Indonesia on Open Images
Sound and Vision has been preserving, digitalizing and opening up Dutch audiovisual heritage together with 5 other institutions since 2007 for the Images for the Future project. In 2010 the central theme for Images for the Future will be Indonesia. Therefore almost 50 items with this theme from the Polygoon collection have been added to Open Images.
Polygoon newsreels did several reports on the former Dutch East Indies and Indonesia over the years. In these reports the Dutch viewers got an impression of the day-to-day life in the Dutch East Indies, for example of the market in Batavia in 1946:
Besides the day-to-day life, Polygoon newsreels also captured the difficult road to independence. Reports were made on the politionele acties (police actions) as well as the diplomatic negotiations. One of these was the signing of the truce agreement on the American ship ‚Renville’ in 1948 (from 00:46):
In the Netherlands there was also interest in the rich Indonesian culture. In 1948 the youth of Zeeland, Brabant and Limburg could get acquainted with the Indonesian culture at a traveling exhibition, showing a.o. wayang puppets and the gamelan:
After the independence of Indonesia, reports about the life in Indonesia were still made. For example a report about the opening of a new research institute for tea and cinchona with development aid from the Netherlands and the World Bank in 1975. In this report are shown beautiful images (in color) of the tea and rice fields in West Java: