Cross a border, catch a movie

Posted by noelbynature under Lifestyle
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Here in the pages of Yesterday.sg, we often talk about the recent past - life in Singapore during the 50s, 60s and 70s. As someone born after independence, one of the often overlooked-dimensions about what Singapore was like in those periods was our interconnectivity with our northern neighbour, Malaya (now Malaysia). Many of us still have relatives up north, and there was once a time when we didn’t even need passports to pass through our shared borders. I was reminded again about this dimension of “Singapore life” in the past, when Peter Chan blogged about travelling to JB to catch a movie.

It’s quite interesting to note that apart from the novelty of crossing the border to watch the movie, the cinema-going experience was also slightly different as the show was split into two parts - meaning you had to go to the cinema (and thus cross the border) twice!

My parents must have been very loyal fans of Grace Chang; like many others who knew her from the days of the “Mambo Girl”. Apart from the inconvenience of crossing over the causeway and the stringent official custom checks, there was no need for international passports. You produced your Singapore ID to the Malayan immigration officials. For me, I didn’t even need to produce my birth certificate.

I was never a fan of Chinese black & white movies unless they were Cantonese action movies like “Wong Fei Hung” or slapstick comedies starring “Nga Chat Soh”. To give you an idea on the length of “Sun, Moon & Star”, it was screened over two sessions; Part 1 this week and Part 2 two weeks later. Cinema-goers had to retain one portion of the ticket as proof for viewing the other part. Within each part, there was even an intermission. I remembered Part 1 was all about “a boy falling in love with girl(s)” but it had too much dialogue.

These days, I don’t think people would cross the border to catch a movie (unless they were interested in catching the latest in Malay cinema), but I do know of some people who cross over to JB in the weekend for major grocery shopping runs. Read more about Peter’s (sometimes risque) adventures in JB here.

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