“Komedi within Komedi”: Moving Pictures and Intermedial Crossings in Turn-of-the-Century Colonial Indonesia

In the past thirty years studies of early cinema, mostly focusing on the history of film production and exhibition in the West, have been preoccupied with examining the emergence of moving images within their intermedial sphere. The case of moving picture exhibition and consumption in turn-of-the-ce...

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Main Author: Ruppin, Dafna
Format: text
Published: Archīum Ateneo 2024
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Online Access:https://archium.ateneo.edu/kk/vol1/iss27/8
https://archium.ateneo.edu/context/kk/article/2093/viewcontent/_5BKKv00n27_2016_5D_203.1_ForumKritika_Ruppin.pdf
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Institution: Ateneo De Manila University
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spelling ph-ateneo-arc.kk-20932024-12-19T06:00:03Z “Komedi within Komedi”: Moving Pictures and Intermedial Crossings in Turn-of-the-Century Colonial Indonesia Ruppin, Dafna In the past thirty years studies of early cinema, mostly focusing on the history of film production and exhibition in the West, have been preoccupied with examining the emergence of moving images within their intermedial sphere. The case of moving picture exhibition and consumption in turn-of-the-century colonial Indonesia, with its rich selection of itinerant indigenous and Western amusements on offer, thus presents an especially intriguing case. This article situates itself within this transnational stream of commercial entertainments, known in Malay by the generic term komedi. In the process, it examines stories adapted across different media and cultural contexts, which were consumed by local audiences of various ethnicities and social standing in colonial society, specifically highlighting the conditions that led to an exceptional 1906 local film production of the popular folklore story of Nyai Dasima. While no known footage from this production survives, this paper proposes an intermedial reconstruction by looking at surviving traces of the text in other turn-of-the-century media forms. By exploring the re-incarnations of Nyai Dasima, alongside other popular stories shared across media platforms in colonial Indonesia, the article fleshes out how early entrepreneurs of moving pictures were utilizing intermedial connections in order to embed the new medium within the local media landscape. Conversely, by drawing on contemporary newspaper reports in Dutch and Malay, this article aims to show that local spectators made sense of the new medium of moving pictures through negotiations with and in relation to established entertainment forms they were habituated in. 2024-12-19T06:03:27Z text application/pdf https://archium.ateneo.edu/kk/vol1/iss27/8 info:doi/10.13185/1656-152x.2093 https://archium.ateneo.edu/context/kk/article/2093/viewcontent/_5BKKv00n27_2016_5D_203.1_ForumKritika_Ruppin.pdf Kritika Kultura Archīum Ateneo colonial history early cinema Indonesia movie-going
institution Ateneo De Manila University
building Ateneo De Manila University Library
continent Asia
country Philippines
Philippines
content_provider Ateneo De Manila University Library
collection archium.Ateneo Institutional Repository
topic colonial history
early cinema
Indonesia
movie-going
spellingShingle colonial history
early cinema
Indonesia
movie-going
Ruppin, Dafna
“Komedi within Komedi”: Moving Pictures and Intermedial Crossings in Turn-of-the-Century Colonial Indonesia
description In the past thirty years studies of early cinema, mostly focusing on the history of film production and exhibition in the West, have been preoccupied with examining the emergence of moving images within their intermedial sphere. The case of moving picture exhibition and consumption in turn-of-the-century colonial Indonesia, with its rich selection of itinerant indigenous and Western amusements on offer, thus presents an especially intriguing case. This article situates itself within this transnational stream of commercial entertainments, known in Malay by the generic term komedi. In the process, it examines stories adapted across different media and cultural contexts, which were consumed by local audiences of various ethnicities and social standing in colonial society, specifically highlighting the conditions that led to an exceptional 1906 local film production of the popular folklore story of Nyai Dasima. While no known footage from this production survives, this paper proposes an intermedial reconstruction by looking at surviving traces of the text in other turn-of-the-century media forms. By exploring the re-incarnations of Nyai Dasima, alongside other popular stories shared across media platforms in colonial Indonesia, the article fleshes out how early entrepreneurs of moving pictures were utilizing intermedial connections in order to embed the new medium within the local media landscape. Conversely, by drawing on contemporary newspaper reports in Dutch and Malay, this article aims to show that local spectators made sense of the new medium of moving pictures through negotiations with and in relation to established entertainment forms they were habituated in.
format text
author Ruppin, Dafna
author_facet Ruppin, Dafna
author_sort Ruppin, Dafna
title “Komedi within Komedi”: Moving Pictures and Intermedial Crossings in Turn-of-the-Century Colonial Indonesia
title_short “Komedi within Komedi”: Moving Pictures and Intermedial Crossings in Turn-of-the-Century Colonial Indonesia
title_full “Komedi within Komedi”: Moving Pictures and Intermedial Crossings in Turn-of-the-Century Colonial Indonesia
title_fullStr “Komedi within Komedi”: Moving Pictures and Intermedial Crossings in Turn-of-the-Century Colonial Indonesia
title_full_unstemmed “Komedi within Komedi”: Moving Pictures and Intermedial Crossings in Turn-of-the-Century Colonial Indonesia
title_sort “komedi within komedi”: moving pictures and intermedial crossings in turn-of-the-century colonial indonesia
publisher Archīum Ateneo
publishDate 2024
url https://archium.ateneo.edu/kk/vol1/iss27/8
https://archium.ateneo.edu/context/kk/article/2093/viewcontent/_5BKKv00n27_2016_5D_203.1_ForumKritika_Ruppin.pdf
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