Bali, de morgen van de wereld

Bali, The Morning of the World revolves around the budding love between a young man and a young woman, which is ruffled when a rival presents himself. Due to jealousy and misunderstandings, the relationship makes a beeline for a dramatic conclusion. Film Museum director Rien Hagen turned this central idea into anything but a conventional film. He selected archive footage from the museum's Netherlands East Indies collection and combined it with feature film excerpts into a CinemaScope film in black-and-white, without spoken word, but with sound and music. With this unusual combination, Hagen wants to lay bare the entwinement of the trivial and the ceremonial on Bali. So, besides the fiction elements, the film contains documentary images of ceremonial dances with entranced children, rituals around a cremation, a shadow play with puppets and archive footage that underline the natural beauty of the island and its inhabitants.