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Explore ethnicity, class and identity, and portrayals of colonial Singapore in Hollywood films. Newly-discovered home movies offer a rare, intimate glimpse of everyday life in a time of change.
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00:00These are the very first films ever made in and about Singapore.
00:12These scenes are just wonderful. I get goosebumps. Super 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, the intriguing, and the intimate.
00:46It's the imprint of light on celluloid, with moments in time captured forever, like ghosts. It's beautiful.
00:54These films allow us to time travel. It doesn't just give you history, it gives you the future.
01:02We bring this archive back to life, as the films are cleaned, digitized, and restored.
01:09Ready to be seen outside the vaults for the very first time.
01:13We also uncover remarkable home movie footage, documenting family history.
01:20This is beyond amazing.
01:23I'm so glad that these films have survived. It's very emotional.
01:28Together, these films capture in astonishing detail a vanished world.
01:35And shine a new light on how Singapore became what it is today.
01:42This is one of the earliest surviving films of Singapore, and it's in the collection of the British Pathé Company.
02:07We think it was filmed just after the end of the First World War, in 1918.
02:14What a sight to behold. Here's the governor of Singapore.
02:18A British person, obviously, with his pith helmet, with these gorgeous plumes on them.
02:25And it's just so very colonial, isn't it?
02:28I mean, it's a time war.
02:35We've got this one instance, you know, these few seconds of this great empire that was once the very greatest empire and the biggest empire in the world.
02:47But the bitter irony of all of this is that in the middle of the footage, you have the arrival of a Japanese naval officer.
02:58It's Admiral Yoshida.
03:01And during the First World War, Japan was in fact an ally of Britain.
03:06But of course, no one was to know then that during the Second World War so many years later, they would be the great enemy.
03:19In the background, we see the photographer trying to keep up with the action.
03:24He can't afford to miss a shot.
03:28The camera technology was not so advanced that you could easily take perfect shots.
03:36So we see him sort of struggling, fussing around and moving.
03:41And, you know, he looks anxious and he's very focused.
03:45It's a joy to see a photographer at work from that period.
03:49Love it.
03:50As the camera pans across the line of soldiers standing stiffly at attention, we see the familiar spire of St. Andrew's Cathedral, just as we would today.
04:09But in the next scene, the camera reveals a sight that has since vanished into history.
04:15The building behind you here is actually the Hotel de la Europe.
04:19And it was actually a fancy hotel that was patronized by a lot of the colonial visitors who came down to Singapore at that time.
04:25But in the 1930s, it ran into some financial difficulties and the land was actually bought over by the colonial government.
04:33And the colonial government tore it down and built the Supreme Court.
04:45But the Singapore Cricket Club has stood the test of time.
04:59For a long time, it was so exclusive that natives weren't allowed to go in at all.
05:05And there was a rumour that there was even a signboard in front of the Singapore Cricket Club that says,
05:09No Asians and dogs allowed.
05:17Contrary to what we see in this film, Singapore was, a hundred years ago, incredibly diverse.
05:28Just head to the harbour, where a Vice Admiral of the Royal Navy has arrived, as captured in this 1924 film from the Imperial War Museum archives.
05:37You have a line up here along the pier of all of these men, no to no women.
05:45And what's really fascinating about this particular shot that I like so much is the hats, this huge range of headwear.
05:55So you've got the boaters and the pith helmets, obviously being worn by the colonialists.
06:03So you've got Europeans.
06:05And then you've got these trilbies, which are probably being worn by the well-to-do Chinese merchants, businessmen.
06:13Those who don't have hats are obviously labourers.
06:16Here you've got quite a few Chinese without hats.
06:19And then you have the cloth draped over a couple of heads.
06:25And they're probably Hindus.
06:27And then you have the Muslim headwear.
06:29I think it's called the Songkok.
06:31So this whole array of hats, and that just tells you how very multicultural this particular society is, and of course this cluster of people.
06:40Very interesting.
06:41Very interesting.
06:42When we study identity now, we imagine people were very fixed about how they were and how they weren't.
06:51But you know, a lot of people weren't.
06:53You know, we're just free and easy.
06:55They might decide to be in a suit today and in a Chinese robe the next day, and you didn't suffer any issues.
07:03And the film really conveys that, you know, how people were just so mixed up culturally.
07:11You get a sense of this inventing and improvising of cultural identity through this fascinating film.
07:24It's a home movie, shot in the 1930s, of a Piranakan wedding.
07:29The Piranakans are descendants of mainly Chinese immigrants who had intermarried with native Malays many generations ago.
07:37The wedding is really fascinating for me at the moment because I'm beginning to see that as traditional as it might seem,
07:47it's really an invention of that period from the 20s and 30s when they got these lavish costumes.
07:53They were wearing the fashionable Chinese robes of that period, so nothing traditional.
07:59But again, all the jewellery would have been made with diamonds, which was not ever used in China.
08:06It would have been made by mostly Sri Lankan jewellers who knew how to set diamonds.
08:12And the symbols and motifs could have been European, could have been Chinese, could have been Indian and Malay all thrown in together.
08:18It's just such a wonderful hybrid.
08:21This home movie is a rare example of early amateur filmmaking in the imperial age and comes from the collection of the National Archives of Singapore.
08:34This is really interesting because one of the things I've never seen and which you don't find here at all is amateur film made by people who weren't British colonialists.
08:43It certainly does exist, but it doesn't exist in British collections and it's really fascinating to see these sorts of things.
08:50In some ways it's remarkable how similar it is to most of the British footage that I've seen.
08:54It shows exactly the same sort of scenes.
09:01Just who is filming is a mystery.
09:04And for decades the film reels lay forgotten in a cupboard.
09:08Until 2013 when its owner discovered them and had them digitally restored.
09:15I was there with a family member and friend.
09:18We were all practically screaming when we saw it.
09:22So thrilled.
09:24We guess she could have been one of the daughters of my great grandfather who was given such a grand wedding.
09:31There were lots of children dressed in white.
09:40I thought white was not the colour for wedding, you know, but apparently this is formal wear.
09:44It looks like a pair of pyjamas, but more formal than that.
09:50There was a jester, which was a very unusual sight.
09:55And obviously the children were very thrilled.
09:57Cherry Tan's great grandfather appears in the film, taking a leisurely tea amid the bustle of wedding preparations.
10:10Born in 1864 into a prominent family of traders, Wee Boon Teng flourished in the Dutch colony of Sumatra.
10:18In Singapore, his large family lived comfortably with a second home on the beach.
10:27To have a house by the sea was something all wealthy pranakans aspired to.
10:33A shop house in town, a country house in Bukit Timur, a seaside villa, yeah.
10:42So at least three residences, that was the ideal.
10:51The older ladies were sitting down in what the peranakan called makan angin, you know.
10:55They were just enjoying the breeze and feeling very relaxed.
10:59And the seafront is gone forever because it's been reclaimed in the 1970s.
11:04You'll never, never see the same thing again.
11:07I spotted my grand-aunt who used to look after me as a child until I was 12 years old.
11:20And such a precious thing, this matriak, who is her mother.
11:23And she didn't come across as someone, you know, the typical archetypal pranakan,
11:29great-grandmother who is very stern and strict, you know.
11:35But she was relaxed, you know.
11:37You could see her like putting her foot on the bench, you know.
11:42And she was very charming, she was like hoi even, you know.
11:45And somebody see, I think the photographer teased her or something.
11:48You know, she was shyly turning back.
11:53So, having seen people, especially my grand-aunt who looked after me,
12:06in that film was priceless.
12:09It was just priceless.
12:12It's such a Southeast Asian thing.
12:15You know, she's just sitting there, an old lady picking her toes by the beach.
12:24Well, I think footage from the 1930s, you know, home movies from the 1930s,
12:29super rare, wonderful.
12:33I'm particularly fascinated by the idea of how people live their lives,
12:39but in a kind of cultural sense.
12:42how people were, their identities were more fluid and more inconsistent in a way that was natural.
12:50I mean, it was sometimes, you know, contradictory, but aren't human beings that way?
12:56Imagine travelling back in time to Singapore in the early 20th century.
13:12This is what you'd see.
13:15Grand European buildings.
13:29Streets busy with rickshaws and horse-drawn carriages.
13:38And a thriving harbour.
13:40This was the Singapore that intrigued cinematographers working for the French Pathy Brothers Company in 1910.
13:47Two decades later, the Singapore that appears in this film, Britain's far eastern stronghold, feels a lot more settled into its wealth.
14:02The Singapore River looks a lot more crowded now, doesn't it?
14:08In 1936, you can hardly see the water.
14:12I guess, in a way, it's almost like a report card.
14:15For the British, this is how Singapore has progressed and how it's developed over the years.
14:22The 1936 film, made for British audiences, depicts a new role for Singapore in the imperial network.
14:31No longer just the Emporium of the East, it is now Fortress Singapore, a key asset in the defence of the British Empire.
14:39Yeah, I think, again, the intertitle of this particular clip is very telling, right, Britain's Far East stronghold.
14:48And that this was actually taken in 1936 says a lot for itself as well, because during that particular decade,
14:56the British were already building this naval base in Singapore when they first started to find out of Japan's territorial ambitions at that time.
15:04And Singapore, again, was being touted as this place, as this ideal place to build this world-class naval base, which they did.
15:16For many of Singapore's inhabitants, the first decades of the 20th century were a period of rapid modernisation.
15:22In 1906, electric street lamps were introduced to the town centre for the first time.
15:30And there they are, caught on film.
15:37In the 30s, electric trams also made possible a rapid expansion of the suburbs.
15:43The development followed transport.
15:48And 1910, how did you travel? You were on foot or you were in a gin rickshaw.
15:52And if you were lucky, maybe you had a horse-drawn vehicle.
15:55Most people would have travelled by foot.
15:57And this really constrained how the city could grow and expand.
16:01But then, you know, with the advent of automobiles and other motorised transport, the city could grow and develop.
16:07One of the reasons why you see this sort of shop-house architecture that Singapore is so famous for, these were the areas then that developed after people could live further from town and, say, commute in if that's where they were working.
16:21From bullet carts to electric trams, public transport changed dramatically over a few decades.
16:34The rickshaw remained a staple on Singapore's roads, though it did get an upgrade.
16:39By the 1930s, Singapore's rickshaw tends to become smaller.
16:46They became one-seater, more comfortable, more lavished, and also fitted with rubber tyre compared to the metal frame that we have in the 1910s.
16:56So they are, in a sense, more comfortable.
16:59And then things that we might note is that the passengers of rickshaw pullers are not limited to Europeans.
17:05So it is a relatively affordable means of transportation, so many Chinese do use rickshaws as well.
17:14Even school children take rickshaws to school.
17:16In 1937, Singapore opened its first passenger airport at Kalang.
17:31The colonial port was now proudly part of the modern age.
17:36Among the airport's first visitors was a British electrical engineer named Robert Waddle.
17:42For years, Waddle had been documenting his life in Singapore for family back in England.
17:51His wedding in 1931.
17:55The birth of his daughter, Jennifer, six years later.
17:59All of which he meticulously captured on film.
18:02And so, too, this newest and latest marvel.
18:10I love the first page of the newspaper.
18:13He's not doing this so much for himself, but you have a sense he's doing this to share it with people.
18:17You know, he doesn't have to write anything, but they'll have the latest news from Singapore.
18:21I think commercial aircraft sort of really took off in the 1920s and 30s when the technology had progressed quite a bit.
18:32That would have been a huge innovation.
18:35As huge as us imagining that we could fly to the moon today, I suspect.
18:40But what we're missing, of course, from this particular footage is the sound of the planes.
18:48But, you know, you can almost sort of just hear the flying and the drones of the aircraft just making that strong buzzing noise and flying over.
18:59And you notice that in this shot, we have no people reacting to it because the photographer is so keen on just focusing on these planes.
19:10He's just looking at that.
19:11It's obvious that we've got a great fan of airplanes full stop.
19:20The 30s was a time of growing wealth and new leisure opportunities, like cinema.
19:25The Hollywood movies of the time offered a glimpse of a Singapore not seen in the Imperial newsreels.
19:381932's Bring Em Back Alive was one of the early hits.
19:43The harbour was full of native boats and the air was full of native smells.
19:47That's where I had my appointment with Ollie, my old number one boy.
19:50He'd been my right-hand man on many previous trips to the Malay country.
19:55Good old Ollie. I was sure glad to see him.
20:00Bring Em Back Alive moves quickly from familiar scenes of the colonial town centre to the tropical jungles of Malaya.
20:09The Tinggi River, just as primitive as in the days of Adam and Eve.
20:15A perfect picture of anybody's idea of a real jungle.
20:19In reality, the filmmakers didn't venture far beyond Singapore.
20:24Private zoos and rural villages in the north and west of Singapore stood in for more exotic locales.
20:29And the audience was none the wiser.
20:41In the minds of western cinema goers, people in the Far East lived exotic lives.
20:47And dressed in exotic ways.
20:50Expectations that were played up in the 1933 silent film Shark Woman.
20:54I wish I was like back in time and be able to watch this film in the cinema back then.
21:00Like, was this film very controversial back then?
21:03Could anyone watch it? Can a kid just walk in the cinema and watch it?
21:06Shark Woman tells the story of a young man hoping to impress the daughter of the village chief.
21:12Along the way, he battles a killer octopus, man-eating sharks and hungry cannibals, to win his true love.
21:20It says the cannibals of Sakai Island were unwilling contributors to this saga.
21:31So the lead is played by this Caucasian man.
21:35And the female lead is played by this lady who was a former beauty pageant in Singapore.
21:41So the two leads don't look like they come from the village, but that's okay.
21:44So the film still works, it's still very entertaining.
21:46And some of the non-actors you can tell like, hey, okay, they're not really actors because they're looking a little strange on camera.
21:54These stories for me are interesting because they already come at a time where you have this enormous technological gap between Western Europe, North America and the rest of the world.
22:06So we're talking about, again, the height of imperial power, and somehow there was a need to accentuate this, to emphasize this enormous gap between the West and the rest.
22:18Perhaps we shouldn't read too much into what the filmmaker was trying to do because really it's just a presentation of what he saw and what they might have presented on film.
22:32So it really was just a way to make money, I mean, and it boiled down to that.
22:39Harmless fun at the time.
22:42But seen today, films like Shark Woman seem loaded with cliché and stereotypes.
22:47The question that needs to be asked is, you know, well, who's watching this?
22:54Because these films were not made for the people they depict.
22:59They are not made for Asians.
23:01Films on Africa were not made for Africans.
23:03Now, the reason why this is important is that, as we'll see later on, as empire weakens in the 20th century, there was a sense of shock.
23:12Like, you know, why is this happening, you know, why are they against us?
23:16Why are the natives angry?
23:17Well, the natives have been angry for 200 years.
23:21The problem is, you never actually listen to them.
23:25Films, for me, are interesting because they account for that imperial hubris.
23:32This deliberate blindness, this not wanting to address the reality of empire,
23:38they helped to explain why the end of empire was also such a rapid process,
23:45how it could all fall apart in a space of just two decades.
23:49In 1941, as it became clear that the Japanese would soon attack Britain's Far East territories,
24:16the British government released this newsreel on war preparations in Singapore.
24:27Wings of War is quite fascinating, actually, when you look at it.
24:29When you look at that arrival of troops, many of them being Australian troops, coming into Singapore.
24:34It really reinforced Singapore's position at the time, the way that it was seen as this impregnable fortress,
24:40and the way that forces of empire were being mobilised to protect it.
24:45I think there is a poignancy when you watch this now, particularly when you see the soldiers,
24:49many of whom were very young, smiling and laughing and waving at the cameras.
24:52And you realise that for many of these soldiers, they would either lose their lives
24:56or spend many years in concentration camps.
24:59Should events force active service upon them, the imperial defences in Malaya are well prepared and equipped to uphold British prestige.
25:14Footage like this would have been shown, firstly, back in England.
25:19And this is again to reassure the imperial audience back in England that their empire was still alive and well.
25:25It's ironic watching this because one can almost sense the desperation, the desire to somehow believe that this is true.
25:37These planes flying above in large numbers, you know, trying to offer some sense of, you know, comfort.
25:43While by the time this footage is taken, of course, Japan has already expanded into China.
25:48It's making its way towards Vietnam and very, very soon Singapore will come under attack.
25:55The Japanese invaded the Malayan Peninsula from the north on the 8th of December 1941.
26:04They swiftly made their way south.
26:07Two months later, Japanese soldiers crossed the one kilometre causeway separating Singapore from the mainland.
26:14As the Japanese advanced, so did their news cameras.
26:21They too understood the power of the moving image.
26:26Footage captured by the victors in February 1942 showed a bombed out Singapore.
26:33The fortress had collapsed.
26:43These are among the last pictures taken before the fall of Singapore.
26:46In news footage filmed by the retreating British, do we sense perhaps the shock of defeat?
26:52Footage that you see here, I mean, the scenes of destruction, of chaos, of, you know, the houses burning in fire.
27:04It's really kind of unimaginable, you know, just a few weeks before.
27:09I thought that the intertitle of this clip was particularly interesting.
27:13I mean, it's called Closing Chapters of Singapore and I think it's actually very ominous.
27:18I mean, it really marked the end of British rule to some extent in Singapore.
27:23But it also symbolised a start or an ominous start of a new chapter for Singapore
27:28because very shortly after that Singapore fell to the Japanese.
27:32And what followed was really a very difficult lie for the people in Singapore for more than three years.
27:52As soon as it had become clear that Singapore was going to fall,
27:56the British and Europeans began to evacuate women and children.
28:02These scenes were captured by Imperial news cameras, perhaps to reassure viewers back home.
28:09You do see from this footage, a lot of these families, they were gathered at the harbour in a somewhat orderly fashion.
28:17But actually this is in sharp contrast to what really happened in the final days before the fall
28:21because what happened then was really chaotic and desperate scenes.
28:26I think some of the scenes that you see here, they look like happy farewells.
28:32Yeah, you wouldn't guess that it was really dire times.
28:36Exactly. So again, maybe that might suggest that it's earlier.
28:40They are possibly leaving first but with quite an optimistic outlook towards the war.
28:45I mean, we're leaving the men behind to fight but, you know, this war is maybe a piece of cake and...
28:51And we'll be back.
28:52It'll be over soon. Yeah.
28:53Yeah.
28:59This was an increasingly dangerous time for amateur filmmaker Robert Waddle and his family.
29:04The idyllic life depicted in his home movies was soon to be shattered.
29:13As a municipal engineer, Robert could not leave so easily.
29:16Neither could his wife Kathleen, who was principal of a large girls' school.
29:21But surely their daughter Jennifer could and must evacuate.
29:27A decision was soon made to send Jenny to Australia.
29:30She was only five.
29:35My grandmother and I left together and I remember being allowed to take my teddy bear, which I still have, and two books.
29:48But my pillow got left behind and I was devastated because I couldn't live without my pillow.
29:56And my grandmother somehow managed to produce or make another one on board ship.
30:02So we were lucky to get through.
30:05When my mother tried to follow a fortnight later, her ship was sunk and she didn't survive.
30:10So, you know, we were quite lucky.
30:19The ship Kathleen Waddle had boarded was the SS Viner Brook.
30:24She was killed when the Japanese sunk the ship on the 14th of February, her wedding anniversary with Robert.
30:41Robert Waddle spent the three years of the Japanese occupation in internment camps.
30:47Remarkably, he continued making films.
30:52They actually set up a pretend film studio in the backyard.
30:59And they were obviously acting out, you know, what the Japs did.
31:08And another point, he actually went and filmed in the street, which was extremely dangerous because if he'd been caught, he would have been shot.
31:19These scenes in 1942 were the last thing Robert Waddle filmed during the occupation.
31:34At some point, he gathered all his camera equipment and went to St. Andrew's Cathedral, where he had been the organist before the war.
31:57There, inside the pipes of the church organ, Robert hid all his precious films.
32:08It's because of his quick thinking that his images survive today.
32:12The Union Jack flies once again at Singapore.
32:29September 1945, triumphant scenes are captured by British news cameras of Commonwealth troops returning to Singapore.
32:41The Japanese had finally surrendered to the Allied forces.
32:46In this clip, you would see all the locals cheering and celebrating that moment.
32:51But what people may not be able to see from this video is that there's a lot of things brewing underneath.
32:57You have to realise that one of the key points of the Japanese occupation is that it made the locals realise that the British were not able to protect them in times of trouble.
33:07And even worse, that there was such an Asian power that was more powerful than a European power.
33:12So that already ignited something in their hearts.
33:15Anyone in Singapore then, at the end of World War II, would surely have been aware of developments right next door in Indonesia.
33:28When the Indonesian War of Independence had just begun.
33:31You can see that, you know, apprehension in the faces of some of the people in the crowd.
33:38Like, you know, when will our day come, when will we be independent too?
33:47It's also clear from the film that in the minds of the locals, the victory did not belong to the British alone.
33:54Here, a boy waves a flag, not the Union Jack, but one belonging to the Kuomintang, who were in charge of Nationalist China.
34:03And here too, the Kuomintang flag hangs proudly from a shop house window.
34:10During the war, large numbers of Chinese in Singapore, backed by the Nationalists and the Communists in China, had participated in the anti-Japanese effort.
34:21In time to come, the Communists would demand a bigger role in post-war Malaya.
34:26But for now, on the surface at least, the British were back in charge.
34:35Welcome Lord Louis Mountbatten, a great concourse of people gathered outside the Municipal Building.
34:41On the 12th of September, 1945, the Japanese formally surrendered to the British.
34:48So this last scene is like the last grand hurrah, because it's not long after this that all these Imperial flags, the British, the Dutch, the French, the Spanish flags, will be lowered one by one across Asia and Africa.
35:05So there's something, I think, poignant about it.
35:10You know, it reminds me of the stories of the men in their tuxedos while the Titanic is sinking.
35:15One of the most revealing portrayals of post-war Singapore comes from a documentary commissioned by the British Overseas Airways Corporation.
35:39It is called Three Dawns to Sydney.
35:42Three Dawns to Sydney, 1948.
35:45Well, of course, that's because it took you three days and you were flying for three days and then you had to stop and spend the night somewhere and then get on the plane the next morning.
35:56I think the first thing that really struck me when I saw this clip was how bad the city looked.
36:02I mean, it looks really rundown and shabby.
36:04It's three years after the war and Singapore was very poor at this time.
36:08But nonetheless, you know, it had this sort of, I suppose, slightly glamorous ethnic quality that tourists and travelers who were on their way here and there could enjoy.
36:19And that's definitely what this documentary sort of exploits.
36:22Part documentary, part travelogue, Three Dawns to Sydney is a day in the life of Mary Lynn.
36:34I really liked watching this film because it's the first time that we actually have a woman character as the protagonist.
36:47But interestingly, it's a taxi dancer.
36:48But interestingly, it's a taxi dancer. At first I thought, what's a taxi dancer? And a taxi dancer is actually a professional dance partner. Now we have to be careful. They are by no means call girls. They are respectable professional dancers.
37:02And that's all they do. But she's come from a very modest family. You can see that from the kind of home that she's living in.
37:23And the story of the taxi dancer is really quite fascinating because taxi dancing, of course, started in Shanghai in the 20s and was very popular in the 30s.
37:36And I didn't realize that even in post-war Singapore, you still have this tradition carrying on. So, you know, the girls would be, you know, sitting in chairs or standing on the edge of the ballroom.
37:46And then, you know, the men would buy the tickets. And then when you danced with the girl, you would give her the ticket.
37:53And so then at the end of the night, how many tickets she had, she would receive her payment based on that.
37:58It's absolutely vibrating with this east-west mix. You know, it's almost echoed in the rhythm of the jazz musicians.
38:18We're really at the threshold of major cultural change.
38:27This was the world that Wally Ong knew very well.
38:33Well, Wally Ong came from a very interesting family.
38:36I think his father and uncle were very involved in the entertainment industry in Singapore.
38:42Dance halls and big fairgrounds with cabarets and he very much lived in this exciting world of entertainment.
38:57In the late 1940s, Wally was a young father of three boys with a little girl on the way.
39:04An avid photographer, he soon learned to use a cine camera with stunning results.
39:12In footage discovered for the first time, we see a Singapore in colour and the passion and optimism of a young man in post-war Singapore.
39:27I mean, you can tell that he has a certain aesthetic sense and a certain artistic flair that he represented through his films.
39:37You see the effects of Hollywood in Mr. Ong's home movies, which I find so charming. I mean, they're so charming and endearing and funny.
39:51Another thing I find interesting about Wally Ong and his way of filmmaking is that he used like this manual transition.
39:58So he has like a black card that goes over and then when he opens up, it's a different scene.
40:05There were other experiments with film. Stop motion photography seems to be a favourite.
40:10He also made mini-westerns, centred round his cowboy sons and the villain Desperado Cheng.
40:24There he is.
40:26The films are a revelation to Wally's granddaughter, Sharon.
40:29That man is A Ching. He's an employee of New World Cabaret.
40:36So he used to come into their movies and be an extra when they needed a baddie.
40:42This is beyond amazing.
40:45I'm so glad that these films have survived.
40:48I honestly thought that they were lost forever because I submitted the film reels to the National Archives.
40:55They said that everything was unsalvageable.
40:58And last year, my aunt passed me two very old Betamax tapes.
41:04I had no idea how to digitise Betamax tapes, so I just left it and I didn't do anything.
41:12Until now, I'm watching these videos and I can't believe they were so good.
41:23But this was an expensive hobby.
41:26Wally Ong would send his films to Australia to be developed and receive in turn a hefty bill.
41:33Wally may have been born into privilege, but in the 1950s, with young children to raise, money was tight.
41:42By the 60s, he had given up his passion.
41:54It's very emotional.
41:56It's going to be really difficult to tell you how I'm feeling right now.
42:00I'm really happy that my grandfather managed to express being young and having fun and enjoying your family in these movies.
42:12Life was not smooth for my grandparents during that decade.
42:16They both got jobs. They worked very hard for very little money.
42:22But somehow, they managed to give the children a very rich and interesting life.
42:29Sometimes when we think about the past, our memories seem very magical and very sweet.
42:35And part of us as adults doesn't dare believe that things really were as good as we remember them.
42:43But when I'm looking at this, I think that what my grandfather did is even more amazing than what I remember.
42:52So, we're looking here, 53 and 54.
43:0152 and 53.
43:03In London, James Vincent is discovering for the first time the extraordinary film legacy of his grandfather, Robert Waddle.
43:12I never met my grandfather. He died in 1969 and I was born a few years after that.
43:24We last saw British expat Robert Waddle during the Second World War, filming inside an internment camp.
43:33Robert remained in Singapore after the war.
43:36His films from that period document his second marriage and a new baby daughter, Sally.
43:45You can see that's mum with a, she's got this gappy tooth.
43:50It's amazing to see she has the same smile.
43:55You know, she had the same smile all her life and you can see it and she's got the gappy teeth.
44:00And it was just some of the mannerisms that you just think, wow.
44:06Mum always referred to the cine films and they ended up just being in the box in the loft.
44:12And as a child, there's something here which is amazing.
44:18Now, this was something which I saw years ago.
44:23And, you know, as a young boy, you just go, amazing.
44:28Look, and there we have one of the cameras he used.
44:32It was one of those things I didn't realise what it was as a child.
44:35And now it's all coming together, fitting together.
44:38But, yes, he would have been there filming using this one.
44:41This was a time of social and political change.
44:58In 1955, thousands voted for the first time in a general election.
45:03The beginnings of self-rule.
45:06As the politicians were sworn inside the legislative chamber,
45:11outside at Empress Place,
45:13a large crowd watched the arrival of the British governor, John Nicoll.
45:18It's a scene his predecessors in 1918 would recognise.
45:23The same pomp and ceremony.
45:26The same starched uniforms.
45:29And flamboyant hats.
45:31But Singapore, by now, was a changed place.
45:37And Robert Waddle's time in the Far East was nearly over.
45:41In 1958, after 30 years,
45:44the electrical engineer and amateur cameraman retired and went home to England.
45:50With the camera rolling right till the very end.
45:54Whether it's intimate home movies, or the very earliest surviving footage,
46:16it's remarkable what film can tell us about Singapore's past.
46:20I think there's something magical, really, about watching footage like this.
46:27That this actually happened 50 years ago, 100 years ago.
46:31And it almost transports you back in time and to that actual place.
46:35The images themselves are mesmerising because film is mesmerising.
46:43One has to read film in the same way that you read a novel.
46:48You know, a novel's not simply a novel.
46:50There are always layers and layers and layers of meaning.
46:52And I think this is important because we're constantly revisiting the past.
46:56To see all these familiar places, the port, the river, and the sort of teeming life.
47:03It's just incredible.
47:05This is Singapore. It's all people from different backgrounds all together.
47:09These films are important because we have people from outside the culture looking in
47:15and being fascinated by all the things that we do.
47:18It feels, I suppose, like I'm being transported to a particular point in history that gives me a sense of where I come from.
47:30It doesn't just give you history, it gives you the future.
47:35And I think that's the magic of film.
47:38Number this is just me, come and seeirm band...
47:39It doesn't just give you the future...
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