The giant Seng Hum – a character in ‘Cambodian Dramatic Dances: the Story of Prince Chet Chey’ (1920) – dir. Ananda Coomaraswamy
12:14 mins., b&w, silent.
Source : this film can be viewed here. It can also be seen as part of the Ananda Coomaraswamy Film Collection at the NAFC, where it is available as part of the film AS-89.2.1Cambodian Dramatic Dances. This also includes a dance based on the legend of Prea Somut and his elopement with Princess Butsumali, described here.
This film shows a performance by the Royal Cambodian Ballet, apparently in the grounds of the Angkor Wat temple complex, of the legend of Prince Chey Chet and the quarrel between his jealous wives. The performers are from a hereditary cast of dancers and as was customary, they are all prepubescent girls, even those performing the male roles. The troupe is relatively few in number, and there is only one accompanying xylophone player, indicating that this was probably put on specifically for Ananda Coomaraswamy.
The film begins with a lengthy inter title explaining the context of the film with the aid of a series of stills of some of the performers. A seccond, shorter inter title, apparently produced on a typewriter, reveals that ‘the photography’ was by Ananda Coomaraswamy himself. The film then follows the story of the legend with the aid of further inter titles produced on a typewriter. The quality of the cinematography is uneven, with many jump cuts, but the film still manages to capture the grace of the dancers and the general flavour of the story.
This is one of a series of films that Coomaraswamy made in the course of a trip around various Asian countries accompanied by his then lover and later wife, the dancer Stella Bloch, an American of Polish-Jewish heritage.
The Cambodian Royal Ballet corps continued to perform until it was dispersed by the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s, and many of the performers perished during the ensuing genocide. But with the fall of the Khmer Rouge in 1979, the corps was recreated and in 2003 the ballet form was added to the UNESCO list of examples of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. For further details see here
Princess Butsumali and Prea Somut resolve to elope – ‘Cambodian Dramatic Dances’ (1920) – dir. Ananda Coomaraswamy
9 mins., b&w, silent.
Source : this film can be viewed on the web here. It can also be seen as part of the Ananda Coomaraswamy Film Collection at the NAFC, where it is available as part of the film AS-89.2.1Cambodian Dramatic Dances, which also includes a dance based on the legend of Prince Chey Chet and the jealousy between his two wives, described here.
This film shows a performance by the Royal Cambodian Ballet – evidently in the grounds of the ancient palace of Angkor Wat – of the legend of the elopement of Prea Somut with the Princess Bustumali. The performers are from a hereditary cast of dancers and as was customary, they are all prepubescent girls, even those performing the male roles. This appears to be an informal performance put on at the request of the filmmaker, Ananda Coomoraswamy : the dancers are relatively few in number and there is only one player of an accompanying xylophone.
The film was shot by Coomaraswamy himself, as the opening titles reveal. Though the resolution of the image is a little murky, the technical quality is reasonable for the period, with a variety of shots. It follows the story of the legend with the aid of inter titles which have clearly been produced on a typewriter.
This is one of a series of films that Coomaraswamy made in the course of a trip around various Asian countries accompanied by his then lover and later wife, the dancer Stella Bloch, an American of Polish-Jewish heritage.
The Cambodian Royal Ballet corps continued to perform until it was dispersed by the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s, and many of the performers perished during the ensuing genocide. But with the fall of the Khmer Rouge in 1979, the corps was recreated and in 2003 the ballet form was added to the UNESCO list of examples of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. For further details see here.
Background : This is one of the very few major films of ethnographic interest to emerge from the British colonial period in South Asia. It was released in 1934 by the General Post Office film unit, then headed by John Grierson. He was also the producer and on the opening credits, his name comes first and is larger than that of the director, Basil Wright, who at that time was a relative newcomer to film-maker. Originally commissioned by the Empire Marketing Board as a four-part travelogue intended to promote the Ceylon Tea Marketing Board, in the course of post-production, it became instead a poetic meditation on the religious qualities that permeate traditional life on what is now the island of Sri Lanka.
Content: The film is subdivided into four parts, presented as if they were four movements in a symphonic composition: the first part follows Sinhalese pilgrims to the sacred mountain of Sri Pada (known to Europeans as Adam’s Peak), the second presents everyday subsistence activity on the island – fishing, pottery, house-building, rice cultivation – and a children’s dance class, contrasting the calm and measured nature of this traditional mode of life with that of the ‘voices of commerce’, shown in the third part. This consists of scenes of colonial economic activity, including the harvesting of tea, the laborious processing of copra and the dispatch of goods on international freighters, overlain with clipped telephone voices referring to stock prices and logistics. The final part returns to religious themes, juxtaposing some magnificently costumed dancers with images of the giant statues of Buddha carved in granite at Gal Vihara and a peasant farmer leaving an offering of flowers to them.
A peasant farmer approaches the statues of the Buddha at Gal Vihara.
The film was mostly shot by Wright himself and in a manner that he would later explain had been very much influenced by the advice that he received from Robert Flaherty when the latter was briefly attached to the film unit of the Empire Marketing Board for a few months in 1931. However, notwithstanding the excellence of the cinematography and the often-daring visual transitions, arguably the most distinctive and impressive aspect of the film is the highly elaborate soundtrack entirely developed at post-production in London. In developing this soundtrack, Wright benefitted greatly from the influence of Alberto Calvacanti, the Franco-Brazilan film-maker then working with the GPO Unit, and also the avant-garde composer Walter Leigh.
Inspired by the contrapuntal theories of Sergei Eisenstein, this soundtrack combined a broad panoply of sounds, including Sinhalese music performed by musicians brought to London specifically for the purpose, Leigh’s own avant-garde compositions, a range of special effects as well as disembodied voices speaking both English and Sinhalese. In addition, it featured a series of texts offering ethnographic observations about Sinhalese life originally published by the sea captain Robert Knox in 1681 and based on his knowledge of the island having spent twenty-three years in captivity there. This text was read in a most entrancing manner by Lionel Wendt, who was a Burgher, that is, a person of mixed European and Sinhalese descent and by profession a photographer. Wendt had collaborated with Basil Wright and his assistant, John Taylor, throughout their lengthy shoot of several months, advising them on all aspects of traditional Sinhalese life.
Dancers in ‘Apparel of a God’ – the final part of the film.
Although The Song of Ceylon is widely acclaimed as one of the finest works of documentary cinema of the interwar years, the film has also been criticized, among other things, for presenting an idealised Orientalist vision of Sinhalese life in the 1930s (there is very little in the film about urban life) and for glossing over the exploitation of Sinhalese workers on the tea plantations and elsewhere. It has also been questioned on more specifically ethnographic grounds, including for implying that the dancers juxtaposed in the final section with the statue of the Buddha are engaged in a religious performance of some kind when in reality, they are secular performers who hire themselves out to provide entertainment at weddings and similar festivities.
But whatever the validity or otherwise of these criticisms – and there are certainly counterarguments that might be made against them – The Song of Ceylon remains a work of uncontestable ethnographicness in that it was based on extensive prior research and a relatively lengthy shoot, as well as being informed by the insights gleaned from Wendt and Knox. Above all, in this film, the poetic power of cinema is used in a virtuoso manner to communicate the experience of everyday customary Sinhalese life in a direct manner. It was surely for this reason that it would later be a source of inspiration to two of the leading ethnographic film-makers of the second half of the twentieth century, Robert Gardner and David MacDougall.
A longer version entitled With the Headhunters in Papua was released in 1923. National Film and Sound Archive, Canberra. Clips from the original 1921 version reconstructed in 1979 are available at http://aso.gov.au/titles/documentaries/pearls-and-savages/
10 min., b&w, no synch sound, but voice-over commentary in English by Margaret Mead
Source: ?
This is the only one of the seven films that Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead made in Bali and New Guinea in 1936-39 that does not form part of the Character Formation in Different Cultures series. Though shot at the same time, it was released some 25 years later, and had a different editor. Whereas the other films were intensively focused on parent-child relationships, this film is mostly concerned with instruction given by professional dancers, notably by the then-celebrated dancer, Mario.
10 min., b&w, no synch sound, but voice-over commentary in English by Margaret Mead
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