The Song of Ceylon

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
Original title The Song of Ceylon
Country of production Great Britain
original language English
Publishing year 1934
length 40 minutes
Rod
Director Basil Wright
script John Grierson , Basil Wright
production John Grierson
music Walter Leigh
camera Basil Wright
cut Basil Wright
occupation

The Song of Ceylon is a British documentary film by Basil Wright from 1934. It is artistically ambitious and with the view of a European viewer concerned with the life of the Sinhalese in the British colony of Ceylon and, along with the later Night Mail, is regarded as an aesthetically outstanding work the British documentary film movement .

content

The film is thematically divided into four sections.
The first part - The Buddha - begins with panning cameras over palm leaves and deals with Buddhism in Ceylon. Pilgrims travel to Adam's Peak to where the Buddha's footprint to worship.
The second part - The Virgin Island - looks at the traditional way of life and work of the Sinhalese against the background and in harmony with the tropical landscape. Among the works shown are fishing, housework, pottery, house building, farming, and dance classes.
The third part - The Voices of Commerce - shows the influence of modernity and the industrialization of Ceylon. Train noises and views of the landscape from a moving train guide the topic. Heavy labor is done with the help of elephants and coconuts are hand-picked for copra , but modern telecommunications have already reached Ceylon. Tea prices in the market are now traded this way. Commercialized tea production, harvest, processing and tea trade are the image of modern colonial Ceylon.
With an offering to larger than life Buddhist statues and a ritual dance by the locals in festive clothing, the fourth part - The Apparel of a God - comes back to the lived religion and culture of Ceylon. With camera pans over palm leaves, the film ends as it began.

background

Still planned under the EMB , The Song of Ceylon was produced after the takeover of the EMB Film Unit by the GPO Film Unit with the support of the Ceylon Tea Propaganda Board founded in 1932, for whose publicity the recordings were to be made. Basil Wright shot with an assistant camera, three cameras, and two tripods.

The descriptive narration in the film comes from Robert Knox 's travelogue A Historical Relation of Ceylon from 1680. The soundtrack was created separately in the recording studio, as the technical conditions did not allow simultaneous image and sound recording. With the support of Alberto Cavalcanti, the composer Leigh experimented with exotic sounds and - especially in the third part - with dissonant industrial sound effects.

The author and film critic Graham Greene praised the film in a 1935 review by The Spectator magazine and emphasized its "methodological and content security as well as visual imagery". According to an American review in Variety magazine in 1937, he was "a little too obsessed with art".

Awards

At the International Film Festival Brussels 1935, The Song of Ceylon was awarded as best documentary and the Prix du Gouvernement as best film in all categories.

Web links