THE SOUTH AND SOUTH-EAST ASIA DOCUMENTARY FILM RESEARCH PROGRAMME AND WEBSITE

This new anthology is, in part, associated with research activities related to the South and South-East Asia Documentary Film Research programme, founded by Professor Ian Aitken and Dr Camille Deprez at the Academy of Film of Hong Kong Baptist University in June 2013. This research programme draws upon ongoing Hong Kong government-funded research projects; a number of Hong Kong Baptist University-granted projects on British and French colonial documentary film in Asia; and three international conferences held at Hong Kong Baptist University in 2009, 2012 and 2013 respectively. In May 2015, the new South and South-East Asia Documentary Film Research website was also launched in collaboration with the Hong Kong Baptist University Library. This new online platform has been designed to hold and disseminate primary and secondary research materials – including texts, images, video and audio files – pertaining to the subject of documentary film in South and South-East Asia and covering the colonial, late colonial and post-colonial periods.

The notion of the ‘archive’ traditionally refers to the physical location where primary and mostly unique source documents of historical, evidentiary or cultural significance are kept. A film archive more specifically collects, preserves, restores and also shares. The digital archive presented in the website just referred to collects, electronically processes, preserves and disseminates primary and secondary research materials pertaining to the documentary film in colonial and postcolonial South and South-East Asia using web and database archiving techniques. In its initial phase of development, this website contained over 3,000 electronically processed pages of official documents relating to the use of official films in South-East Asia, including Hong Kong, written between 1945 and 1973. The majority of these documents was written by government officials and reveals the process of colonial withdrawal from the region, as well as the role played by the official film in that disengagement. As such, these documents offer insight into the region at the end of much of the British Empire. This database is one of the outcomes of the afore-mentioned government-funded research projects on the use of official films in Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaya over this period, carried out by Ian Aitken.