Song of Ceylon (1935) by Basil Wright
Saturday, September 22, 1984, 8:00 pm
Classics of Ethnographic Filmmaking
Song of Ceylon by Basil Wright (1935) and Les Maîtres Fous (The Manic Priests) by Jean Rouch (1955).
This evening’s program features work by two pioneering documentary filmmakers—Basil Wright and Jean Rouch.
Directed by Basil Wright and produced by John Grierson for the British Empire Marketing Board, Song of Ceylon has long been considered one of the early masterpieces of personal ethnographic filmmaking. Though downplaying the effects of colonialism, the film contains extraordinary footage of the island of Ceylon and its people, as well as a remarkable soundtrack largely conceived and executed by Alberto Cavalcanti.
An early film by the French ethnographic filmmaker Jean Rouch, Les Maîtres Fous concentrates on odd religious practices among sub-Sahara African tribes. Controversy around the film led Rouch to develop his later innovative ‘cinema vérité’ style that characterizes such films as Chronicle of a Summer.