Bagyi Aung Soe, “To Not Take the Wrong Path,” Publication Unidentified, ca 1980.
1 One night, on the way back from the Bolshoi National Theatre with Saya U Chin Sein (movie director Shwe Nyar Maung) in the heavy snow, he said to me,1 “Hey Aung Soe, you refer to yourself as an artist [Burmese: အာတစ်] /ARTIST everywhere you go, just like anyone else from our country who doesn’t differentiate between sculptors, painters and photographers and refers to all of them as ARTIST [sic]. Do you know that stage actors, movie actors and musicians are also regarded as ARTIST [sic]? A painter should be called a PAINTER, and a PAINTER for ILLUSTRATION, an ILLUSTRATOR. Now you call yourself an ARTIST, they wouldn’t know that you’re a painter ARTIST. They might mistake you for a stage actor or a movie actor. They wouldn’t be able to tell.”2 Since that night, I have clearly understood the meaning of the word ARTIST. Previously, I had thought that ARTIST only referred to painters, and I only found out then from Saya U Chin Sein that I was wrong. I was not yet in the movie industry back then. Then, there was a time when U Chin Sein and I shared a room, and he said to me one day, “Aung Soe, do you want to become a movie actor? You check yourself in the mirror once when you go out, and once again when you enter; you almost break the mirror.” I realised that I had a little bit of movie bug in me. I also found the art of movie-making interesting when I went on an excursion trip to Mosfilm Studios with U Chin Sein.3 After we returned from Moscow, I lost contact with U Chin Sein. I never told him that I wanted to work in the movie industry. 2
1
U Chin Sein (Director Shwe Nyar Maung) was the Chairman of Myanmar Motion Picture Association from 1974 to 1986. 2 Characteristic of usage in the modern period, the Burmese word meaning “painting” is often used to stand for “art”, and likewise “painter” for “artist”. 3 Mosfilm Studio was the largest and oldest film studio in Russia and Europe. It produced films by Tarkovsky, Eisenstein and Kurosawa. Bagyi Aung Soe, “To Not Take the Wrong Path,” Publication Unidentified, ca 1980.
1
AungSoeillustrations.org