![]() ![]() This film, however, relies on a more visceral or poetic way of conveying information. Documentary typically relies on logos to convince, not to suggest that they don’t use pathos as well. Basil Wright accentuates this decision by featuring both technology and rural work ambivalently – heavily juxtaposing two ways of life but not clearly choosing either. Sri Lanka was facing the beginnings of a revolution of identity in 1934, of either becoming more integrated with world production or retaining their culture. The primary question of the film The Song of Ceylon regards the problem of modernity, of choosing an identity between two worlds – an old world with its own values, and an unknown new world where society decides to take the murky path toward a Western idea of progress. If promoting the Tea Industry wasn’t Wright’s “social purpose,” then it seems the question of modernity and capitalism in Sri Lanka was. ![]() The original commission of the film was to produce four short films on the Tea Industry in Ceylon, but the tea pickers are featured as an afterthought of the film. ![]() As seen in the film, Wright was interested in the stark juxtaposition of man, technology, and nature. Basil Wright, the creator of The Song of Ceylon, seeing the uprising of non-fiction film seized the opportunity to become an acolyte of John Grierson. During Tallents’s influence, the gross earnings of film went from one-thousand pounds to seventeen thousand in one year (Tallents 30). Tallents formulated the idea of massive public relations under government sponsorship designed to stimulate trade with the Commonwealth. ![]() Grierson was charged with developing the form of “films with a social purpose,” by Sir Stephen Tallents, the Secretary of the Empire Marketing Board (Guynn 83). The rise of documentary was associated with the rise of the state and capitalism in Great Britain (Aitkin 17). ![]()
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