This silent film from the 1930s provides an overview of Singapore. It was made during the British Colonial era as the card at the start of the film makes clear. The film starts with a panning shot of the city/state at :44. At 1:58 a title card explains that the British Far Eastern Fleet is based here. At 2:21 are shots of busy streets with rickshaws being pulled by coolies wearing large brimmed hats. At 3:00 a policeman wearing a head scarf waves traffic onward. At 4:48 a title card mentions that a Chinese Temple and a Hindu Mosque occupy the same street in this multi-ethnic city. At 6:10 the Singapore River is seen that runs parallel to Alexandra Road and feeds into the Marina Reservoir in the southern part of Singapore. Many sampans and barges are visible. At 9:10 an eye is shown painted on a Chinese boat. At 9:40 Connaught Road the finest drive in the city is shown. This is actually Connaught Drive — a one-way road linking Stamford Road to Fullerton Road on the northern side of the Singapore River within the Downtown Core in Singapore. On the left side of the road, it is Esplanade Park, and on the right is The Padang. At 10:12 the WWI memorial is shown, and at 10:37 Victoria Memorial Hall and the municipal building is shown as well as St. George’s Cathedral. At 11:22 the Governor’s Mansion is shown and at 11:52 the famed Raffles Hotel.
Singapore, officially the Republic of Singapore is an island city-state in Southeast Asia. It lies one degree (137 kilometres or 85 miles) north of the equator, at the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, with Indonesia’s Riau Islands to the south and Peninsular Malaysia to the north. Singapore’s territory consists of one main island along with 62 other islets. Since independence, extensive land reclamation has increased its total size by 23% (130 square kilometres or 50 square miles). The country is known for its transition from a developing to a developed one in a single generation under the leadership of its founder Lee Kuan Yew.
In 1819, Sir Stamford Raffles founded colonial Singapore as a trading post of the British East India Company. After the company’s collapse in 1858, the islands were ceded to the British Raj as a crown colony. During the Second World War, Singapore was occupied by Japan. It gained independence from the British Empire in 1963 by joining Malaysia along with other former British territories (Sabah and Sarawak), but separated two years later over ideological differences, becoming a sovereign nation in 1965. After early years of turbulence and despite lacking natural resources and a hinterland, the nation developed rapidly as an Asian Tiger economy, based on external trade and its workforce.
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This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com
