Tassilo Adam in the Dutch East Indies in the 1920s for 2020 World Day for Audiovisual Heritage

Gartenberg Media Enterprises presents a rare clip that Tassilo Adam filmed with the cooperation of the Royal authorities, who staged processions, and gatherings, and rituals for his camera. A number of these included representation of animals through dance. As the official ethnographer for the Dutch government of the East Indies, as well as a professional photographer, his moving image footage shows a considerably more sophisticated vision of the Dutch East Indies in the 1920s than other films of the period. Although transferred digitally, this material retains the lustrous sheen of the nitrate on which it was originally filmed.

In 2018, the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia acquired this collection of 31 reels of original nitrate from Gartenberg Media Enterprises. GME unearthed this collection in a storage warehouse, and then catalogued and researched the history and provenance of this rare footage. We then identified the NFSA as the long term archival repository for this unique and valuable moving image collection that represents the inflection point of Indigenous peoples with Colonial culture.

View post on The Coordinating Council of Audiovisual Archives Associations website.