2014 Working Paper Series Volume 1 Between the Village and the City: Representing Colonial Indonesia in the Films of Saeroen Christopher A. Woodrich Editors: David Price and Frank Dhont Recommended Citation: Woodrich, Christopher A. "Between the Village and the City: Representing Colonial Indonesia in the Films of Saeroen." International Indonesia Forum, 2014 Working Paper Series 1 (2014). Between the Village and the City: Representing Colonial Indonesia in the Films of Saeroen Christopher Woodrich
[email protected] Abstract: Following the Great Depression, colonial Indonesia was in a flux. The economic shift from a rural agrarian to an urban manufacturing economic base led to increasingly rapid urbanization and the accompanying societal woes. This shift in societal make-up influenced various forms of popular culture, which writers and other creative professionals used to express their opinions – both positive and negative – of the cultural shift. The reporter turned screenwriter Saeroen, a keen social observer who wrote under the name Kampret and was several times arrested for his writings, was no exception. Attached to four film production houses in his four-year screenwriting career (1937–41), Saeroen’s oeuvre included some of the biggest commercial successes of the period and often involved migration from the villages to the cities. Though the majority of Saeroen’s films are now thought lost, enough evidence survives in the form of film reviews, novelizations, and promotional material for a textual analysis of his works and the views contained within. As will be shown, Saeroen’s works, including Terang Boelan, Sorga Ka Toedjoe, Asmara Moerni, and Ajah Berdosa, represent a testament to the experience of abandoning the villages and embracing the cities.