LETTERS: Finas - the national film agency also known as Perbadanan Kemajuan Perusahaan Filem Malaysia - was established more than 40 years ago.
It is a long and winding name which unfortunately, has not borne anything significant since it was established with the drafting and approval of the Finas Act or 1981 or Akta 244.
It turned out the Finas Act of 1981 was drafted by people who never went to any film school or who never did any serious research on what they can have in the Act.
I have read and studied the Finas Act of 1981 and found it wanting; first it does not have any philosophy in it; so how could anyone who is entrusted to develop the film industry be able to do anything with it?
There is no mention of the need to develop the Malaysian Cinema, to replace and improve further the Old Malayan Cinema.
And those in Finas especially the senior officials and those in the Board of Finas have never ever asked to discuss the Act itself, because they too would not know how to look at it with sharp eyes; because none of them had studied film in America, where it matters, since there is a lot that we can learn from the experiences of Hollywood, which not many know started not there but in New York City.
That was why I never thought or wanted to study film at any university in Los Angeles but one in New York City that turned out to be more eye-opening for me when I researched and found out the early beginnings of the establishment of the American Film Industry and American Cinema, as how we know them today.
I was lucky to have a co-chairman of the Film Division in the form of a double Oscar-winner, Milos Forman who won Oscars for Best Director for 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest' and 'Amadeus' he won before I went to Columbia and after I returned to Malaysia.
As for Finas, it is too bad that it was not developed properly because the Act that caused it to be established was flawed; and despite the minor changes that had been made through the forty years of the existence, they were cosmetic ones with the philosophy that was missing in it, and still not discussed by people in other disciplines to add various levels to it that can be eventually seen in the types of films produced by local producers and film companies and dramas produced by television stations.
The government had spent around RM1.5 billion on Finas so far. The point is, if the Finas Act of 1981 had been drafted better, Finas today would not be what it is now; but an agency to look after film festivals and the film library and archives, with the film industry standing on its own and the New Malaysian Cinema existing proudly to guide the direction for the filmmakers to heed.
Most importantly, the film industry would be able to attract investors and participants from other countries and in the end it can become an income-generating industry.
Mansor Puteh
Kuala Lumpur
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the New Straits Times
