The Nameless

With his film The Name (2015), Ho Tzu Nyen, a film maker and visual artist from Singapore, takes a critical look at the history of the Malaysian communist party. The Nameless (2014) was the run-up to his latest theatre piece, The Mysterious Lai Teck. The Nameless is about Lai Teck, the leader of the Malaysian Communist Party from 1939 until 1947. The man had over fifty aliases and was killed in Thailand in the end, after having been found out as a triple agent for the French and British secret services, as well as the Japanese Kempeitai during the Malaysian occupation. The Nameless is also about cinema and acting. Of all the major film cultures around the world, Hong Kong cinema might have the most intense fascination with suspicious characters such as spies, informants and traitors. As such, Lai Teck’s story about a main character who constantly changes his appearance is told with a number of intense clips. As in The Name, Ho samples material from other films: in this case from the oeuvre of film actor Tony Leung (from Hong Kong). As a result, Lai Teck’s history appears to parallel the course of Leung’s career, who acted in a striking number of spy films.