Monthly Archives: November 2014
Banned in Burma redux
Written on November 28, 2014 at 12:05 am, by Ian Holliday
Banned in Burma reopens this weekend at Hong Kong Visual Arts Centre, 7A Kennedy Road, Central for a brief, three-day residence spanning Saturday, Sunday and Monday. The star of our opening ceremony (18:00 – 21:00 on Saturday evening) will be Maung Theid Dhi, who at both 18:30 and 20:00 will recreate a censored performance piece…
The Stilwell Road
Written on November 27, 2014 at 12:05 am, by Ian Holliday
Sticking with the subject of World War II in the Southeast Asian theatre, we’re getting close to the 70th anniversary of the opening of the Stilwell Road. Until the very end of the two-year construction period this was the Ledo Road, built to connect Ledo in India to Bhamo in Burma, and from there join…
The Burmese Harp
Written on November 26, 2014 at 12:05 am, by Ian Holliday
Also present on a mid-1950s Oscar shortlist (for the new category of best foreign language film) was The Burmese Harp (Biruma no tategoto), a roughly two-hour, black-and-white Japanese movie directed by Kon Ichikawa and released in 1956. In contrast to The Bridge on the River Kwai, this film did not find favour with the Academy….
The Bridge on the River Kwai
Written on November 25, 2014 at 12:05 am, by Ian Holliday
I suggested yesterday that The Narrow Road to the Deep North invites comparison with The Bridge on the River Kwai. David Lean’s 1957 film garnered no fewer than seven Oscars (in 1958), including best picture, best director and best actor (for Alec Guinness). To many, its whistled theme tune, the Colonel Bogey March, remains instantly…
The Narrow Road to the Deep North
Written on November 24, 2014 at 12:05 am, by Ian Holliday
I read Richard Flanagan’s 2014 Man Booker Prize winner, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, mostly for the light it sheds on construction, during World War II, of the “death railway” between Burma and Thailand. For sure it’s an important novel focused on a powerful love story going well beyond the events of 1942-43…
Tales by Japanese Soldiers
Written on November 21, 2014 at 12:05 am, by Ian Holliday
On the subject of the Japanese military in Burma during World War II, a wonderful set of 62 brief stories by regular troops is brought together in Tales by Japanese Soldiers, edited by Kazuo Tamayama and John Nunneley, and published in 2000. The most basic fact about this collective experience is conveyed in a single…
Comfort women in Burma
Written on November 20, 2014 at 12:05 am, by Ian Holliday
What knowledge do we have of comfort women in Burma during more than three years of Japanese occupation in the early 1940s? The matter is clearly of historical interest, in that it is important for the record to be as complete and accurate as possible. It also has contemporary resonance, for charges of sexual abuse…
Comfort women
Written on November 19, 2014 at 12:05 am, by Ian Holliday
In the New York Times, Mindy Kotler has a powerful article about comfort women and Japan’s war on truth. She notes that for many years the issue was so uncontroversial in Japan that Yasuhiro Nakasone could describe in a 1978 memoir his role in setting up a military comfort station in Borneo in 1942, and…
Arts of resistance in Hong Kong
Written on November 18, 2014 at 12:05 am, by Ian Holliday
Joyce Lau has a neat piece in the New York Times about the voluminous street art spawned by Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement – and, as the endgame gathers speed, what can be done to safeguard it for posterity. That’s no easy task when the Lennon Wall in Admiralty comprises literally thousands of Post-it notes, and…
Mobile Library: Myanmar
Written on November 17, 2014 at 12:05 am, by Ian Holliday
Congratulations to Hong Kong’s Asia Art Archive and the recently-founded Myanmar Art Resource Center and Archive for last Friday launching the Mobile Library: Myanmar project. From now until March 2015, more than 450 publications on art theory, philosophy, spaces, curating and archiving will move around a series of venues in Yangon and Mandalay. Previously, AAA…