Scenes in Ceylon is one of a series of titles produced by Hepworth in Ceylon during 1909. Indeed less than two months after reviewing Scenes in Ceylon, Bioscope wrote of a new Hepworth title, Cingalese Village Life, which it described in strikingly similar terms. ‘Some quaint pictures among the natives in Ceylon’, it wrote, ‘showing the street market, Kandy, a fishing village, natives climbing cokernut [sic] palms and a native magician at his tricks’ (Bioscope, 1 April 1909, 27). Furthermore, a number of sequences described in contemporary reviews for Scenes in Ceylon – ‘a large native laundry’, ‘a moonlight trip on the river’, ‘the bazaar at Kandy and the famous temple of the Sacred Tooth’ – are not evident in this surviving copy (KW, 11 Feb 1909, 1085). It is quite possible therefore that this footage belongs to another Hepworth title from the same expedition (KW, 11 Feb 1909, 1085).

The pictures in Ceylon have been credited to James Scott-Brown, who also filmed in Egypt and British North Borneo for Hepworth during the year. In his autobiography, Cecil Hepworth recalls sending Scott-Brown to Egypt – from where he brought back the ‘tremendously popular Moonlight on the Nile’ – and to British North Borneo, where he was given ‘the strictest instructions to send every bit of film home just as soon as it was exposed’. Hepworth also recalls that ‘we introduced the staining of various scenes to enhance the effect’ on many of Scott-Brown’s films – ‘blue for night, red for firelight and so on’ (Hepworth, 1951, 68, 69, 79). Bioscope stated that this effect was used on Scenes in Ceylon, describing the film as a ‘good travel picture opening with a splendid cloud effect which would be better if it were not tinted red’ (Bioscope, 11 February 1909, 14). In its review of Cingalese Village Life, Moving Picture World commented more favourably that ‘many of the views are beautifully tinted’, while the surviving extracts from Cinghalese Dances (1910) at the BFI National Archive reveal a tinted film print (MPW, 12 June 1909, 809).

Scenes in Ceylon was listed for release in America through Empire Film Co. on 22 May 1909, followed a few weeks later by Cingalese Village Life. Scott-Brown’s footage seemingly played throughout the Empire. For example, a notice in a New Zealand newspaper in May 1909 stated that Cingalese Village Life would play at His Majesty’s Theatre, and three months later in August, a further notice explained that ‘travel scenes in Ceylon form another fine series’ at the theatre (Wellington Evening Post, 6 May 1909, 2, 21 August 1909, 3).