A Resource for the Study of Early Ethnographic Film
Probably less than one minute, b&w, silent
Production/ Source : Lumière, catalogue no. 1271
This is one of some 33 ‘views’ shot in French Indochina by the leading Lumière cameraman, Gabriel Veyre in the period April 1899 – March 1900. While many of these were of military parades, industrial processes or general street scenes, this is one of ten ‘views’ that cover more obviously ethnographic subjects. For further details, see the page dedicated to Gabriel Veyre here.
Balinese Character: A Photographic Analysis. New York: New York Academy of Sciences.
16:47, b&w, silent – Dutch intertitles
Source : EYE Dutch East Indies collection, viewable here
Extract from the EYE catalogue
“A reportage about the various crafts, customs, and the culture of the Karo-Batak, an ethnic group in Sumatra. The film concludes [last minute only] with Western gymnastics exercises being performed by indigenous schoolchildren”
This is a stub – to be developed
110 mins., b&w, silent – Dutch titles and intertitles.
Production : Soverdi
Source : EYE Dutch East Indies collection, viewable here
Ethnodrama, shot on island of Flores. On the film itself is dated to 1923, but this maybe the year on which the ‘true story’ on which this fiction is based took place. Year of production in EYE catalogue given as 1930
EYE catalogue entry :
“Christian mission propaganda film about a Christian girl’s arranged marriage to a Muslim .The parents of Christian girl Ria Rago have arranged for her to marry Dapo, a Muslim. She refuses and, after a beating, flees to the mission sisters who offer her a safe haven. Her father and his cronies aren’t long in finding her, however, and she is taken back into the kampong. After months of torture, Ria still won’t give in. She escapes again and manages to reach the mission post where she collapses. On the brink of death, she is administered the last rites. Ria’s father decides to call off the marriage and returns the dowry to Dapo. On her deathbed Rita forgives her parents.”
Text : Ray 2017
92 mins., b&w, sound
Production : Java Pacific Film
Source : EYE Dutch East Indies collection, but not currently viewable on-line
EYE catalogue entry:
” Film about the thwarted love between a village girl and a young fisherman. This Sundanese language film by Mannus Franken tells the story of an Indonesian Romeo and Juliet. Machmoed and Wagina love each other but village tradition forbids marriage between a villager and a fisherman. The theft of the village elder’s sacred dagger sets in motion a whole train of disastrous events. In the end the dagger is found and Machmoed and Wagina live happily ever after.
Pareh, een rijstlied van Java was made especially for the local Javanese population and was meant to encourage the Javanese to leave their island and move to the much more sparsely populated Sumatra. To make the message more convincing, local Javanese were hired to play the parts. Only the Wayang puppeteers and Gamelan players were professional artists. Franken’s film was commissioned by the Centrale Commissie voor Emigratie en Kolonisatie van Inheemschen (the central committee for emigration and colonisation of native peoples).
Mannus Franken (1899-1953) was one of the founding fathers of the Dutch Filmliga and director of the celebrated Amsterdam Liga theatre De Uitkijk. He is best known for his co-direction, with Joris Ivens, of both Rain/Regen (1929) and Breakers/ Branding (1929).”
See also information on line here
Stub – requires more work
7:39, b&w, silent – Dutch intertitles
Source : EYE Dutch East Indies collection, viewable here
Informational film. Year of production 1917.
EYE catalogue entry:
“Shots of various Karo-Batak crafts: cotton processing, weaving of reeds, rope making, working with iron, silver and gold, the manufacture of pottery, and the cutting and drying of tobacco. In staged settings, the people of Karo-Batak demonstrate their skills. The shots also give a picture of the environment, architecture, clothing, and jewellery of the Karo-Batak.”
This is a stub – requires work
8 mins., b&w, silent – Dutch intertitles
Source : EYE Dutch East Indies collection, viewable here
Background – This film was shot in 1917, released in 1920 and directed by L.P. de Bussy who made several films about the Karo-Batak for the Dutch Koloniaal Institut. In common with his other films, the cinematography consists primarily of a series of static wide shots and the occasional pan. However, the quality of the images is generally high and as such, the film offers a valuable record of Karo-Batak ritual procedures at that time.
Content – The film consists of two quite distinct parts. Only the first six minutes concern the Batak funeral; the remaining two minutes concern a series of dances and ceremonial activities aimed at the alleviation of drought.
The funeral section follows various different stages of the event: farewell dances by the relatives as the body is cremated on an open pyre, a ‘welcoming’ dance by the relatives (presumably for those who have come to attend the funeral), the transport of the bones remaining from the cremation in an elaborate funeral tower, perhaps ten metres high, across the countryside to the burial ground. Musket are fired en route. At the burial site, a cloth is laid out, presumably for the bones, though these are not shown being placed on the cloth. We only seem some mourners engaged in lamentations from behind.
After another shot showing a priestly figure engaged in an unexplained religious ritual of some kind (above), the funeral part of the film concludes with the manufacture of a fake corpse which is placed outside the village fence in order to fool malignant spirits.
The ceremonial activities to alleviate drought seem by contrast to be very light-hearted. They appear to be based on the principle of ‘sympathetic magic’ in that as well as a women’s rain dance in which the dancers appear to be dancing with bamboo water containers, they consist largely of dancing and mock fighting in the river (see above).
50 mins., b&w, silent
Production : Haghe Film for Ministry of the Colonies
Source : EYE Dutch East Indies collection, viewable here
EYE catalogue entry:
“A two-part film commissioned by the Ministry of Colonies about the production of local crafts in the Dutch East Indies, particularly in Yogyakarta.”
Stub – requires work
10:20, b&w, silent
Source : EYE Dutch East Indies collection, viewable here
Production : Kolonial Instituut
Informational film. Production year 1918. Censorship date 1929
EYE catalogue entry:
” Everyday scenes and ritual services in the village. Women doing housework: pounding flour, and carrying water. A Balinese district chief on the way to the Poera (Temple), and worship at home altars. The council of Kerta has a meeting, the chiefs and an inspector pronounce justice. Processing and writing on lontar leaves. Wood carvers.”
Stub – requires work
43:36 mins., b&w (tinted), silent (Dutch intertitles)
Production: Haghe-Films.
Source : EYE Dutch East Indies collection, viewable here
Background – By the time that he came to make this film, the film-maker Willy Mullens (1880-1952) was already well-established as a leading maker of industrial, corporate and advertising films in the Netherlands. He was also celebrated for his films about the monarchy, which established his reputation as a ‘film-maker for the fatherland’.
Haghe-Films was Mullens’ own production company, but for this film he received additional funding from the Ministry of the Colonies and the Ministry of Education.
In general, the quality of the cinematography is competent but often very stilted, much of it consisting of rather rocky pans across subjects who are clearly performing their everyday lives for the camera. The camera is mostly at a considerable distance from the subjects and there seems to have been very little rapport between them and the film-maker. Some subjects seem positively terrified, making one wonder whether they were being filmed under duress. Curiously, almost all the close-up images are of women.
The film is regularly punctuated with subtitles, which are set on backgrounds that alternate between a map of the Dutch East Indies, or drawings of elegant Javanese women dancers.
Further information about Mullens is available on the Eye website here.
Content – The village that is the subject of the film is not actually named, so one is presumably meant to consider it to be typical of Javanese villages generally at the time. The film is in two roughly equal parts. The first part mainly shows traditional subsistence practices, particularly the cultivation and processing of rice. However, there are also some more intimate scenes, e.g. of women chewing betel nut paste and of children buying iced drinks and sweets from itinerant vendors.
The second part focuses on the relationship of villagers with the Dutch colonial state, emphasising the general benefits of this relationship to local people (as one would expect, given the sponsors of the film).
It begins with the ‘Regent’ (one of the local nobility preserved by the Dutch in their East Indian colony) going on tour in his large motor car and arriving at the village. Here he holds a meeting with a group of headmen from around the local region, who arrive on horseback and are all dressed in some sort of simple uniform. They are very deferential to the Regent.
Fine Javanese cattle are displayed and the introduction of improved breeding methods is commented upon. There then follows a feast, with dancers wearing large horned masks, resembling cattle. They dance in a lively and apparently comical way supported by a gamelan orchestra. But, sadly, it is all filmed from a great distance.
This is then followed by a lengthy sequence about the election of a local headman, seemingly supervised by the Regent. Villagers are given a stick and encouraged to put it in one of series of tubes hidden behind a screen. The film emphasises that a real choice is available and that women, or at least widows, are also allowed to vote.
There are then sequences about the production of pottery for the local market, the distribution of money through a farmer’s credit bank, and also the activities of a large pawnshop, which apparently does a roaring trade. This seems to be understood by the film-maker as a positive matter, but to a neutral viewer it would appear to testify to the fact the villagers have become ensnared in a market economy and are now finding it difficult to make ends meet. Some people are pawning what appear to be family heirlooms.
You must be logged in to post a comment.