The Dutch East-Indian home movie has added its own particular ‘stock scenes’ to the genre. They often begin in the home land, on the quay in Amsterdam, or Genoa or any other port where people stepped on the boat and said goodbye to their families. Ports of call – Port Said, Colombo – were often included in these images. Another quay scene, when leaving the colony again – on furlough or definitely – often completes these films.

Specific social conditions in the Dutch East-Indies, particularly in relatively small, isolated communities may have ‘stretched’ the genre even more. Nowhere does this become more clear than in the collection of home movies of the Sanders family. Mr. Sanders owned a goldmine near a small settlement in Sumatra. Friends, colleagues, dignitaries, or servants fulfilled the roles traditionally played by family and children in these records of domestic life. In these films the sphere of the private is more diffuse (Sanders even shot a home movie in someone else’s home!). Daily life consisted of work, visits, trips and official holidays. An interesting leitmotif in these films are the stairs in front of the Sanders residence, connecting the inside and the outside world, which appear to be so much closer to each other in these films.

Nico de Klerk