1. From documentary/ethnographic film to creative transformation: Some examples Dr. Linda C.H. LAI SM4134 Berlin, a symphony of a big city (1927) Night Mail (1936) ｜ Song of Ceylon (1934) A Song of Ceylon (1985) Divine Horsemen, the Living God of Haiti (1985)

2. Berlin, a sympony of a big city (Germany 1927) Walter Ruttmann...an ordinary day in 1927 Organization – narrative – journey Collecting – categorization – typification Representation

3. CASE STUDY: Song of Ceylon (Basil Wright, 1934) Production: GPO Film Unit for Ceylon Tea Marketing Board …begun as an Empire Marketing Board film

4. CASE STUDY: Song of Ceylon (Basil Wright, 1934) Background of production: Producer: John Grierson Screenplay: John Grierson, Basil Wright …, based partly on a book about Ceylon written by traveler Robert Knox in 1680 Music: Walter Leigh Cast: Lionel Wendt (Narrator) …

5. CASE STUDY: Song of Ceylon (Basil Wright, 1934) Basil Wright was sent to Ceylon to film four one-reel travelogues as publicity for the Ceylon Tea Propaganda Board. When he was actually there, he was driven by his own “inner impulse” which made him shoot other sites and themes. The idea of Song of Ceylon was not in his mind when he was there until after he returned to London to edit the footage. There was no shooting script, but a screenplay afterwards, also with reference to an existing book. The editing and sound in the film were done in England. Eight tracks of recorded sound and music and images were combined. The film’s narration was taken from Robert Knox’s book (1680), which Wright discovered by chance in a store window.

6. CASE STUDY: Song of Ceylon (Basil Wright, 1934) I. the Buddha Pilgrims up a mountainside to pray… II.the Virgin Island (10:54) Daily life of the people… III.the Voices of Commerce (~23:00) Two systems of labors juxtaposed: sound track of British stock market prices and the arrival and departure times for ships // natives of Ceylon gathering coconuts ad tea leaves by hand IV.the Apparel of the Gods (29:43) Religious and cultural life of Ceylon as lived before the arrival of the British colonizers The four titles were inserted afterwards.

7. CASE STUDY: Song of Ceylon (Basil Wright, 1934) The film is often called the world’s finest example of “lyrical documentary.” Grierson described the theme of the work, “Buddhism and the art of life it has to offer, set upon by a Western metropolitan civilization which, in spite of all our skills, has no art of life to offer.”

8. CASE STUDY: Song of Ceylon (Basil Wright, 1934) Keywords… Interpretation / narrative composition / sight and sound craftsmanship / experimentation of sound / anthropology and power structure

9. CASE STUDY: Song of Ceylon (Basil Wright, 1934) Bibliography: http://www.filmreference.com/Film-So-St/Song-of-Ceylon.html Cecil Starr Screen online: http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/442428/index.html

10. CASE STUDY: Song of Ceylon (Basil Wright, 1934) Comparison: Laleen Jayamanne A Song of Ceylon (1985, 51 minutes, color)

11. CASE STUDY: Laleen Jayamanne’s A Song of Ceylon A Song of Ceylon (Laleen Jayamanne, 1985, Australia, 51 minutes) Her work is NOT an ethnographic film, but it engages in issues of ethnography and anthropology in general, critically.

12. CASE STUDY: Laleen Jayamanne’s A Song of Ceylon Jayamanne is a Srilankan working overseas. The work focuses on gender and the body. Trinh T. Minh-ha remarks on the work, “The anthropological text is performed both like a musical score and a theatrical ritual… The film engages the viewer in the cinematic body as spectacles…” (in journal Discourse)

13. CASE STUDY: Laleen Jayamanne’s A Song of Ceylon Jayamanne’s own Song is based on an anthropological text that deals with the experience of “possession” – “of a body being possessed by other bodies, of the voice being multiplied.” Ethnography of class Cultural hybridization Found anthropological text Daily rituals Bibliography: “Anna Rodrigo Interviews Laleen Jayamanne on A Song of Ceylon” in Toward Cinema and Its Double: cross-cultural. (pp. 65-66)

14. Visual anthropology: the case of Maya Deren (Avant-garde filmmaker/experimentation in visual anthropology) Apparatus: exploring the material possibilities of the camera Reflexivity Ritual: union of cultural FORM and CONTENT  Moral commitment to aesthetic sensibility

15. Visual anthropology: the case of Maya Deren Filmmaker’s artistic sensibility “The problem of the filmmaker then becomes not how to make a thing look like itself, so much as how to make it look like what he wants the audience to feel about it. He must discover how to translate his emotion about something into a visual film expression.” [Legend of Maya Deren, 1942-47, p. 300]