6:46 mins., b&w (tinted?), silent with English inter titles
Production : Pathé Frères, production no. 4616
Source : CNC at the BnF
Background : the Murut are an ethnic group who live widely distributed across the northern part of the island of Borneo, mostly in the Malaysian state of Sabah in the extreme northwest, but also in neighbouring parts of the Malaysian state of Sarawak, in Brunei and the Indonesian province of North Kalimantan.
Traditionally, they lived in hilltop long houses, were slash and burn cultivators and practiced headhunting. They were renowned also for their body tattoos.
Although this appears in the Pathé Frères catalogue, given the remoteness of the region, rather than send their own operator, it is possible that they bought this film from the Charles Urban Trading Company which sent cinematographer Harold Lomas (c.1873-1926) there on three occasions: in 1903, 1904 and 1908. The fact that the intertitles are in English lends greater credence to this possibility.
Lomas’s expeditions were paid for by the British North Borneo Company, a trading company which administered the then-colony of North Borneo. In 1915, led by a charismatic figure claiming supernatural powers, the Murut attacked the offices of the company.
Content: The film itself is very simple. It is shot from a single static position, though with some variation between wide shots and close-ups. The inter titles are factual and explanatory, for example: “The Muruts live in tribes from fifty to sixty individuals dwelling together in the same hut”.
At first, the subjects pose, obviously ill at ease. A man makes a cigar from leaf. A family climbs into a long house. We see some jaw bones, said to be of animals (but given their history of headhunting, perhaps they are human?). A chief’s grave is shown from a distance. Then they show their weapons.
The film concludes with various dances (which are said to be “diverse and have a certain originality”), on a patch of grass beside a house, to the unheard sound of gongs. Men and women dance in a circle, a young girl plays on a flute with several heads, another girl does a sort of scissor dance between two bamboos operated by two other girls. A man dances alone with a long sword.
In the copy held by the CNC, the film ends in mid-dance, with no end credits, suggesting that originally it may have been longer. The subject matter of the last part of the film provides further evidence that this material may have been filmed by Lomas since the title of one of his films in the Urban catalogue is entitled, Head-Hunters of Borneo at their Peace and War Dances (1903).
Text: McKernan 2013: 51-52.