Polygoon newsreels were shown in Dutch theatres from the 1920’s onwards. Subjects of the daily life in the Netherlands supported with compelling visuals were central to its (nowadays) typical format. To keep the audience interested Polygoon had to renew itself throughout the years. The latest inventions on communication, technology and innovation served the newsreels well as interesting subjects. Further, attention was paid to the mass consumption of the Dutch people in the ‘age of automation’. Innovations and developments which offered new opportunities in solving problems concerning the increasing use of energy, often found their way to the Polygoon newsreels.
These new techniques and innovations were often announced with great optimism. Take for example the introduction of a new sort of an electricity factory, the atomic power station in Dodewaard, announced with quit some enthusiasm. As where nowadays nuclear energy generally appears in an unfavourable light, in a news item from 1966 no attention was paid to the possible dangers entailing nuclear energy. The emphasis lay on the new possibilities: the station would supply the people with all the conveniences they needed in a time of mass use of energy.
Not only new methods to meet the growing need for energy among the Dutch were searched for. The need for better communication techniques became relevant in an age of mass communication. More and more people found their way to Schiphol airport and air cargo traffic grew continually. These developments put much pressure on the air traffic controllers. With the introduction of the radar, the Dutch airspace could be mapped in great detail so that the air traffic controllers had a better overview of air traffic approaching and leaving the Dutch air space. A Polygoon newsreel from 1951 shows how an air traffic controller from Schiphol ‘talks an airplane down’ with the assistance of a at that time new radar technique.
Attention was also paid to remarkable ‘close to home’ innovations which would make life much easier. As early as in 1963 Polygoon made a news item on the precursor of the contemporary late-night shops: the automatic store in Boxtel.
The ever more industrializing Netherlands provided its inhabitants not only with more energy, but also with new consumer goods. Many of these products came onto the market thanks to new technological innovations. New techniques were often shown in the Polygoon newsreels, and in retrospect can now give an indication on how fast new technologies follow each other up. For example, in 1978 a precursor of the contemporary DVD, the videodisc, was shown in a Polygoon news item. As was often the case with Polygoon news items, this particular item had a highly educative character, but with a comic flavour. In the item is demonstrated how with videodisc equipment connected to a regular television, among other things, images can be winded back in slow motion. Thanks to this new technique the bottom of a model walking on the catwalk can be seen again in slow motion. Putting the news in this ‘visual’ way, Polygoon continually captured the attention of its viewers.
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:
The first selection of audiovisual material for Open Images is now completely available online! The 469 items that can now be found on Open Images are mostly from the Polygoon Dutch News collection and some from the RVD collection. The current selection is mainly centered around a number of themes, namely: the city, summer, nature, water, food, sports, education, religion and labour. The subjects of these items are very diverse, such as an item about a caravan that can also be used as a boat, but also a video about the Tour de France in the Netherlands or about the first residents of Almere city. The material is from the period 1919 until 1980 and ranges from black and white material with no sound to colourful images with the caracteristic voice-over by Philip Bloemendal.
To give an impression of what is now available, a small selection of the available content will be shown below. From the early years, when the material was still without sound, is for example this item about the floods in Ridderkerk and Barendrecht in 1928:
From the 1930’s onwards there were more and more items with sound. During the Second World War the Polygoon newsreels were primarily used as propaganda material for the Germans and the NSB. An example of this is a series from 1941 called ‘The Netherlands feeds itself’ which makes propaganda for the national socialistic idea that every country has to be able to provide their own food:
After the Second World War the newsreel is accompanied by the voice-over from Philip Bloemendal. His typical voice is inextricably linked to the Polygoon newsreels:
From the 1970’s onwards some newsreels are in colour. A fine example of this can be seen in the beautiful colours of the butterfly collection of amateur entomologist Hermans:
The selection described above is all the material we’ll be adding to Open Images in 2009. But from next month it will be possible for users to add material to Open Images themselves. This can be material that is based on material from Open Images, but also original work.
In the 2010 we will continue adding audiovisual material to Open Images. We will also actively collaborate with other collection keepers to expand and diversify the content on Open Images and make it even more interesting.
To be able to view the examples in this blog post we kindly recommend you to use Firefox 3.5.
This entry was posted by Evelien Wolda
on Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 at 1:09 pm and is filed under Content.
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