One of a series of short films shot in 1912-1913 in the Dutch East Indies by J.C. Lamster that were commissioned by the Koloniaal Institute.
Despite the title, there are very few shots inside a village. The film begins with series of sequences by river (children playing, crossing a bridge, washing clothes, oxen, gathering water from mountain streams). There is then a shot of village headman meeting another local authority and going off together on horses, followed by a brief shot of feast of roast goat meat, a lemonade seller and children enjoying his wares.
Mostly shot as a series of static wide-angle shots, though in the roast goat feast, there are some cuts to wide GVs to close shot of man doing the cooking by an open fire.
The hornbill bird masked dancer (left) dances with a group of other Karo-Batak masked dancers – ‘Gundala-gundala & Ndikkar’ – L.P. de Bussy (1917)
3:22 mins., b&w, silent (Dutch intertitles)
Production: Koloniaal Institut, Amsterdam
Background – This film was shot by L.P. de Bussy who made a number of films about the Karo-Batak for the Dutch Koloniaal Institut. It is available on YouTube here, where it has been uploaded with a soundtrack of extra-diegetic music. Although it carries the EYE logo, this film does not feature in the listing of its Dutch East Indies films.
Content – ‘Gundala-gundala’ is a Karo Batak term for a particular form of masked dancing, while ‘ndikkar’ is an archaic term for a traditional form of martial art. The film consists of a series of distant shots of dance performances. These are largely static though there are also a few pans. Notwithstanding its technical limitations, the film provides a valuable record of some remarkable dances.
The first sequences consists of Batak women dancing in a village plaza with masked men standing in the background. This is followed by a particularly impressive dance of a man wearing an elaborate mask representing the hornbill. He twists and turns his head rapidly, obviously imitating the movements of the bird. Other masked dancers dance in support (see above).
The action then moves to a rural location to show a ‘war dance’ performed under a broad shade tree: presumably this is ndikkar. A series of shots shows two men, stripped to the waist, dancing in opposition to one another, gesturing extravagantly, while a third man, dressed differently, acts as some form of intermediary or third party.
The film then returns to the village for the final dance, which consists of two men, also dancing in opposition to one another, but this time the dancers are older, are fully dressed and are wielding swords.
The film ends with a shot of the Sultan of Serdan and his chief administrator who, it is revealed in an inter title, were also spectators of the village dances.
This profile is based on the entry in the EYE catalogue
Louis Philibert le Cosquino de Bussy, usually referred to simply as L.P. de Bussy, worked from 1905 until 1917 as a biologist at the Deli tobacco plantation in North Sumatra, eventually becoming the manager of the research station where he developed a number of pesticides.
In 1917, he was appointed to a senior position in the museum of the Koloniaal Instituut in Amsterdam and in February and March of that year, he shot three thousand meters of film in the Dutch East Indies, Sumatra, and Java.
In 1919, after the First World War, the films were shipped to the Netherlands, where they were first shown in 1920. A certain Mr. Giel, a freelance editor who had previously worked on the films that J.C. Lamster made for the Koloniaal Institut, was responsible for the editing and titles.
De Bussy also lectured as an adjunct professor at the Faculty of Indology at the University of Utrecht.
This film was not reviewed for The Silent Time Machine, but it has recently been restored by the CNC and would appear to be of ethnographic interest.
According to the CNC catalogue, the film consists of a series of views of large dragon-boat races on the Mekong river.
The catalogue does not specify a location but in À travers la Cochinchine et le Cambodge(1925), what is apparently the same event is shown taking place in Phnom Penh, capital of Cambodia.
This film purports to show a day-in-the-life of a rickshaw driver in Saigon in the mid-1920s. Travelling shots of the rickshaw driver pulling a European client, presumably taken from a car, are intercut with shots of him eating a bowl of soup at a roadside stall, buying a crushed ice drink in a shop, resting in his rickshaw in the shade of a wall, and interacting with the client. A bizarre close-up shows that he carries the coin paid for his fare in his ear.
An interesting sequence at the end of the film shows the first rickshaw driver handing over the rickshaw to a second young man. The latter then hands over a few coins, suggesting that he is renting the rickshaw from the first driver. After a shot of a group of women washing the rickshaw driver’s clothes, we see him apparently waking up next day, and the final shot is of him again pushing a European client.
In the version in the Gaumont-Pathé Archives, this film does not carry any titles, but it clearly comes from the same body of footage that was shot by Brut and Lejards for À travers la Cochinchine et le Cambodge, released in 1925. Not only are there a certain number of shots in common, but this film too has subtle cross-fades.
Also common to both is the sophistication of the film-language : the narrative keeps cutting back and forth from a shot of the driver pushing the rickshaw to him engaged in other activities, and these are clearly intended to be sequential events in the rickshaw driver’s day. However, this ‘day’ has clearly been constructed in the edit suite, not least because the client in the rickshaw is always the same European man.
Missie naar Flores : Pater Simon Buis SVD en zijn Flores-films, 1925-1934. In Bert Hogenkamp, ed., Stichting Film en Wetenschap, Audiovisueel Archief, Jaarboek 1996, pp. 7-31. Amsterdam : Stichting Nederlands Audiovisueel Archief.
Legong – Dance of the Virgins (1935) – dir. Henry de la Falaise
56 mins., colour, inter titles in English for dialogue, extra-diegetic music
Production : Bennett Pictures Corp. (the company of De la Falaise’s wife, the actress Constance Bennett)
Source : distributed in DVD by Milestone and Les Films du paradox. There are also many extracts, usually unacknowledged, on YouTube.
An ethnodrama set in Bali and built around a central story about the competition between the beautiful young ‘maid’ Poutou and her not-quite-so-beautiful half-sister, Saplak, for the love of Nyong, a handsome young man who has arrived from the north of the island.
After making her feelings known to Nyongo, albeit non-verbally, Poutou and her father await his marriage proposal. However, Nyong chances upon Saplak bathing in a pool, is entranced by her beauty and proposes to run away with her instead. Finding the loss of face unbearable, Poutou throws herself from a high bridge and the final part of the film follows her cremation.
The story itself is very lame, the characterisation shallow, the music often execrable and there is much that is simply too good to be true about the setting. However, the cast were all local Balinese, including the principal characters, and there are many exquisitely filmed sequences, shot in Technicolor, of everyday life in the market and in the streets, but also of the ceremonial events.
These include the same tjalonarang ceremony that is shown in Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson’s Trance and Dance in Bali, in which Rangda the Witch is pitted against Barong the Dragon. The location looks so similar that one wonders whether it might even be the same place, with some of the same participants.
The film culminates in two sequences that feature some remarkable dancing. The first is of the djanger, in which, apart from the female principal, all the participants are seated, while the second is of the legong, performed by the two principal female characters, Poutou and Saplak. The cremation sequence over the last five minutes, which is also spectacular, appears to have been for the most part a genuine event rather than one performed only for the film.
The film was shot in 1933 and released in 1935 in various different versions. In the US version, the close ups of naked breasted women were removed by the censor, while in the British version scenes with even the slightest suggestion of violence were cut. The Milestone/ Les Films du paradox DVD is based on a restored version of the film that reincorporates the parts cut by the censors.
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