Cinema of Indonesia is film or that is produced domestically, in Indonesia. The Indonesian Film Agency or BPI defines Indonesian film as "movies that are made with Indonesian resources, and wholly or partly Intellectual Property is owned by Indonesian citizens or legal entities in Indonesia". It dates back to the early 1900s. Until the 1920s, most cinema in Indonesia was produced by foreign studios, mostly from Europe, and the United States, whose films would then be imported to the country. Most of these films were silent documentaries and feature films from France and the United States. Many documentaries about the nature and life of Indonesia were sponsored by the Dutch East Indies government and were usually made by the Dutch or at least Western European studios. The first domestically produced documentaries in Indonesia were produced in 1911. However, the first domestically produced film in the Dutch East Indies was in 1926: Loetoeng Kasaroeng, a silent film, which was an adaptation of the Sundanese legend of the same name. During 1926, there were two movie theatres, the Oriental and the Elita, in Bandung. The first movie theatre in Jakarta was the Alhamra Theatre, which opened in 1931.
Indonesia Calling is a 1946 Australian short documentary film directed by Joris Ivens and produced by the Waterside Workers' Federation. The film depicts post-World War II Sydney as trade union seamen and waterside workers refuse to service Dutch ships containing arms and ammunition destined for Indonesia to suppress the country's independence movement. Ivens filming of the events taking place gradually became a symbol even for those who had not seen the film and had a growing following in the Netherlands, long before the film had an audience.
Leonard Retel Helmrich is a Dutch cinematographer and film director. He was born the 16th of August 1959 in Tilburg, Netherlands and has lived in Amsterdam since 1982. He received highest honours for international documentaries at the Sundance Festival and was the first two-time International Documentary winner at the International Documentary Filmfestival Amsterdam (IDFA). On June 5, 2018 he was rewarded by the Dutch King Willem-Alexander with the title Knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion, a very high distinction.
Shape of the Moon is a Dutch/Indonesian documentary film from 2004 directed by Leonard Retel Helmrich. The documentary released on 24 November 2004 as opening film of IDFA.
Eye of the Day is a Dutch/Indonesian documentary from 2001 directed by Leonard Retel Helmrich. The documentary released on 1 March 2001.
Scarabeefilms B.V. is a Dutch corporation specialized in the production of creative documentaries, short films and feature films about all kind of arts, cultural and social subjects for the cinema and public broadcasting.
Hetty Naaijkens-Retel Helmrich raised in the Netherlands, is the director of Scarabeefilms (Netherlands). She has produced several award-winning documentaries.
The 64th Writers Guild of America Awards honored the best film, television, and videogame writers of 2011. Winners were announced on February 19, 2012.
Pareh, released internationally as Pareh, Song of the Rice, is a 1936 film from the Dutch East Indies. Directed by the Dutchmen Albert Balink and Mannus Franken, it featured an amateur native cast and starred Raden Mochtar and Soekarsih. The story follows the forbidden love between a fisherman and a farmer's daughter.
Albert Balink was a Dutch journalist and filmmaker who contributed to early Indonesian cinema. Born in the Netherlands, he began a career in film journalism in the Dutch East Indies. A self-taught filmmaker, in the mid-1930s, he released a documentary and two feature films, before immigrating to the United States and resuming his journalistic career.
Roekiah, often credited as Miss Roekiah, was an Indonesian kroncong singer and film actress. The daughter of two stage performers, she began her career at the age of seven; by 1932 she had become well known in Batavia, Dutch East Indies, as a singer and stage actress. Around this time she met Kartolo, whom she married in 1934. The two acted in the 1937 hit film Terang Boelan, in which Roekiah and Rd Mochtar played young lovers.
The Yogyakarta Documentary Film Festival, also known as FFD Yogyakarta, is the first documentary film festival in Southeast Asia, which invites audiences and visitors to learn about the documentary genre. FFD Yogyakarta has been held regularly every year, in the second week of December, since 2002, and organized by Forum Film Dokumenter . The festival includes a number of programs such as Competition, Screening, Partial, Education, and Discussion. In the competition program, FFD Yogyakarta competes in three categories, namely: Long Documentary, Short Documentary, and Student Documentary.
Encounters South African International Documentary Festival (Encounters) is the premier documentary festival in Africa and one of the oldest film festivals on the continent. It remains one of only a few on the continent that is solely dedicated to the genre. Since its inception, the festival has advanced the currency of documentaries in the country and region, supporting new productions and giving an African platform to international documentaries.
Djaoeh Dimata is a 1948 film from what is now Indonesia written and directed by Andjar Asmara for the South Pacific Film Corporation (SPFC). Starring Ratna Asmara and Ali Joego, it follows a woman who moves to Jakarta to find work after her husband is blinded in an accident. SPFC's first production, Djaoeh Dimata took two to three months to film and cost almost 130,000 gulden.
Superjews is a 2013 documentary film produced and directed by independent Israeli-Dutch filmmaker Nirit Peled.
Sepideh – Reaching for the Stars is a 2013 Persian-language Danish documentary film written and directed by Berit Madsen. The film premiered in-competition at the 2013 International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam on November 24, 2013.
Boris Gerrets (1948–2020) was a Dutch film director, film writer and editor based in Berlin, Germany. He was born into a Bulgarian-German family in Amsterdam and was raised in The Netherlands, Spain, Sierra Leone and Germany.
Oeke Hoogendijk is a documentary maker, best known for the documentary The New Rijksmuseum, which followed the renovation of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam over ten years.
Sumiyarsi Siwirini, whose name was sometimes spelled Sumiarsih, was an Indonesian doctor, writer, activist, and political prisoner. She was imprisoned in the Plantungan concentration camp by the Indonesian government during the 1970s, where she became well-known for running a medical clinic staffed by fellow prisoners; in the anticommunist propaganda of the Indonesian military she was portrayed as the "doctor of Lubang Buaya."
