The Song of Ceylon 1934
Ambitious documentary chronicling the cultural life and religious customs of the Sinhalese and the effects of advanced industrialism on such customs.
Ambitious documentary chronicling the cultural life and religious customs of the Sinhalese and the effects of advanced industrialism on such customs.
In this travelogue of Ceylon, the first stop is Colombo, the capital and chief seaport of this island nation. A lighthouse at the end of the main street is the chief landmark. The port is filled with a mixture of modern vessels and traditional man propelled vessels. A short train ride from Colombo is Mount Lavinia, one of the country's most popular pleasure resorts. The next stop is the Peradeniya Gardens, the highlight of which is a magnificent avenue of majestic royal palms. Another botanical item of interest in Ceylon is the manufacture of rubber and the abundance of rubber trees in cultivation. The final stop is the city of Kandy. Its primary attraction is the Temple of the Tooth. Traditional island ways dominate life in this city, including the sight of bathing elephants after their afternoon work shift.
Chandar is a black leopard who lives near the beach of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) together with his mother and his sister.
Fitzpatrick Traveltalks
A Traveltalk visit to the island nation when it was still a British crown colony and the name Sri Lanka was 40 years in the future.
A visit to the island of Java when it was part of the Dutch East Indies, and Sri Lanka when it was still called Ceylon.
A formally rigorous, visually stunning study of colonialism, gender and the body. The title echoes the classic British documentary and evokes a country erased from the world map. The soundtrack enacts a Sri Lankan anthropological text observing a woman’s ritual exorcism. Visually, the film brings together theatrical conventions and recreations of classic film stills, presenting the body in striking tableaux. This remarkable film is a provocative treatise on hybridity, hysteria and performance.
Song of Ceylon was commissioned for the short-lived German TV-series Telekritik and broadcasted in 1975. In Telekritik documentary approaches were analysed and made available for a critique of contemporary TV, its aesthetics and modes of production. Other authors for the series include Hartmut Bitomsky, Rainer Gansera and Klaus Wildenhahn.In the 30-minute movie, Farocki shows and comments on excerpts from the film Song of Ceylon by Basil Wright (and a short segment of Eisenstein's Mexico-fragments). Farocki's voice-over describes part of the movie, focussing on details and montage. He also uses didactic and descriptive drawings and intertitles to confront the classic documentary and its stylistic approaches with contemporary TV.
Rajini, a Sri Lankan Tamil girl, narrates the horrific tale of why she had to leave her homeland and become a refugee in India.
A spectacular action-adventure travelogue with stages in Genoa, Suez, Colombo, Singapore, Canton, Yokohama, Honolulu, San Francisco, New York and Brest.