Ah Ma: On family memory and trauma – Sim Chi Yin and Tash Aw in conversation

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In 'Swaying the Current'  Sim Chi Yin tells the story of Loo Ngan Yue, her grandmother, who was made a widow by Britain’s violent suppression of anti-colonial forces in Malaya – a conflict that lasted twelve years and later served as a served as a template for Western counter-insurgency campaigns both historical and contemporary. Sim’s paternal grandfather, a journalist and left-wing intellectual, was – along with many other Socialists and their sympathetisers – imprisoned by the British and deported to China, where he was then executed by the anti-Communist national (Kuomintang) army. Sim juxtaposes moments of leisure with oral histories of her family's inter-generational trauma, using photographic means to create a cinematic experience. Against the background of the “Malayan Emergency” (1948–1960), Sim draws a picture of fear, loss, flashes of joy as well as familial and historical amnesia – and therewith points to the unhealed wounds of the Cold War, which deepened the cleft between different segments of the population and led to enduring conflicts, whose repercussions we continue to feel today.