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.