World War II · Film · 1997
Paradise Road
Fleeing Singapore by ship, British, Australian and Dutch women are wrecked off Sumatra and interned for years in jungle camps, where they form a choir of voices imitating an orchestra.
Where it happened
Follow the story across 4 places.
Stop 1: Raffles Hotel, Singapore
A dance is broken up by bombs as Singapore falls, and the women and children are hurried onto a ship to escape.
Stop 2: Bangka Strait
Japanese planes bomb the ship, and three women swim for hours to reach the Sumatran shore.
Stop 3: Palembang internment camp, Sumatra
Key location
Starved and humiliated, the women defy a ban on gatherings by rehearsing a vocal orchestra that gives them back their spirit.
Stop 4: Belalau camp, southern Sumatra
Moved to a new camp for the last months of the war, the dwindling group sings one final time.
What really happened
On 12 February 1942, days before Singapore fell, the small ship Vyner Brooke left with nurses and civilians; Japanese aircraft sank it in the Bangka Strait two days later. Survivors reached Bangka Island, where Japanese soldiers shot 21 Australian nurses on Radji Beach; the rest spent the war in camps at Muntok, Palembang and finally Belalau in southern Sumatra, where many died of starvation and disease.
In the Palembang camp, missionary Margaret Dryburgh and Norah Chambers arranged orchestral music from memory for women's voices, and the 'vocal orchestra' first performed in December 1943. The film's characters are composites of real internees, and several events are compressed or invented.
Where to watch
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Full details
- Original title
- Paradise Road
- Directed by
- Bruce Beresford
- Countries
- Australia
- Languages
- English, Japanese, Dutch
- Released
- 1997
- Period
- –
- Theaters of war
- China & Southeast Asia
- Themes
- Prisoners of war
- True story
