NO FILM INDUSTRY WAS ESTABLISHED UNDER THE DICTATES OF ANY SPECIAL ACT! NO NEED TO REDRAFT THE FINAS ACT OF 1981.

By Mansor bin Puteh

The talk on the film industry is on the Finas Act of 1981 or Akta 244, which caused the formation of the Film Development Corporation of Malaysia in June, 1981, after the bill was passed by parliament.

It will be forty years next year. But what has Finas done to create any semblance of a film industry.

There has not been any national film industry in the world that was established and developed on the dictates of any Act of parliament that was passed in the country.

In fact, Hollywood, Bollywood and our own Old Malayan Film Industry were not formed and developed because of the presence of any Act of parliament; each of them grew from the basis of economic and artistic dictates of a few.

Hollywood was established by four persons while Bollywood was established by just one person and the Old Malayan Film Industry was established by two and another two enterprising entrepreneurs from Kuala Lumpur and Shanghai – all four being Chinese, who showed the passion for the production of films and in Malay!

So after almost forty years, the government is mooting the idea of changing some terms or clauses in the Finas Act of 1981 with newer ones to reflect the times.

Alas, no one can be certain that even after the redrafting of the Act, there would be a film industry.

The Malaysian Film Industry as we know it, still does not exist; what we can see are some activities in the field of filmmaking of features and short films, some of which got to be screened in the cinemas nationwide while many got stuck in fewer cinemas and fewer films still are sent abroad to film festivals where a small number finally managed to get secondary or minor recognition, which are mostly not of the artistic type, but for cultural values that the foreign juries seem to value.

How can we create and develop a film industry? 

This is a question that the Finas Act of 1981 had failed to emphasize simply because it was drafted by some people who did not seem to know what they ought to include in the Act, which was approved by the Members of Parliament then who also did not seem to care what they were approving.

It is too bad that the Finas Act of 1981 did not get feedback from me, or I could have caused it to be drastically changed or altered so that it can be used to introduce a brandnew National Film Industry for the country.

I was studying for my Masters of Fine Art in Film Directing at Columbia University in New York City in 1979 when the Act was being drafted. And I could do a side study to go to Hollywood, on behalf of the government to see how Hollywood was formed and developed until it became what it is today. 

Can the Finas Act of 1981 be redrafted simply by changing some terms to including those that are trendy now and some clauses removed and new ones introduced in it?

It cannot be that simple; it needs some serious research and investigation using models introduced and used by Hollywood and Bollywood, before one can be certain that the New Finas Act of 2021 be introduced and approved by parliament and this time, hopefully, the bill can be dissected and studied seriously and in-dept by the experts that we have in the country.

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This will be 1981 Revisited, when the wrong people who do not have the proper qualification will be entrusted to do the task they are not qualified to do; yet, there will be many who are willing to take the tasks if offered without care if the New Finas Act of 2021 will be of any use to anyone.

Chances are the New Finas Act of 2021 will be useless as the last one that was devised forty years ago!

For one, the Finas Act of 1981 had failed to create any semblance of a film industry; it only caused Finas to be too sensitive and too self-centered with its top officials playing the public relations game and not wanting to hear from the real experts those who had studied film as their specialty in prestigious universities abroad, especially America.

And this is not to say how much more the federal government would channel funds to the agency which is subservient to the ministry and minister who had come and gone over the years since Finas was formed.

So far no one in Finas had bothered to disclose to what extent has the government given them, which one could roughly estimate to be more than one billion ringgit!

It is such a huge amount of money to fund a mere agency in a ministry, especially when one cannot see what achievements has this particular agency produced!

Where is the film industry that it was entrusted to establish? And where is the New Malaysian Cinema that was supposed to have resulted in the country having a robust industry?

How many world-renowned filmmakers, film critics, film scholars has Finas created since its interception in 1981? 

It looks like in the forty years since Finas was formed it has benefitted mostly those who are not qualified much like the officers in Finas and KKMM who often tried to fashion themselves as film experts that they are not and can ever be!

This brings me back to the main issue in this article which is that the Finas Act of 1981 has indeed failed those in the industry and country as well as the government: so what good will the New Finas Act of 2021 achieve? 

In the end an analysis can see how Finas has been doing things just to promote itself and their senior staff and had never attempted to create a film industry that could over time be left to its own device and can become an income-generating one for the country, instead of being just a small agency in a ministry.