Singapore's First Film Attitudes Research Findings

Remember the survey you helped to do some time back? Well, here's the findings: More than a decade after Money No Enough smashed local box office records, Singapore's top grossing local film of all time and the fifth behind Hollywood giants, has achieved a new iconic status – it was mistakenly thought to be Singapore's oldest film. According to an online survey of over 300 respondents, Money No Enough emerged as the most cited answer when asked what the oldest local film is. In second place was yet another Jack Neo film, I Not Stupid, released in 2002. Eric Khoo's 1996 Mee Pok Man took third rank. Overall, more than half of respondents quoted a film made after the 1990s. Only a mere 16% of respondents named Malay and Chinese films from Singapore's Golden Era in the '50s and '60s. But the correct answer is either Liu Peh Jing's Xin Ke (The immigrant) thought to have been made in 1926, or B.S. Rajhan's Laila Majnun made in 1933. Only 1% of respondents got this right. While both films been lost to time owing to a lack of film preservation, its memory should not
fade into obscurity. There is a clear lack of awareness about the nation's culturally rich film heritage and its urgent need to be saved. These findings were carried out last month by a group of final-year students at the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University for the Asian Film Archive, shedding new light on Singaporeans' attitudes towards their local film and its overlooked history. A series of projection bombs in the heartlands and a nationwide call for local film memories and memorabilia are planned for the guerilla campaign which will run for one and half months till the end of February. More information on the Archive's campaign and fifth anniversary will be available to the public from 15 January 2010 via the Archive's Official Website: http://www.asianfilmarchive.org/