Telecritique: About “Song of Ceylon” by Basil Wright

Film with the self-declared ambition to make aware of a few cinematic methods. For that, Harun Farocki chooses Basil Wright’s Song of Ceylon (1934) for an episode of the Telecritique series in WDR in (1975). Here, Farocki is searching for indications and condensations of decision-making processes and analyzes their consequences within the politics of representation. Yet despite the literal re-drawing and de-reading of the original film, Farocki’s work is once more faced with the question to what extent the colonial context which brought about Wright’s film is named and made visible.

Telecritique: About “Song of Ceylon” by Basil Wright
Directed by: Harun Farocki
First Broadcast: October 7, 1975
Commissioned for the TV series Telekritik (Telecritique), commissioning editor: Angelika Wittlich