107A Song of Ceylon (1985)

Laleen Jayamanne (b. 1947)

DVD film (51 min)

Courtesy the artist and collection National Film and Sound Archive of Australia

First screened: Sydney Film Festival, Sydney, Australia, 1986

‘A Song of Ceylon’ borrows its title from the 1938 British documentary ‘The Song of Ceylon’ directed by Basil Wright (1907–1987). In stark contrast to Wright’s archetypal documentary, the narrative structure of ‘A Song of Ceylon’ is non-linear. The soundtrack of the film enacts the anthropological text, ‘A Psycho-Cultural Exegesis of a Case of Spirit Possession in Sri Lanka’ (1977) by the Sri Lankan anthropologist Gananath Obeyesekere. It is performed by four voices—the female voice of the possessed woman, Somawathi, the voice of the ‘priest’ who conducts the exorcism ritual, the voice of the storyteller and lastly the anthropological voice, authoritative and analytical in tone. In parallel with the sound narrative, the film moves through a set of film stills, including the artist Juan Davila (b. 1946) dressed up as Kim Novak, Hitchcock’s femme fatale in ‘Vertigo’ (1958). Interspersed within the film stills is footage of a faceless female figure, clad in a sari, who is dancing on a chair. As the film progresses, her dance becomes disquietly more aggressive, until the exorcism is completed and she faints. Jayamanne’s treatment of the female figure is intended as a counterpoint to the outmoded image of the hysterical female, as evidenced by the resistance that Somawathi shows against the ritual priest. The dancing figure in Jayamanne’s film dances on top of the chair in resistance to the imperative to take refuge underneath it. The film provides a cultural counter-narrative to the treatment of hysteria in western psychoanalysis, through its engagement with Feminist Film Theory and practice of the 1970s and ’80s. It also offers a consummately crafted and intricately layered study of the narrative impulse.

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