Film Archive

Land (Film Archive)

Re-Visions 2021
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Mother Dao, the Turtlelike
Vincent Monnikendam
“A kinematographic image of the Dutch-Indies 1912 – c.1933”, assembled from silent footage commissioned by the colonial rulers, learns to speak: in the stories of the colonized.
Media Name: 50969d83-f957-4e09-9d7b-6b4ce77eca55.jpg

Mother Dao, the Turtlelike

Moeder Dao, de schildpadgelijkende
Vincent Monnikendam
Re-Visions 2021
Documentary Film
Netherlands
1995
88 minutes
Dutch,
Indonesian
Subtitles: 
English

Vincent Monnikendam calls his archive film “a kinematographic image of the Dutch-Indies 1912 – c. 1933” in the subtitle, echoing the ponderous bureaucratic language of the Dutch authorities who at the time commissioned the footage he re-edited. He condensed some 280,000 metres of nitrate film, shot by professionals but left largely uncut, into a compilation about indigenous people and their immigrant rulers in the former colony. The originally silent footage begins to speak – not in an explanatory voiceover, but in the songs and stories of the colonized. The images are unchanged. But they have to be read in a new way.

Sylvia Görke

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Vincent Monnikendam
Script
Vincent Monnikendam
Cinematographer
Vincent Monnikendam, Hans van der Marck
Editor
Licky Zydower, Albert Markus
Producer
Rade Miličević
Score
Jan-Dries Groenendijk