serious yet enjoyable investigation of leisure during difficult times of transition and political upheaval. By skillfully blending historical and anthropological approaches, Ferguson shows how Burmese cinema presents a lively, unique take on the country’s social history.

Jane M. Ferguson is associate professor of anthropology and Southeast Asian history at the Australian National University. Her previous work has included Repossessing Shanland: Myanmar, Thailand, and a Nation-State Deferred (U Wisconsin Press, 2021), which details tells the story of the Shan people in the Sino-Burmese borderlands in their own voices and offers a fresh perspective on identity formation, transformation, and how people understand and experience borderlands today. She is currently working on a new monograph about the history of commercial flight between Southeast Asia, Australia and North America, using archival materials from Thailand and the United States, ethnographic field research, and interviews with employees of Southeast Asian and North American carriers.