A Song of Ceylon, Sydney Film Festival #SydFilmFest Feminism & Film Sun 18 June 2017 @ 10.30am AGNSW http://bit.ly/SongOfCeylon_SFF Jayamanne, Laleen. (Director), Weary, Geoffrey (Film editor), Parr, Adrienne. (Producer), Finnane, Gabrielle. (Photographer), Australian Film Commission. Creative Development Branch – The narcissistic, masochistic, hysterical body in exquisite tableaux. A formally rigorous, visually lush study of gender and possession, referencing a classic British film. Australia | 1985 | 51 mins | In English and Sinhala with English subtitles.

“A formally rigorous, visually stunning study of colonialism, gender and the body. The title echoes the classic British documentary and evokes a country erased from the world map. The soundtrack enacts a Sri Lankan anthropological text observing a woman’s ritual exorcism. Visually, the film brings together theatrical conventions and recreations of classic film stills, presenting the body in striking tableaux. This remarkable film is a provocative treatise on hybridity, hysteria and performance.” WMM Women Make Movies

Film still: Juan Davila

Fim Poster: A Song of Ceylon

“The anthropological text is performed both like a musical score and a theatrical ritual….The film engages the viewer in the cinematic body as spectacle…”
Trinh T. Minh-ha

Interview with director Layleen Jayamanne in Senses of Cinema

Hysteria and the hybrid body in Laleen Jayamanne’s a song of Ceylon
Priyadarshini Vigneswaran, online: 18 May 2009

C. Berry, A. Nicholson & L. Jayamanne, The Filmmaker and the Prostitute: Dennis O’Rourke’s The Good Woman of Bangkok, Power Publications, Sydney, 1997

Barrett Hodsdon, Straight Roads And Crossed Line; The Quest For Film Culture In Australia, A Bernt Porridge Group Book: Western Australia, 2001C. Berry, A. Nicholson &

L. Jayamanne, The Filmmaker and the Prostitute: Dennis O’Rourke’s The Good Woman of Bangkok, Power Publications, Sydney, 1997

Barrett Hodsdon, Straight Roads And Crossed Line; The Quest For Film Culture In Australia, A Bernt Porridge Group Book: Western Australia, 2001