Produced by Eastman Teaching Films, Inc. of Rochester, NY in 1930, this silent educational film titled “The Dutch East Indies” was one of a series made for classroom use. It highlights rural and cosmopolitan life, industry, and handicraft in what is today the archipelagic nation of Indonesia. Property of the Board of Education of the City of New York, this particular Eastman Teaching film offers the viewer insight into life in Indonesia while it was still a Dutch colony – both in major cities like Java and within rural island communities. Through a compilation of rich black and white footage, the film also educates its audience on important handicrafts like silver work and batik printing as well as industry like bamboo, sugar cane, crude rubber, and rattan amongst others.

Opening credits (0:10). Title page (0:11). Camera pans jungle of wild palm trees and other wildlife (0:18). Globe – pointer highlights the Dutch East Indies, what is now Indonesia (0:26). Map highlights Sumatra, Borneo, Celebes (Sulawesi), and Java (0:40). Terrace rice fields (0:59). Town life in Java (1:05). Dutch and Indonesians walk along the port where Dutch ships are parked (1:10). Cable car approaches along a tree-lined street (1:21). Automobiles parked alongside horse-drawn carts at market (1:36). Scenes of crowded streets at the market and around Java reveal how densely populated the city is (1:48). Two men string together a necklace (2:37). Ox cart (2:50). Another street scene – a mix of vendors, pedestrians, and peddlers (2:57). Handicrafts (3:04). Metal workers pound their material with mallets – perhaps shaping silver (3:11). A young man engraves a piece of pottery or metal container (3:17). A woman measures the weight of jewelry (3:20). A young man paints detailing onto a tapestry (3:29). Street shows (3:54). Street performers performing what is perhaps Caci Dance (3:56). Musicians play instruments like the angklung and drums to accompany the dance (4:16). Performers pretend to be in battle while “riding” fake, decorative horses (4:39). Grass-topped huts and homes in a rural community (4:49). Women sit in an artisan workshop painting batik (5:04). Close-up of artisans applying wax to the cloth (5:16). Man dyes finished batik fabrics and leaves them to dry (5:32). A woman removes the wax casting from the dyed fabrics (5:42). Women working at a weaving loom (6:01). A large extended family sits on the floor of their home and drinks tea (6:19). Scene of rural life – boy walks with carrying pole on his shoulder (6:46). Agricultural workers wearing Asian conical hats tend to and harvest sugar cane fields (6:53-7:25). Ox carts filled with harvested sugar cane (7:28). Men and women work together to harvest cinchona bark (7:37). Two Dutch men oversee the work of the laborers (8:00). Women lay the cinchona bark out to dry it (8:10). Kapok pods are sorted and their fibers removed (8:18). Women fluff the kapok fibers (9:02). Bamboo industry: men walk through bamboo forest (9:12). Dutch businessman inspects a bamboo tree (9:21). Bamboo bridge (9:41). Sumatra (9:55). Boats, water-front shops along coast in Sumatra (10:12). Women sort beads and string together jewelry (10:27). Crude rubber production (10:38). Laborers flatten rubber by hand and hand-operated rubber roller machine (11:16). Borneo (11:48). Train moves along tracks amidst overgrown trees and plants (11:51). People in canoe ride-along river shaded by jungle (11:58). Scenes of native life in Borneo (12:09). Ceremonial folk dance performed by men (12:30). Young women walk with large containers on their backs for gathering goods (13:12). Scenes from Celebes: outdoor spice market (13:34). Young men unload burlap sacks from trading boats (13:55). Men weigh the sacks alongside a Dutch businessman (14:09). Bunches of rattan offloaded from boats (14:17).

Caci Dance is a traditional dance performed by two men fighting each other using a whip and a shield.

Batik is a technique of wax-resist dyeing applied to the whole cloth. This technique originated from the island of Java, Indonesia.

This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com