The Center for
Southeast Asian Studies
University of Hawaii at Manoa

Information on the University's extensive library holdings for Malaysia is available here.

The University offers basic, intermediate and advanced instruction in the Indonesian and Malay languages. UH's Department of Indo-Pacific Languages also offers distance learning in Bahasa Indonesian!

For general information on Malaysia, click here!

 

Subtitling ALOHA - A Classic Malay Language Film

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This film was subtitled as part of the University of Hawaii’s Southeast Asian Film Translation Project!

ALOHA, a recently discovered classic black-and-white film from 1950, showcases the early artistic talents of a 21 year-old P. Ramlee, who would later go on to become the biggest film and music star in Malaysia’s history. As early as 1950, Malaya, as it was known at the time, had many close artistic associations with Hawaii. This film, shot in Singapore, uses a Hawaii theme to tell the story of a young woman named Aloha who falls into the clutches of a local gangster. The film - featuring eight songs played by master Malay musicians trained on ukulele, slack key guitar and stand-up bass - opens a fantastic musical window to the transmission of Hawaiian music forms into Southeast Asia.

ALOHA, long-thought unavailable outside Southeast Asia, is a must-see for film buffs and those interested in Hawaiiana and Hawaii-inspired music of the early 1950s.

 

Retrospective on Malay Filmmaker Yasmin Ahmad

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The Center for Southeast Asian Studies hosted Malaysian auteur director and master storyteller Yasmin Ahmad at a retrospective of her films at the Honolulu Academy of Arts in April 2007.

The featured films included RABUN, SEPET, GUBRA, and the U.S. premiere of MUKHSIN, recent winner of the grand prize of the Deutsche Kinderhilfswerk for Best Feature Film in the Kplus category competition at the 57th Berlin International Film Festival.

This rare weekend provided the Hawaii community with a fantastic opportunity to engage the filmmaker in a series of informal discussions in which Ahmad discussed her experiences as a Muslim woman making films and her philosophy of filmmaking and storytelling.

The retrospective was supported by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education as part of the Center’s educational outreach mission.

 

Lecture by Dr. Anwar Ibrahim

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Dr. Anwar Ibrahim spoke as part of the the Distinguished Visiting Scholar Program in Liberal Arts on February 23, 2006, as invited by the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education, at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Dr. Anwar has a long history of public service and leadership, beginning with his days as a student at the University of Malaya. He founded the Malaysian Youth Movement of Malaysia in 1971 and served as its president for 10 years. Dr. Anwar was first elected to the Malaysian parliament in 1982, and subsequently appointed as a deputy minister. He joined the cabinet as minister of youth in 1983 and later served as minister of education and finance. While serving as minister of education, Anwar was elected president of the UNESCO General Conference. In 1993 Anwar was elected deputy president of UMNO and appointed deputy prime minister while he continued to serve as finance minister. His interests in the role of culture led him to organize in 1995-1998, a series of conferences on the Asian Renaissance, aimed at crossing geo-political barriers between societies and nations and creating political structures to promote dialogue across cultures and civilizations.