Celluloid Colony: Locating History and Ethnography in Early Dutch Colonial Films of Indonesia by Sandeep Ray (review)
- Celluloid Colony: Locating History and Ethnography in Early Dutch Colonial Films of Indonesia by Sandeep Ray
It is always rewarding when a book on a Southeast Asian topic offers material that can shake up established disciplines and knowledge. Sandeep Ray's book Celluloid Colony does just that: it offers a history of Dutch colonial non-fiction film that challenges fields such as documentary, colonial history, Indonesian history, all while offering new directions in the use of audio-visual material for the study of history and ethnography.
Until now, the Dutch colonial non-fiction film has rarely been discussed and Ray proposes that the Dutch non-fiction film is less shaped or influenced by propaganda and are 'rarely embellished or sensationalised' (p. 15) compared to the more prominent British colonial film which has been the subject of a number of studies. Ray's book challenges some of the accepted history of non-fiction film which has been dominated by figures like John Grierson and Robert J. Flaherty (Nanook of the North, 1922) and further opens up the space to use these Dutch films as ethnographic resources.
Ray's book follows a short but important period of Dutch colonial history in Indonesia from 1912 to 1930, covering the final decades of Dutch rule. It is a period that has come under renewed focus across a range of disciplines, including studies on urban modernity, Cars, Conduits, and Kampongs: The Modernization of the Indonesian City, 1920–1960 by Freek Colombijn and Joost Coté (2014) and on media such as Karen Strassler's book Refracted Visions: Popular Photography and National Modernity in Java (2010) and The Komedie Stamboel: Popular Theater in Colonial Indonesia, 1891–1903 by Matthew Isaac Cohen (2006). [End Page 123]
Divided into three substantial chapters, bookended by chapters on the significance of colonial documentary and their historical positioning, Ray discusses the Colonial Institute films as products of a newfound fascination to capture images of the colony, corporate films with a focus on plantations and their labour, and films made by missionaries in Eastern Indonesia. Ray provides detailed readings of the films in the context of their production, aided by other archival material including promotional flyers, correspondence, and newspapers. The overall argument is that the Dutch filmmakers were less encumbered by either the dictates of entertainment or the propaganda trends in other European countries and as a result their films reveal more ethnographic truth.
Ray's selected films reveal encounters between film and the colonial system, and bring to life behaviours, bodies, and rituals that hitherto may only be written about. Within the footage Ray observes child labour on tobacco plantations, the arrival of indentured labour in Deli (North Sumatra), and the Garebeg Mulud ceremony amongst others. These moving images represent a world lost to us now but in Ray's reading reveal new insights into the operations of the Dutch colonial system and the 'overlapping space' between the oppressor (Dutch) and the oppressed.
A reader might have expected more outrage at the colonial system since many of the filmmakers come across as innocents in the structures of colonialism, and this might not sit well with some. But it is to Ray's credit that the account of colonialism is a sober one that recognises the complexity of the colonial encounter and social organisation that it relied on. It is hard to feel outrage or anger at how the Dutch colonial enterprise is presented in these pages, though an understanding of colonialism's division of labour, exploitation, and civilising mission, does linger as an overall observation throughout the book. More might have been made of the ways in which documentary was being deployed for knowledge creation to further the colonial state, or the ways in which film was used to know and therefore govern the population.
Ray is also part of a generation of scholars taking advantage of the renewed attention placed on archives and the preservation of cinemas, especially in its digitisation which removes specialised projection needs, and makes the...
