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Singapore in the early 1900s, the height of colonial rule. We see coolies sharing lunch, mourners at a grand funeral and Europeans having tea - brought vividly to life in these rare archival films.
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00:00.
00:07These are the very first films ever made in and about Singapore.
00:12These scenes are just wonderful, they get goosebumps.
00:16Super rare.
00:17What's really interesting is that this is perhaps the first time this has been seen.
00:21There's something magical about watching footage like this.
00:25It's an extraordinary, never-before-seen archive.
00:29Kept for decades in climate-controlled vaults at the British Film Institute.
00:34Much of Singapore's history is here.
00:38The epic.
00:40The intriguing.
00:42And the intimate.
00:46It's the imprint of light on celluloid.
00:49Moments in time captured forever, like ghosts.
00:53It's beautiful.
00:54These films allow us to time travel.
00:57It doesn't just give you history, it gives you the future.
01:02We bring this archive back to life as the films are cleaned, digitised and restored.
01:09Ready to be seen outside the vaults for the very first time.
01:15We also uncover remarkable home movie footage, documenting family history.
01:20This is beyond amazing.
01:24I'm so glad that these films have survived.
01:27It's very emotional.
01:30Together, these films capture in astonishing detail a vanished world.
01:36And shine a new light on how Singapore became what it is today.
01:41The Singapore collection at the British Film Institute is small but precious.
02:0280% of the early films have survived.
02:0480% of the early films haven't survived.
02:06And there's some mystery as to how it was they came here.
02:09But life on film, dormant for decades, has now been revived.
02:15This is amazing.
02:31I think it's the earliest surviving footage of Singapore, dating to 1900.
02:37So this is a historical document in that sense.
02:41What we see here are Malay boys diving for coins.
02:44And that's something that you find happening quite a bit with ships leaving Singapore.
02:48They would be asking the passengers to throw their coins in.
02:51You know, you're leaving Singapore, you don't need your coins anymore.
02:54The coins are going to make your pockets heavy.
02:56Why don't you just throw it over here?
02:58You have lots of money, we don't.
03:00And once people do that, they will dive straight in and get the coins.
03:05From the middle to the late 19th century, you have evidence of that happening already.
03:11We have a print in our collection at the National Museum of Singapore.
03:14That's a print that appeared in the 1872 issue of the Illustrated London News.
03:20And that shows exactly the same scene.
03:30The attention-seeking and diving looks like a serious business.
03:33If you look carefully, you'll notice that in amongst the Wari youth, it's the smallest boy who gets the coin.
03:45These boys are actually from the local Orang Laud community.
03:48And Orang Laud are basically people whose lives and livelihoods are actually centered on the water.
03:54Many of them would live in the boats and they would actually be engaging in fishing and various other kinds of water activities.
04:01Orang Laud translates directly into sea people.
04:05But normally people would call them sea nomads because their lives were basically moving from one place to another.
04:11There's a moment which I find very moving because it's very human where one of the guys climbs out of the boat and then he sneezes and then washes his nose like this in the water.
04:23There's a tiny human moment in a film which otherwise can seem rather anonymous and certainly anonymizing.
04:32This one-minute film was shot in 1900 by celebrated war photographer Englishman Joseph Rosenthal for Warwick Trading Company.
04:41He was traveling home after attempting to cover the Boxer Rebellion in China.
04:48This reel is not only precious, it's also highly flammable.
04:53Shot on one of the earliest film materials, cellulose nitrate.
05:00Why I think this image is so pristine is because it's on nitrate.
05:04Nitrate film has a beauty that I think the acetate film isn't able to capture.
05:10And kept properly, it really can last as long as we can think of.
05:15There's no way that this format can be preserved in Singapore.
05:19We don't have the conditions, neither do we have the storage for it.
05:24The fact that the BFI has this, I'm really glad.
05:30These Malay boys are indigenous sea nomads.
05:34One of the first communities to settle along the coastlines of pre-colonial Singapore.
05:41It's a way of life lost from the island as the development of modern Singapore has forced them north to Malaysia.
05:50We are actually at the moment in an Orang Laod setting.
05:55It's actually a village that's located in the coastal areas of southern Malaysia in Johor.
06:01As you can see from the village around me, there is actually a lot of these old or traditional kinds of practices still being had.
06:09I mean, given that their lives were by the sea, meant that their children would basically just be jumping and diving into the water.
06:14And they would actually still be engaging in fishing activities and even muscle harvesting that goes on in the straits here.
06:22For many of these people, although they do no longer live on boats like they used to, like their forefathers did,
06:28many of them still feel that it's very important for them to be by the water so that they can still engage in all these kinds of traditional activities of the community.
06:38Today, their way of life is again under threat, as further prime coastal shores are reclaimed by developers.
06:52Back in 1819, Sir Thomas Stanford Raffles arrived in these waters, heading a delegation from the British East India Company to secure Singapore's natural deep harbour as a British trading port.
07:10Located in a perfect geographical spot, midway between key British trade routes to India and China, Singapore is where the monsoons meet.
07:21Raffles established Singapore as a free trading port.
07:27It would become an epic maritime hub, shipping exotic cargo from the vast reaches of the empire.
07:33Scenes which in 1910 would fascinate the pioneering French filmmakers, the Pathé brothers, headed by Charles Pathé.
07:46We're looking right now at the scene of coaling.
07:59And what you see here are labourers bringing coal up to a ship.
08:04And that's really interesting because, I mean, when you think about Singapore, you talk about it being a port city.
08:10And most of the time we think of trade, we think of shipping.
08:14But at the same time, I think Singapore was a very important coaling station.
08:18It's certainly a very busy place.
08:20There's a lot of trade coming in.
08:21And I think in that sense, it provided jobs for the local people as well.
08:26These were some of the pull factors that brought the immigrants into Singapore.
08:31What I really love about this clip is just the hive of activity.
08:36Shipping companies are looking to get into the port, to unload goods, to recall and to leave as quickly as possible.
08:44And also the fact that the coolies or the labourers don't have any shoes on,
08:48or they're going up and down the gang planks.
08:51I think it's quite often very much a sign of those times or that era when you have that very lowest class of worker,
08:58then generally they won't have shoes.
09:01The labour force in Singapore in the early 20th century, the majority of them are Chinese.
09:09The Chinese immigrants in Singapore came mostly from the Fujian province and the Guangdong province,
09:15especially the southern part of Fujian, we call the Hokkien.
09:19They are invariably young men who have basically very little skill, no connections in Singapore,
09:27and they migrated here to perform hard labour.
09:33I think with the many early films that we have, we didn't really see narrative filmmaking at that point in time.
09:39And so back then they weren't known as documentaries, they were known as dailies,
09:43so like daily life, capturing daily lives.
09:52The Singapore River is the next scene that this clip goes to.
09:56And Singapore was not only connected to the east-west trade,
10:00but also basically the centre of what was an intra-Asian trade.
10:04So you have ships moving around the region as well as from east to west.
10:08And this is where you have on the Singapore River all of these smaller vessels,
10:12which the British would tend to dub native craft.
10:15But these are smaller vessels which could navigate the river,
10:18whereas steamships just couldn't and they had to stay within the outer harbour area.
10:24The Singapore River didn't just bring goods to shore, but ship them out.
10:29Three of the Pathé brothers' films discovered in the BFI faults
10:32feature Singapore's homegrown goods, ripe for export.
10:52This beautiful example is simply titled Ananas.
10:56This Ananas clip is fantastic.
11:00What I like is that it takes us from the production, the plantation,
11:04right through to the canning of pineapple.
11:06So you see every single step.
11:09If you notice from the film that there is a tint of colour,
11:13and I think that speaks of the nitrate that it was on,
11:17that nitrate film could actually be coloured by hand.
11:21Obviously, at that time, film was in black and white.
11:24And so this tinge of colour is really quite brilliant,
11:28especially when you can see the greens with almost the distinctions of shadows.
11:39There would be like studios where there would be hundreds of people
11:42just doing just the colour over and over,
11:44because they were done frame by frame, almost like doing an animation.
11:48So I believe it would cost quite a lot.
11:51And not every film had this luxury of being coloured.
11:57Did you notice that the man in the film cutting the pie apples into chunks
12:02was wearing rubber gloves?
12:04This is actually supposed to be a standard practice
12:07because the acid from the pie apple juice will eat away at your finger.
12:12And that is very, very painful.
12:14So it is a standard practice,
12:16but not all of them practice-safe manufacturing procedure.
12:21I particularly love the scene with the little boy
12:25who is loading the pineapple, which is cut into cubes.
12:28He's loading it into the cans.
12:30And you see there's no real quality control
12:32the way we would think of it in the present day
12:34because some cans seem to get a lot, others not so much.
12:37I guess it depends on what sort of instructions he's given.
12:45I'm just amazed to see a film from this period.
12:49I get goosebumps.
12:50They mostly looked southern Chinese,
12:52so they have their shaved heads and what we call cues,
12:56sort of plaited hair that's tied up at the back.
12:58During the Qing dynasty,
13:00every male had to have his head styled in that particular way,
13:03in pain of death.
13:04The other thing that I'm really interested in
13:07is body language and movement.
13:10Photography, anyway,
13:11is so entrenched in looking at identity
13:15from the way people sit and pose.
13:18And that, in a way, is really artificial.
13:21And when you look at film,
13:23this is how people are naturally.
13:26They're born movie stars.
13:29Of course, the question is,
13:30where exactly does this take place?
13:32We can't really say for sure.
13:34Later on here,
13:35you actually see the cans of pineapple being labelled.
13:38Again, it's a bit hard to tell exactly.
13:41I see the word Singapore on it.
13:43But apart from that, we don't quite know.
13:45Plantations and canning factories like this one,
13:49once covered Singapore.
13:51Now they're all long gone,
13:53existing only on these few minutes of celluloid.
14:00There's something magical and strange about the fact
14:02that after 110 years,
14:04this guy is still chopping those same two pineapples
14:07in exactly the same way,
14:08so precisely, so dexterously.
14:10and will do so forever and ever,
14:13as long as the medium exists.
14:36By the time these early films were shot,
14:38at the start of the 20th century,
14:40Singapore was firmly established
14:42as a prosperous British colonial port city.
14:48The opening of the Suez Canal
14:50brought East and West closer,
14:52and Singapore's success was based
14:54on its perfect geographical location
14:56and, fundamentally, its free port.
15:01The British built grand colonial buildings
15:03with European designs.
15:05They're still here today.
15:17And their town planners mapped out the city streets
15:19with separate enclaves
15:20for the different communities working in Singapore,
15:23such as the Chinese, the Indians, and the Malays.
15:27and the Malays.
15:42This is Singapore.
15:43It's all people from different backgrounds all together.
15:46Our national treasure is this idea of this multiculturalism
15:51in a very, kind of, intense way.
15:53I think that really characterises Singapore from the start,
15:57and it's still very much that way today.
16:01And it's always interesting to see how,
16:03when you have people dressed up to the nines,
16:05it's usually the colonials.
16:06And where you see the natives,
16:08it's usually when they're actually pulling the rickshaws.
16:11Whenever they have scenes in this clip of traffic,
16:15you always have the policeman directing the traffic.
16:18And in more than one scene, actually,
16:20you see a Sikh policeman.
16:22Sikhs, as policemen in particular,
16:24moved throughout the British Empire.
16:26Part of it actually links back to the Indian mutiny.
16:31The Sikh soldiers during that uprising remained loyal to the British.
16:35And for that reason, the British identified them
16:37as a particular martial race
16:39that could be dependable and very trustworthy.
16:43The Sikhs guarding Kavanagh Bridge are gone.
16:47But the bridge remains today.
16:54It's now closed to traffic
16:56and a tree has matured
16:58where the rickshaws would have passed.
17:00The Kavanagh Bridge is the first,
17:04probably the only suspended bridge in Singapore.
17:07It was actually first built in Glasgow
17:10and then it was dismantled
17:12and then brought to Singapore
17:13where it was put together again
17:14by the convict labourers
17:16that were here in Singapore at that time.
17:18Singapore had served many purposes for the British
17:20and one of the purposes that they served
17:22was actually as a penal colony.
17:24So many of these convict labourers
17:26were actually brought over to Singapore
17:27because they could also then serve as the labourers
17:31to establish Singapore
17:32to become the great emporium
17:34that it was envisioned to be.
17:37And every emporium needed a strong workforce.
17:41These workers were known by the generic term,
17:43coolie.
17:45In these films so far,
17:46the coolie is shown as the men loading at the docks
17:49and labouring at the plantations.
17:51The origins of coolie is still debating.
17:55Where that word comes from,
17:57some believe it's from India.
17:59But in Chinese it's interesting
18:00because it's translated as coolie,
18:02bitter strength.
18:04Right, so they have to eat bitter
18:06and perform strenuous job.
18:10Perhaps the most strenuous job
18:12was rickshaw pulling,
18:14a magnet for foreign filmmakers
18:16like the Pathé brothers.
18:17I think that in the early days,
18:20the rickshaws were really pulled
18:22by the poorest of the Chinese migrant labourers.
18:26You'd think they're going to be skinny and weak,
18:29but you look at this film
18:31and they're racing across the streets
18:34in bare feet, mind you.
18:36And you don't quite realise how fast they're going
18:39until this particular shot
18:41where you see two rickshaws racing ahead
18:45and then just after them,
18:47you've got this carriage drawn by a horse
18:49and the horse can't even keep up.
18:51They are literally running marathons
18:54on the road every day.
18:56As you might notice,
18:58the rickshaws in Singapore are two-seaters.
19:00So you have to pull two persons
19:02at a fast pace over a long distance.
19:06So rickshaw pulling is actually one of the dayliest jobs
19:10in Singapore at that time
19:11because many of the young men died due to heart attack
19:15because it's so strenuous, so hard on the body.
19:27The foreign filmmakers documented many aspects
19:29of these coolies' lives,
19:31like their hurried meals on the streets.
19:37I really like this scene.
19:39I mean, the question that you're always asking
19:41is what draws the filmmaker?
19:43You can tell from the title,
19:45Open Air Restaurant,
19:46that's something different, I imagine,
19:48for a European filmmaker coming to Singapore.
19:51But I think you see that fascination
19:54going both ways in a shot like this.
19:59In a way, I think that's the beauty of film,
20:01that it has that accessibility
20:03to cross generations across,
20:06you know, and it doesn't even have audio.
20:09And yet you can imagine in your head
20:11that the bustling sounds
20:12and the kinds of conversations
20:15that people are having
20:16and the sounds of, you know,
20:18chopsticks clinking
20:19and these are the things
20:21that you imagine in your head
20:22when you watch the footage.
20:24Here you have this man making dumplings.
20:27He's just sort of automatically...
20:29He's so used to making dumplings,
20:30he's just looking at the camera
20:31and just throwing them into the soup.
20:33Well, what can I say?
20:34The Chinese just love eating.
20:36Usually we get a photograph
20:38of a single food vendor, you know,
20:41but this one, you have a whole row.
20:43So it appears like Chinatown
20:45had its destiny set from day one.
20:48It's an eating place.
20:49Over a hundred years later,
20:54Chinatown is still thriving
20:56as a culinary destination.
21:07The last scene of this film
21:09continues the eating theme.
21:11So this is cute.
21:18Four grown men squatting and eating.
21:23But the first time I'm seeing a kid
21:25eating with them,
21:26it might have been that he was also
21:29working with them as well.
21:31And he's given a very big bowl of rice
21:33and that tells you that he needs to
21:36put in the energy so that he would have
21:38the strength to carry out his work.
21:41They will be wondering,
21:42what is this guy filming us eating?
21:44It's not the nicest thing to look at.
21:48But have we seen this boy before?
21:50He looks familiar.
21:53The boy who was packing the pineapples,
21:57right, I think it was the same boy.
21:59Yeah, it looks like him.
22:03The boy in the Ananas film
22:04wears the exact same clothes
22:06and has identical markings on his shaved head.
22:10The filmmakers must have followed
22:11the same group of workers
22:12from the pineapple canning factory.
22:15But the boy is not the only child in the frame.
22:18What caught my attention is
22:19there is somebody looking at them
22:21eating in the back.
22:23And that somebody is a little girl.
22:26She might be hungry.
22:29She doesn't get to eat with the men,
22:32you know, and likely she would only have to eat
22:35whatever that's left over.
22:37This just represents so much of,
22:41I suppose, the Asian culture
22:43that continues on even to this day.
22:47This footage speaks volumes
22:50much more than you can get from any photograph or text.
22:53In the early days of silent film,
23:09we see title cards used to set up each scene.
23:13As time moves on,
23:15these cards become more suggestive
23:18in films designed to influence public opinion.
23:20I love this one, Britain's Birthright.
23:24Why? Because I would see this
23:26as an imperial propaganda film.
23:28It's filmed around the 1920s
23:30when the Royal Navy basically did a tour of empire.
23:34And it's really designed to impress upon subjects of empire
23:38that the Royal Navy possessed some of the largest
23:41and fastest ships in the world at that time.
23:44So it's great to see Singapore featured
23:46and also the way it's described,
23:47which is very much a celebration of empire.
23:52I think the language that's used even in the title
23:55gives you a sense of that, you know,
23:57to call Singapore Britain's birthright.
24:01There is that sense of entitlement and to ownership as well, I think.
24:06You do get a sense that there's a certain pride
24:08in the tone of the narration,
24:09in how the film has been put together,
24:12that the British had contributed a lot to the development of Singapore
24:17from a fishing village into this thriving, cosmopolitan city that is Singapore.
24:24Every empire claims to do good.
24:27And that's been true from the Romans until today.
24:30Every empire claims that it has come to civilise the natives.
24:33Every empire claims that it has come to bring peace and prosperity,
24:38while, of course, squeezing the natives dry.
24:41So this is not new.
24:43They then contrast the waterfront and the admiring eyes with these dark and malodorous streets.
24:56I found that quite surprising because the streets didn't look so dark and malodorous.
25:00But I guess what they're trying to do is make that contrast between the progress and modernity
25:05that you can see at the waterfront in the civic district
25:07against those areas which were seen as much more representing the native or indigenous quarters.
25:14Oh, this is probably quite a popular ruse of cameramen.
25:20He's got a crowd of children and he's trying to stimulate them to do something.
25:26So he's throwing something.
25:28They're laughing, you know, they're probably screaming and shouting with laughter,
25:32if only we could hear them.
25:37This time, it's the smallest girl who gets the prize.
25:45This is a scene which is very similar, in a way, to the Cooley Boys Diving for Coins film
25:51and shows precisely the same sort of thing.
25:54The spectacle for the audience is the image of young brown bodies doing things.
26:01Running, swimming, jumping.
26:02There's a sense in which it recapitulates in miniature the actual process of empire,
26:10which is to say the demand from the colonial authority for labour.
26:16Singapore, 1913.
26:30A dense crowd is formed in one of the city's cross streets.
26:34Traffic stops.
26:35This is the funeral procession of Mr Lim Ho Pua.
26:37I think in those days, even a funeral procession is supposed to be a form of celebration.
26:50You have to do it in a dignified way to celebrate the person's next journey to another place, and you have to give them a good send-off.
27:08That's why it appears to be festive.
27:15Lim Ho Pua was a prominent Chinese businessman who made his fortune in shipping.
27:23Well, the funeral of Lim Ho Pua has always fascinated me.
27:26And to actually see it, you know, it's so exciting.
27:29He had what was described as one of the grandest funerals in Singapore for that time.
27:33You just look at how long the procession is.
27:37There's so many flags, and these are words of consolation or wishes for a good afterlife and things like that.
27:48Oh, there's something I can see quite clearly.
27:50It's called Fukon Assurance and Go Down Company Limited.
27:54And something that says they sell rubber stamps and Chinese-type manufactures.
28:00And then in Chinese words, down the pillars, it says they sell European and American products.
28:09So these are all in, yeah, possibly in the Chinatown area.
28:14This looks like early-day departmental store.
28:17It looks like South Bridge Road in the corner of a cross street.
28:22I see the photo studio called Kaisan, which was just at that corner.
28:26And, you know, there's a traffic jam and you can see police have stopped the traffic.
28:31And, you know, it's sort of mayhem.
28:36In the bustling crowd, you can spot one man urging his rickshaw puller to go forward and find a way round.
28:44But the police won't have any of this and force the rickshaws back.
28:49This is typical for a very grand funeral it happens.
28:59It happened in my family 30 years ago.
29:02We've been here a long time, the big family.
29:04So when a very, a family elder passed away, we have to apply for partial roadblocks so that the procession can go through.
29:13Quite often, the cost of the funeral would be higher than what a child might have been bequeathed.
29:29So it was very important for a wealthy man to have an extremely lavish funeral.
29:37At that time, a funeral could cost $10,000 when a shop house could be $4,000.
29:44So, you know, it was a lot of money.
29:46When immigrants first arrived in Singapore, records state the first thing they did was give thanks to their gods for surviving the sea voyage.
29:59They then set about building places of worship, many of which survive to this day.
30:16In 1913, the same year as Lim Ho Pua's grand funeral procession, a different kind of procession is captured on film.
30:30This might be an early example of undercover filmmaking.
30:35Its aim appears to be to secretly record the religious rites at a Hindu festival.
30:40I can say that the photographer decided that he needed to go in, you know, Hindu dress.
30:49But it's really interesting that he would actually be even more conspicuous dressed as a Hindu.
30:57And obviously, you know, he thought that he needed to be discreet, you know, with hiding of the camera in his sleeve.
31:03I think he would probably stand out more than if he just came as himself through the camera and go,
31:10Hi, I'm just going to film you guys. I think they'd be fine.
31:12But if you're dressed like that with the camera in your sleeve and you're pulling out like that, it would be really obvious and awkward.
31:18But at the same time, the footage that he's captured is really quite brilliant.
31:24It's unclear who captured this film, but we do know that the Timiti is a Hindu festival originating in Tamil Nadu in southern India,
31:37where devotees prove their faith by taking part in a fire walking ceremony, crossing a pit of burning embers with their bare feet.
31:44I think the crowd, I feel that sense of anticipation in the air as to what exactly is going to happen.
31:57I always thought like, would fire walking hurt?
32:00I've read that it's less painful if you just like walk slowly across rather than run across because you're slightly lighter on the ground.
32:08So I'm not sure how true it is or whether when you're walking slowly and if it's hot, would you still walk slowly or would you like run for your life?
32:15So something that's always got me curious.
32:18The first guy, he started off walking slowly first and then he kind of like stumbled a bit.
32:24So probably halfway through, he felt like, oh my gosh, this is so hard.
32:28And then he finally, I think he felt a little bit weak in his knees.
32:31Looking back at it, it's funny, but I think for him, it's probably not funny at all.
32:34The ceremony includes the parading of a sacred cow and a less fortunate goat offered up for sacrifice.
32:46If you're squeamish, look away now.
32:53Even the ritual of animal sacrifice, it's so vivid.
32:58This is really quite an eye-opener for me.
33:04I've seen photographs of it, I just haven't seen it in a moving image.
33:09And to actually be able to see people carrying children,
33:13it really is indicative of the fervour of the participants of this particular ritual.
33:20Over a century later, the Sri Mariamam Temple continues to host the fire walking ceremony.
33:37Singapore lies just one and a half degrees north of the equator.
33:41Its climate is tropical with high humidity and heavy rainfall.
33:45Singaporeans are used to weather, which is warm and wet.
33:58OK, this one, Singapore street settlements, torrential rains, flood city in a few hours.
34:06Some things never change.
34:08This is pretty deep.
34:10I'm amazed this car is still trying to drive through.
34:13Now I see a building with the signboard Pirelli tyres.
34:19Ah, OK, now I know where it is.
34:22This is the old Orchard Road Market.
34:24These are quite amazing scenes, how serious the flood was.
34:31We do have record of this exact flood which took place in 1925.
34:35And we do know that Orchard Road was especially affected by it.
34:41Well, I mean, I would imagine that it was actually quite cold during those days of floods.
34:46And you do see a man there in the footage.
34:49I think he looked like he was shivering.
34:50I think it's really fascinating.
34:53You do find the newspaper reports that mention the extent of property damage,
34:59the losses to businesses, and also the casualties for the floods.
35:04But you also have children who are playing.
35:06I think that's quite reflective of reality, really.
35:08Singapore's modern drains can now cope with downpours.
35:24But a century ago, they could be destructive in more ways than one.
35:27If your livelihood depended on your physical ability to pull someone, to convey them through the streets, what would happen if you had an injury?
35:39On a rainy day, if you don't see a pothole, for instance, you would suffer quite severe injuries and that may be the end of you being able to work as a rickshaw puller.
35:47There was a very small step between that and being destitute.
35:52This would often lead to dependency on the drug of the day, opium, as we see in this film discovered in the Huntley Film Archives.
36:01I particularly like the clip on opium smoking. Opium was the basis of the East India Company's trade across Asia.
36:15Britain invaded China to force the Chinese market to consume opium.
36:21So the East India Company was basically the world's biggest drug cartel with its own navy.
36:25So the idea that somehow this is a vice, to say that here we have a problem, but nobody is asking how did this problem emerge in the first place.
36:34It emerged because this is how colonialism was built. It was built on the trade of opium.
36:40Revenue from opium is about one-seventh of the total revenue of British India.
36:47So selling opium prop up the British Empire for decades.
36:52It's reckoned that one in four coolies was an opium addict.
36:59Now remember, for immigrants, they have to leave their family, leave their friends, leave an environment that they are familiar with behind to come to Singapore, an entirely strange place.
37:12Many of them come here to perform hard labour. What do you do to ease your physical pain and even emotional ones?
37:20Opium is highly addictive, and for many of them, they can't quit.
37:25And when you can't quit opium, you just probably can't keep up with paying for it.
37:30And you're just going to suffer the fate of death.
37:34Many lives were lost back then from the coolies who nobody really cared about, I would say.
37:40So, tough life.
37:41Tough life.
37:42Our films so far have featured the colonial subjects.
38:04have featured the colonial subjects,
38:06the working classes laboring for the British Empire.
38:13But what's been captured of the ruling classes?
38:16The colonialists themselves.
38:18Clues into their way of life in Singapore
38:20comes in the discovery of these never-seen-before home movies.
38:34Amateur film of the empires is often especially interesting
38:40because, certainly in the early part of the 20th century,
38:45filmmaking technology is quite an expensive thing.
38:47That means you have an incredibly privileged view
38:50into the private lives of the very people who structured
38:54and were the instruments of colonial rule.
38:58And you have this incredibly intimate picture
39:02from the centre of their lives.
39:07This amateur film is from the collection of Colin Legg.
39:12Nothing more is known about him
39:14except that he donated some of his reels
39:16to the British Film Institute.
39:18Colin Legg has actually filmed these three men
39:21and he's made them line up like that, looking very smart indeed,
39:25probably because he wants to show people back home
39:28that he's employing these numbers of servants
39:31and also for them to be behaving in the proper British way.
39:36There are several shots which occur very regularly in amateur film.
39:41Portrait pictures of housekeeping staff,
39:45chefs, childminders and things like that,
39:49and also pets, lots of dogs.
39:52Another shot is for the subject to walk directly towards the camera.
39:58I confess I'm not completely sure why this is such a common shot,
40:03but people do it quite a lot.
40:05And of course you can't hear what they're saying
40:06and have this very intimate family moment
40:09which was only for home consumption.
40:11The Frankel family, seen in this footage,
40:20were Lithuanian Jews who settled in Singapore
40:22in the late 19th century.
40:25They built their fortune in the textile and furniture business
40:28and owned a vast coconut plantation by the sea
40:31named Siglap, where they'd gather at weekends.
40:34The Frankel family footage is actually quite fascinating.
40:40It really speaks to quite a privileged background.
40:43They're having a garden party by the looks of it.
40:46This is a very cute family photo
40:48where all the kids have been gathered together
40:51to wave to the camera
40:53and, oops, there's one who's just escaped.
40:56And then here we see her later
40:58because she wants the camera all to herself.
41:01The Frankels would have been
41:03one of the richest people in Singapore.
41:06Obviously very close-knit.
41:09I mean, having the ball of their life, man.
41:12What is also interesting for us
41:15is that the knowledge that Albert Einstein,
41:18being a Jew himself,
41:19visited the Frankels
41:21and stayed on their estate.
41:23And he wrote about it in his diary
41:25that was discovered, you know,
41:27and he described the place as beautiful.
41:31I think, looking at their dress,
41:35we're looking at around the 1930s,
41:38which means that, actually, war is around the corner.
41:43And it's a little tragic, almost,
41:48to be looking at these scenes of gaiety and laughter
41:52and togetherness
41:54and just sensing that, not many years later,
41:59Singapore is going to be engulfed in the Second World War.
42:05In the 1930s,
42:07life in Singapore for European expats
42:10was comfortable, to say the least.
42:12They had nice homes
42:14and enjoyed endless social events.
42:18Robert Waddell
42:19was a British engineer
42:21working for the city government.
42:23He was also a prolific amateur filmmaker,
42:25recording his life and times in Singapore.
42:29We found his first-born daughter, Jennifer,
42:31now living in New Zealand.
42:32Oh, well, my earliest memories
42:38are a bit kind of disjointed
42:40because there are bits here and bits there.
42:44We always had dogs.
42:46The dog that we had just, you know,
42:48at the time that I remember
42:49was a Cocker Spaniel,
42:51and they always seemed to have Cocker Spaniels.
42:53And my mother has had several cats, I believe.
42:56My mother went out to Singapore
43:00to teach at Raffles Girls' School.
43:03And then in the last two years,
43:05she actually became headmistress.
43:08I think my mother
43:09was a very independent sort of person.
43:11She had a car that she called Sarah.
43:13She's driving in some of the films.
43:16She was musical and sang in the cathedral choir.
43:19My father played the organ.
43:22I'm not really awfully aware of him filming.
43:25Except there were one or two occasions
43:27where he gets into the film,
43:30and I do remember him doing things like that.
43:34Robert Wattle was a pioneer.
43:37He invented the film letter,
43:39sending his life and pictures home to England,
43:42which his father would view
43:43from the local Kodak shop.
43:49The swimming club was near the sea in those days,
43:52and I do remember being, you know,
43:54taken there and playing there.
43:56Obviously, a lot of Europeans
43:58knew each other
44:00and, you know, did things together.
44:03I mean, I think people enjoyed themselves.
44:07As well as filming family and friends,
44:10Robert Wattle used his cine camera
44:11to capture the construction
44:13of Singapore's Supreme Court building
44:15and his fascination with aircraft.
44:26By 1937, George VI had inherited the throne,
44:30becoming ruler of the British Empire.
44:34Robert Wattle filmed Singapore's celebratory procession,
44:37an occasion which all subjects felt compelled to join in.
44:42You would have these sort of performances
44:45of loyalty to the empire,
44:48where, as we see in this procession,
44:50you have the quote-unquote loyal Malays
44:53professing their loyalty to the empire,
44:55but you would also have the quote-unquote loyal Chinese,
44:58the so-called King George's Chinese,
45:01having processions very similar to this.
45:04So if you wanted to survive in a colony,
45:06you had to play by the rules of the coloniser.
45:09It looks almost like a kind of moving history lesson.
45:14You have different placards
45:16that are referencing different milestones
45:19in Singapore's history,
45:21and here you see the first one, I believe,
45:23which talks about the Temenggong,
45:25Temenggong Abdurrahman,
45:26who met with Raffles in 1819 on his arrival.
45:30I see this as the Malays
45:32really reminding the British
45:35of their presence in Singapore
45:36even before they came,
45:38even before Raffles arrived.
45:45Film is film.
45:47It's beautiful.
45:49And they show a past
45:50which is so far away from us
45:52in so many ways.
45:53It's part of a lost political
45:55and cultural world.
45:57Unlike any other period of human history,
46:03film catches these fragments of light
46:06and movement in real people's faces
46:08from, you know, 100 years ago.
46:11Now we can see what it was like
46:12to eat your lunch in the street
46:15in Singapore
46:16or to dive into the sea
46:18or pull a rickshaw
46:19and see people doing that,
46:20how they moved and how they lived.
46:22Those things can't be gainsaid.
46:24They're fragments of reality.
46:31When you look through archive footage,
46:34there is always that mixture of emotion
46:38that you go through.
46:39On the one hand,
46:40seeing something really quite authentic
46:43that you can only imagine through text.
46:46And yet at the same time,
46:48either looking back at it
46:50with some sentimentality
46:51because it's all disappeared
46:52or some sort of irony
46:55that all of that aspiration
46:58just drifted away
47:01and vanished
47:01with the mists of time.
47:05In the years that were to come,
47:08Singapore and its people
47:09were to face drastic change.
47:12The succeeding decades
47:13would be similarly captured
47:14and restored
47:15in Singapore on film.
47:21to get there
47:23in reference to была
47:27this latest film
47:27this film
47:29has forgotten
47:30where it was
47:30the Freeman
47:30patronized
47:35of the young people
47:35who hadorts
47:36because of
47:36death
47:37and her
47:38and she's
47:39deeply
47:41and
47:43began
47:43as
47:46a
47:46hhh
47:47Transcription by CastingWords
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