Kultursinema #3: Capturing the Lights

Departing from the motive of trade, economy, technology, and culture, cinema was distributed by manufacturers of cinema technology. Economics became the foundation stone of the spread of this technology across the ocean to the other parts of the world to get to this country. In the mid 1920s, the cinema had been the technology completely marketed in this country. Not just a camera and a projector, but also the raw material film. The access to the ownership of the means of production then was encouraging the emergence of films made by local people of this country. One of them was Kwee Zwan Liang, a laboratory head at Djatti Piring sugar mills in a small village near Cirebon, West Java, who made a film since 1926. Kwee Zwan Liang made so many documentation films of many families, people, objects, and social events happened around him.

In the same period, some figures pioneering cinema entertainment business in Indonesia tried to understand this technology and started making their own films. At that time, most of people of this country, especially in the cities, had understood and enjoyed the cinema as a spectacle that give a pause of their lives escaping from their daily reality through a broadcasts fantasy and the stories produced from Hollywood, Europe, and the Republic of China. The pioneers of Indonesian cinema then offered different spectacles by screening the face of the players who were close to them, stories that had been previously identified by the viewer, or scenes which reflected their own daily life, such as gathering in a coffee shop, a fighting in the village, and etc. And with the provision of a potluck, with small capital and limited knowledge and equipment of cinema production, the directors of bumiputera try to formulate what the Indonesian cinema is. They were, like The Teng Chun and Tan Tjoei Hock, trying to use the technologies and knowledge taken from Western to make a film locally and put the audiences as their strategic position, especially the potential of the lower middle class audience. Both the director exploited the process of knowledge reciprocal transfer between filmmakers and the audience as the basis of artistic for their films.

The exhibition KULTURSINEMA #3: Capturing the Lights tries to look again at ninety years ago when native people braced themselves to create their own representation of reality; how these filmmakers tried to present different perspectives of daily life and suggest their own identity in all limitedness, from that of technological equipment and tools, cinematic knowledge, production capital, to that of human resources. This exhibition is held with the cooperation of the archival institute Sinematek Indonesia and EYE Film Institute, the Netherlands, and supported by the Dutch cultural center in Jakarta, Erasmus Huis.

KULTURSINEMA is a cinematic exhibition initiated by ARKIPEL – Jakarta International Documentary & Experimental Film Festival since 2004. This exhibition which in the first and second year was called Cinematic Civilization in Exhibition (Peradaban Sinema dalam Pameran) tries to explore possibilities of cinematic presentational forms by putting forward specific issues inspired from the cinematic petite histoire and culture in Indonesia, Asia, and the world at large. Each time this exhibition always tries to involve film archiving institutions whether in Indonesia, Asia, and elsewhere.

Films exhibited

Kwee Zwan Liang’s footages
1926-1937. Black & white. No sound.
Kwee Zwan Liang
Collection of EYE Film Institute Belanda

Tie Pat Kai Kawin (Siloeman Babi Perang Siloeman Monjet)
1935. 42 mins. Black & white.
The Teng Chun
Collection of Sinematek Indonesia

Gagak Item
1993. Film cut, original duration is unknown. Black & white.
Joshua Wong and Othniel Wong
Collection of Sinematek Indonesia

Matjan Berbisik
1940. 60 mins. Black & white.
Tan Tjoei Hock
Collection of Sinematek Indonesia

Roekihati
1940. Film cut, original duration is unknown. Black & white.
Joshua Wong and Othniel Wong
Collection of Sinematek Indonesia

Siti Akbari
1940. Film cut, original duration is unknown. Black & white.
Joshua Wong and Othniel Wong
Collection of Sinematek Indonesia

Tengkorak Hidoep
1941. 47 mins. Black & white.
Tan Tjoei Hock
Collection of Sinematek Indonesia

Srigala Item
1941. Film cut, original duration is unknown. Black & white.
Tan Tjoei Hock
Collection of Sinematek Indonesia

Koeda Sembrani
1942. Film cut, original duration is unknown. Black & white.
Joshua Wong and Othniel Wong
Collection of Sinematek Indonesia