Singapore Synopsis (1971)
Synopsis
This is a travelogue made by amateur filmmaker Alan Bresnahan during a trip to Singapore in 1971. It includes the city’s colonial architecture, prominent buildings and the Tiger Balm Gardens, as well as capturing some of the local ways of life.
Curator’s notes
Alan Bresnahan was an enthusiastic member of the Victorian Amateur Cine Society for over 60 years. He took up amateur filmmaking as a hobby in 1936 when he began using a colour 16mm camera to film the first of many travelogues. Of the near 60 travelogues Bresnahan produced, almost all are of Australian destinations. Singapore Synopsis is not his most engaging, but it is one of the few he made while on tours abroad in the 1970s.
Amateur filmmaking and packaged tourism are well aligned with the travelogue format. Singapore Synopsis employs a diary-like voice-over (a synopsis of Singapore as the title suggests) where Bresnahan narrates the film from the point of view of the tourist group he is travelling with. He employs an instrumental soundtrack (similar to the one he uses in Bali Hi, also made during this 1971 tour) underneath the voice-over. As a competent and creative amateur filmmaker, his shots are well chosen and framed. Bresnahan mixes architectural and colonial history with tourist attractions such as the Haw Par (or Tiger Balm) Gardens, a rubber plantation, and the Sultan of Johor’s palace and mosque.
Film historian Chris Long recorded an oral history interview with Bresnahan in 1998. It is preserved at the National Film and Sound Archive.
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