1920s
Myanmar’s film industry
Myanmar has one of the oldest film industries in all of Asia, dating back over one hundred years. The very first film was the rousing 1920 documentary of the funeral of U Tun Shein (the nationalist lawyer and leader of Young Men's Buddhist Association), filmed by U Ohn Maung. In the years that followed, cinema would play a critical role in the awakening of Burmese nationalism. U Ohn Maung went on to direct the country's first feature film, Love and Liquor, which the LA Times newspaper describes in an article on the current state of the Myanmar film industry as "a 1920 cautionary tale about gambling and alcoholism that proved a big hit despite its rather monotonous single camera angle".
The picture is a still from the iconic 1971 film Wearing Velvet Slippers, Holding a Golden Umbrella by the director Maung Wunna.