Mat Sellahs with cameras: Malaysia portrayed in Western films

Francois Truffaut said ‘every film should say something about life and something about film.’ Since the 1930s and the golden age of B.S. Rajhans, Malaysian films have had much to say about Malaysian life. But what happens when Westerners get behind the camera? Have their portrayals of the country been positive, negative, fair-minded, inaccurate? How have such movies changed over the years?

This article explores representations of Malaysia in films such as Four Frightened People (1934), The Letter (1940), The Camp on Blood Island (1958) and Turtle Beach (1992), concluding that these movies have tended to say more about Western preoccupations than Malaysian realities.