Pearl Tears on the Silver Screen: War Movies and Expanding Burmese Militarism in the Early Independence Years

The early years of Burmese postcolonial independence (1948) saw a tremendous expansion of the Tatmadaw (Burmese Armed Forces) predicated on an ongoing civil war and the Kuomintang ‘incursion’ in the northeastern Shan State. The same years comprised the beginning of the so-called ‘golden age’ of Burmese cinema. Amidst films of various genres, historical fiction war films glorifying Burmese soldiers and peasants as heroes, and constructing archetypes of enemies to the country’s independence marked an important shift from earlier colonial-era nationalist films which had sought to reclaim Burmese sovereignty by harking back to the grandeur of prior Burmese dynasties. Instead, while war experiences are homogenized and enemies are stereotyped, national heroes were now created as part of a post-independence political milieu.