The Komedi Bioscoop : The Emergence of Movie-going in Colonial Indonesia, 1896-1914

Abstract

This dissertation traces the emergence of a local culture of movie-going in the Netherlands Indies (present-day Indonesia) from 1896 until the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. It outlines the introduction of the new technology by independent touring exhibitors, the constitution of a market for moving picture shows, the embedding of moving picture exhibition within the local popular entertainment scene, and the Dutch colonial authorities’ efforts to control film consumption and distribution. Focusing on the cinema as a social institution, in which technology, race and colonialism converged, moving picture venues in the Indies – ranging from canvas or bamboo tents to cinema palaces of brick and stone – are perceived as liminal spaces in which daily interactions across boundaries could occur within colonial Indonesia’s multi-ethnic and increasingly polarized colonial society.

This dissertation makes an important contribution to recent developments in the study of the emergence of the new medium of film. Traditionally, the emphasis has often been on Europe and North America, and it was assumed that cinema arrived much later in other parts of the world, especially in former colonial territories. By shifting the focus from the study of film production to exhibition and consumption, this dissertation reveals that screenings in the Netherlands Indies took place much earlier than was hitherto known. In fact, already in October 1896 a French entrepreneur exhibited films in Batavia (Jakarta), thus ten months after the Lumière brothers had their first commercial debut in Paris, and the same exhibitor also made films in the Indies in early 1897. As this study shows, over the following decade, new technologies for projecting moving images, along with the latest films on offer, often arrived in far flung locations within just a matter of weeks from their first appearance on screens in the West. Such screenings were presented by exhibitors of various nationalities and ethnicities, and were similarly attended by spectators from all levels of colonial society.

The dissertation thus presents the first historical overview of the emergence of a movie-going culture in the Netherlands Indies, filling a gap in the writing of film history.