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Joris Ivens and the Role of Film in the Indonesian Independence Movement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

Drew Cottle  and
Angela Keys
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From September 1945 to November 1946, the Singapore-based British Southeast Asia Command under Vice-Admiral (later Lord) Louis Mountbatten assumed responsibility for taking the Japanese surrender in Java. A similar role was assumed by the British in taking the Japanese surrender in southern Vietnam. Indonesian and Vietnamese nationalists viewed both events – correctly — as a cover for the return to power of, respectively, Dutch and French colonialists at a time when the British were vying to recover their own empire in Malaya, Singapore, India and elsewhere. On Java, nationalists around Sukarno and Mohammed Hatta, having sidelined the veteran revolutionary Tan Malaka, declared independence on 17 August 1945, ambiguously in the Jakarta house of a Japanese admiral. With demobilized former Japanese auxiliaries coalescing into a putative independence army, today's TNI, became a law unto themselves.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , January 2009 , e3
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This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2009

References

Notes

1. Over a four-year period, the shipping ban in Australian ports held up a total of 559 vessels, which included 36 Dutch merchant ships, passenger liners and troopships, two tankers and other oil industry craft, 450 landing barges, nine corvettes and seven submarine chasers. Three Royal Australian Navy vessels and two British troopships were also black-banned. Lord Louis Mountbatten, the Commander-in-Chief of British forces in the Far East, travelled to Sydney in January 1946 to persuade the Australian maritime unions to end their boycott on Dutch shipping. Mountbatten's efforts failed. See Rupert Lockwood, Black Armada (Sydney: Australasian Book Society, 1975), passim. The ultimate success of the selective on Dutch shipping depended upon the Chifley Labor government's refusal to intervene in the dispute. Australia was largely unaffected by the ban as there was virtually no trade between Australia and war-ruined Holland. Had the Federal government attempted to break the ban, Australia's maritime trade would have been threatened by industrial action. These questions are barely considered by most accounts of the boycott campaign. See W. J. Brown, The Communist Movement and Australia: An historical outline - 1890s to 1980s (Haymarket: Australian Labour Movement Publications, 1986), pp. 164-6; Ralph Gibson, The Fight Goes On: A picture of Australia and the world in two post-war decades (Maryborough: Red Rooster Press, 1987), pp. 65-7; and Margo Beasley, Wharfies: A History of the Waterside Workers' Federation of Australia (Rushcutter's Bay: Halstead Press in association with the Australian National Maritime Museum, 1996), pp. 127-30.

2. IVANS, Joris (IVENS), A6126/XMO, 18, 1945-1949, National Archives of Australia, Canberra.

3. Rosalind Delmar, Joris Ivens: 50 Years of Film Making (London: British Film Institute, 1979); Carlos Boker, Joris Ivens, Film-maker: Facing Reality (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1978).

4. See the magisterial study of Ivens' life and work by Hans Schoots, Living Dangerously: A Biography of Joris Ivens (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2000), pp. 179-93.

5. Schoots, pp. 188-92.

6. Copies of appointment as Film Commissioner, 1944, Item 143, 2.1.143, Joris Ivens Archives, European Foundation Joris Ivens Municipal Archives, Nijmegan, The Netherlands.

7. Schoots, p. 195. Schoots' conclusion that “Browderism” influenced Ivens remains speculation. Nevertheless, Browderism exercised a marked influence over American and Australian communism during the Pacific War and early post-war years. See Alastair Davidson, The Communist Party of Australia: A short history (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1969), pp. 157-9.

8. Malcolm Caldwell and Ernst Utrecht, Indonesia: An Alternative History (Chippendale, Sydney: Alternative Publishing Co-operative Ltd, 1979), pp. 61-8.

9. Caldwell and Utrecht, pp. 67-74; Anthony Reid, The Indonesian Revolution, 1945-1950 (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood, 1974), pp. 23-47.

10. Schoots, pp. 194-197.

11. Gerda Jensen-Hendriks, “Bersiap: Joris Ivens and the early Indonesian revolution”, European Foundation Joris Ivens newsmagazine, Issue 9, November 2003, p. 21.

12. Rupert Lockwood, “The Indonesian Exiles in Australia, 1942-1947”, Indonesia, 10 October 1970, p. 37.

13. Ibid, pp. 37-56.

14. Lockwood, Black Armada, passim.

15. Schoots, pp. 198-200.

16. Ibid, p. 198.

17. Ibid, pp. 197-8. Extensive security ‘information’ on Duncan and the Indonesian members of the Unit is found in “East Indies - Film, Indonesia Calling”, A1838, 401/3/9/1/4, National Archives of Australia, Canberra. See also Catherine Duncan's security file: Duncan, Catherine, A6126, 17, 1937-1949, National Archives of Australia, Canberra.

18. Schoots, p. 200.

19. Catherine Duncan, “In Relationship with Paul Strand and Joris Ivens; The legacy today”, European Foundation Joris Ivens newsmagazine, Issue 9, November 2003, p. 19.

20. Ibid.

21. Oral History Record No. 226112, Allison, Edmund, National Film and Sound Archive Office, Woolloomooloo; Schoots, p. 200.

22. Oral History Record No. 226112.

23. Ibid.

24. Ibid.

25. Lockwood, Black Armada, pp. 225-8.

26. Graham Cutts, “Indonesia Calling and Joris Ivens”, in Albert Moran and Tom O'Regan (Eds), An Australian Film Reader (Sydney: Currency Press, 1985), p. 354.

27. Cutts, “Indonesia Calling and Joris Ivens”, p. 356.

28. “East Indies - Film, Indonesia Calling”, A1838, 401/3/9/1/4, National Archives of Australia, Canberra; Cutts, p. 356.

29. Oral History Record No. 226112. See also Allison's security file: ALLISON, EDMUND CHARLES, B883, NX21097 (1939-1948), National Archives of Australia, Canberra. Encouraged by Ivens, Allison directed the film, Coaldust, for the New South Wales South Coast Miners' Federation in 1946. The mines on the South Coast had the worst record for miners with ‘dusted lungs’ of any region in Australia. Later he shot a film on May Day for the Sydney May Day Committee. It was followed by Words For Freedom made with Cecil Holmes. This film traced the history of the working-class press in Australia. See Bob Gowland's obituary to Eddie Allison in The Guardian, No. 1223, 13 April 2005.

30. Arthur Gar Lock Chang, interview with Drew Cottle, Haymarket, Sydney, 11 November 2003. Arthur Gar Lock Chang, a welfare officer of the Chinese Seamen's Union and a member of the Chinese Youth League, also helped striking Indonesian seamen find food and accommodation within Sydney's Chinese community.

31. Oral History Record No. 226112. Copies of resignation as Film Commissioner and related papers, 1946, Item 147, 2.1.147, Joris Ivens Archives, European Foundation Joris Ivens, Municipal Archives, Nijmegan, The Netherlands.

32. Cutts, pp. 358-9.

33. Schoots, pp. 200-1.

34. Ibid, p. 205.

35. Cutts, p. 351. See also the security file: “Netherlands: protest at film, ‘Indonesia Calling‘”, A1067, IC 16, 46/49/7 (1946), National Archives of Australia, Canberra. In answering questions about Indonesia Calling, the Prime Minister had to assure parliament that the Australian National Film Board (ANFB) had not been involved in the making of the film. A number of those who helped Ivens had joined the ANFB. Catherine Duncan was among them. It was suspected that a member of the ANFB was reporting to the security service on the political activities of other ANFB staff. See Albert Moran, Projecting Australia: Government Film since 1945 (Sydney: Currency Press, 1991), pp. 34-5.

36. Tribune, 13 August 1946, p. 3.

37. Ted Roach, interview with Drew Cottle, East Hills, New South Wales, 2 June 1989.

38. East Indies - Film Indonesia Calling, A1838, 401/3/9/1/4, National Archives of Australia, Canberra.

39. IVANS, Joris (IVENS) AG126, 18, National Archives of Australia, Canberra.

40. Cutts, p. 359