VIDEOS: Vintage Southeast Asia in the British Pathe Archive · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

British Pathé, a media company which produced films from 1910 until 1970 in the United Kingdom, has uploaded more than 80,000 historic news clips to its YouTube channel. Its archives also included numerous films that featured countries in the Southeast Asian region. Many of these films are valuable resource that could teach us a lot about the region’s recent past and even the present. Below are some of the interesting videos we found in the British Pathé collection:
1. Invasion of Laos in 1953.
2. Manila retaken by Allied Forces in 1945. After the war, Manila was the second most devastated city in the world after Warsaw.
3. Water Festival in Burma (Myanmar) in 1946. It seems water splashing today was as rowdy and fun as before.
4. Indonesia's Independence Day celebration in 1945.
5. Bangkok street rally in 1940. Compared to some of the street demonstrations in the present, the rally in this video was peaceful and orderly.
6. A school in Hanoi, Vietnam in 1973. See the bomb shelters near the end of the video.
7. New Year in Vietnam in 1949
8. Cambodia in 1969.
9. Singapore election in the 1950s. After 1959, elections in Singapore have been dominated by only one party, the party founded by Lee Kuan Yew.
10. Manila flood in 1960. Flooding is still a major problem in Manila today.
11. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in the 1950s.