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).
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