The Komedi Bioscoop ─ Early Cinema in Colonial Indonesia

The Komedi Bioscoop traces the emergence of a local culture of movie-going in the Netherlands Indies (present-day Indonesia) from 1896 until 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 exhibitions 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.

Dafna Ruppin holds a PhD in Media and Performance Studies from Utrecht University, The Netherlands. Her research on the exhibition, consumption and production of early cinema in the Netherlands Indies forms part of the research project "The Nation and Its Other" funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).