THE DAY I TORE THE LETTER FROM DR MAHATHIR WHEN I WAS AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN NEW YORK CITY!

By Mansor bin Puteh

It's not something that I am proud to admit and write about, but it is something that had caused the government to lose RM1.5 billion if the letter then Deputy Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir Mohammed had written was totally different than the one he had written to me when I was just into my second semester working for my Master of Fine Art in Film Directing at Columbia University in New York City.

It was in March of 1979! It will be forty-three years ago in two months' time, but it seems to be like it was yesterday when I did that.

Malaysia would have become a better country with many of those who are in politics are not in it but who are doing something else with those who are qualified given the rightful place in the country to influence its growth and to trust the country's image in the world to a higher plane. 

We would have created and developed a New Malaysian Cinema that can influence even Hollywood, and caused to create better unity amongst the World Muslim Ummah, and even created works in film and literature and theater that serve us better; after all this is what the cinema and its subsidiary artistic and literary and intellectual activities should do.

Unfortunately, none of these had ever been absorbed into the Finas Act of 1981 that was drafted by people who were totally unknown to the arts and film community of the country who drafted it using templates that they found convenient to use to devise them to finally create the Finas Act of 1981 which unfortunately was debated by members of parliament in Dewan Rakyat and the senators in Dewan Negara who had scant knowledge of what they should debate on or about. 

It was passed unanimously and handed to the Agong to get His Majesty's accent, with it ever been given to experts that we had then or those from abroad that the government could easily engage to study it before it was presented to parliament in the first place.

I did not know Columbia was an Ivy League university until much later when I noticed the local Americans looked at me suspiciously and stopped being chatty, when they were told I was a student of that university, and they pointed a finger to the side of their head to indicate that I was a brilliant student for being admitted to study at the university.

And this still happens each time I am back in America like the last time I did in December of last year when I went to New York City to visit Columbia and Harvard Universities for a week.

I wrote a letter to Dr Mahathir when I found out that the government was going to form Finas, the National Film Agency which was later known formally as the National Film Development Corporation or Finas.

However, I did not expect to get a reply from him, but I did; but the contents of the letter totally floored me and I immediately tore it and threw it into the dustbin in my room at Harmony Hall of the university.

And Malaysians do not know that the contents of the letter written by Dr Mahathir, if they were written differently could have saved the government RM1.5 billion that the government has so far spent on Finas with Finas not being able to do much other than being a mere agency in a ministry which receives funds from the federal government every year, when it could have become an independent entity that could bring in income to the country, while at the same time, created a new style of filmmaking and film appreciation which is unlike those that had been introduced by Hollywood.

The Finas Act of 1981 is forty-one years and sadly, it was drafted by people who were not qualified; its contents have no relations to what is happening in the world of the cinema for which we can trust ourselves as a major participant in its creation so that Hollywood too can be affected by it.

Forty-one years of Finas and still no one in the agency is able to check and study how atrocious it is and no amount of amendments to it can make it better; so what the Finas Act of 1981 or Akta 244 as it is also referred to needs is for it to be rejected altogether.

I can on my own draft another act for the parliament to pass so that Finas can only be allowed to be no more but an agency to handle the Malaysian Film Festival and Malaysian Film Archives, with the country having a totally different system that can be used to create new films that can have markets way beyond the borders of our country.

This also means that the New Malaysian Film Industry can become independent of the government, and on the other hand, provide it and the country massive income.

The New Malaysian Cinema can be created too, and these are the two things that Finas has not even bothered to enquire what they are and how they had failed to create them even after forty-one years of its existence under an Act of Parliament - the New Malaysian Film Industry and New Malaysian Cinema.

Finas has failed to do what they were supposed to do which is to create the New Malaysian Film Industry and New Malaysian Cinema, so that over time, of not more than five to ten years, it can move back to play a different role to supplement them, like how I had described earlier and allow the industry and cinema to take their course.

No senior official of the ministry and Finas had bothered to study the Finas Act to see how it could be redrafted or replaced altogether by seeking views from experts that they had never bothered to do as a matter of policy because they know they won't be holding the posts forever, and once they leave the agency or ministry they would deal with different matters and issues.

There were some Malaysians who had majored in film who had returned to the country that the government and the committee that was formed to draft the Finas Act that they could invite to sit in it.

Unfortunately, they did not do this; and they also did not check with Mara or JPA and the universities to see if they had anyone with a background in film to invite.

In the end the Finas Act was drafted by people who did not have the formal training in film or who were given the task to do some research on Hollywood there and everywhere to find ideas that they could incorporate into the Act.