BIBLIOGRAPHIC DATA:
Title: Art of Silat Director: DS Farrer Release Date: 2000 Country of Production: USA Language of Edition: English/Malay Duration: 47-mins Copyright: Creative Commons. https://bit.ly/3pkCwFO
GENRE:
Observational cinema
SYNOPSIS:
“Art of Silat” views Malay culture through art, dance, and martial arts in Singapore, Malaysia, and England. As outsiders travel to Malaysia to learn silat, Malaysians journey to England to stage a theatre show in London. Here the notion of silat is explained by Professor Zainal Latiff. Shots of Kuala Lumpur are followed by an exhibition of the Sufi artwork of guru silat Mohammad Din Mohammad at an exhibition entitled Night of the Secret Wine. A masterful performance of Javanese wedding silat in Singapore leads to ritual ablutions (wudu) at the well of the legendary warrior, Hang Tuah, in Malacca. Arriving at the event in Kuala Lumpur, pesilat (practitioners) practice their techniques towards grading. The film charts a three-stage rite of passage in Silat Gayong: for the mandi limau (lime divination) an initiate’s lime is cut by a guru silat (master). The cut lime is placed in a bucket of flowers towards ritual purification in the rite’s second stage, the mandi bunga flower bathing ritual. Hundreds of coconuts are chopped to extract their milk. Forty men say continuous prayers as they boil the milk in cauldrons. The rite of passage culminates in a dramatic ordeal by boiling oil (mandi minyak). Participants husk coconuts with their teeth, split the nuts with their bare hands, perform martial arts, and engage in wild ludic sparring. To conclude the event, travelling to England, Malay silat practitioners perform at a theatre show in London.
BACKGROUND/CONTEXT:
The film provides a visual accompaniment to D. S. Farrer’s ethnographic research in Singapore and Malaysia. See Farrer (2009) Shadows of the Prophet, especially Chapter 6, “Social and Aesthetic Drama,” and Chapter 7, “Divination and Revelation.”
KEYWORDS:
Rite of passage, ritual, martial arts, silat, theater.
ACADEMIC COMMENTARY:
The film addresses esoteric practices throughout. Liminal filmic motifs include lines drawn between this realm—the shadow realm—and the ultimate reality of the afterlife; and magical circles regarded as portals to divine mystical power (Turner 1988). A cacophony of machine sounds interspersed with haunting music recorded in situ combines with an observational style to present an evocative montage of traditional arts within Islamic Malay modernity. The art featured at the beginning is that of Mohammad Din Mohammad for the exhibition, Night of the Secret Wine (Farrer 2008).
The knowledge (ilmu) of silat is carefully guarded in esoteric ritual passed from guru to murid. In medieval times the ritual ordeal was used as a juridical test of veracity. Those who could pass their hands unscathed through molten tin or lead were pronounced innocent. Alongside trial by ordeal, the ritual is an invulnerability rite. After 9/11, the ordeal was discontinued in Singapore due to alleged links with al-Qaeda training camps. In contemporary Malaysia, however, the bath in boiling oil was billed as a therapeutic exercise beneficial for health.
Douglas Farrer
Bibliography:
Farrer, D. S. 2009. Shadows of the Prophet: Martial Arts & Sufi Mysticism. Dordrecht: Springer.
Farrer, D. S. 2008. “The Healing Arts of the Malay Mystic.” Visual Anthropological Review, 24 (1):29–46.
Turner, Victor W. 1988. The Anthropology of Performance. New York: PAJ Pub.
