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Showcase and Film Screening
What do a 1933 Pre-Code American movie and a 19th-century British zoological expedition vessel have in common?
The British navy vessel HMS Samarang played an important role in the formation of natural history collections in Singapore. From 1843 to 1846, the Samarang surveyed Singapore’s adjacent waters and recorded a number of species.
A century later, an American feature film would be produced in Singapore bearing the title Samarang. An action-packed jungle odyssey, the movie maintains familiar tropes of an orientalist oblivion brought upon the social and natural landscape of the tropical rainforests.
Both vessel and movie are packed with wild animals and jungle dweller humans who share comfortably an ecosystem. Through it all, one thing remains certain, their shared name, Samarang, has little to do with the actual port city in Central Java.
This showcase was accompanied by a film screening and discussion on SEMARANG - A Wild Nomenclature held on 26th May 2022
