BEHIND THE SCREEN # 111

14:00, Wednesday 17th June, Cinema 2

Director/Anthropologist: Aung Nwai Htway, Yangon Film School
Year of Release: 2012
Duration: 35 mins
Country of Production: Myanmar
Location: Myanmar
Ethnic Group: Burmese
Language: Burmese with English subtitles

A son dissects his parents' marriage - they were film icons in 1960s Myanmar. It turns out the heartrending scenes they acted out on the silver screen are a pretty accurate reflection of their real lives. While the camera slides across the glamour photos from their heyday, the filmmaker looks on, entranced. He grapples with the incredible fame of his parents. Now that he is reconstructing their relationship, he sees the old film footage through different eyes - as if it might contain the answers he didn't get as a child, when his parents separated. This merging of family history and film excerpts creates a magical mix of fact and fiction, or - as the son calls it - "the real and the celluloid wedding." The son's public revelation of how things went wrong is an emancipatory act, as divorce is still a big taboo in Myanmar. But the filmmaker doesn't publically jump onto the barricades. Rather, he keeps things personal, showing the pain caused by the divorce, both for,him as a child and for his parents. He also shows how, 50 years ago, ambitions in Myanmar in the area of film were in line with Hollywood: the first film his parents appeared in together was called Sweet Sixteen.

Aung Nwai Htway joined YFS in 2007. He has worked for over ten years as a full-time editor and filmmaker for Population Services International, an international NGO based in Yangon. He also works as a freelance editor and director and sometimes joins YFS courses as a trainer. Yangon Film School has a train-to-teach programme in which experienced students can learn to pass on skills to their peers.

Return to the 2015 film programme