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Historical black-and-white footage from the period 1914-1945, presents an image of the decline of the great colonial dominion, which was occupied by the Japanese.
In the VOC commemoration year 2002, the Amsterdam Filmmuseum screened for the first time a large number of films from its vast collection of Netherlands East Indies films. In addition, four new compilation films, including Tabee, were presented. Using historical black-and-white footage from the period 1914-1945, an image is presented of the decline of this great colonial dominion, which was occupied by the Japanese in 1942. The film starts with the life of the first-class passengers on board the steamer from Holland to Batavia. The new batch of white settlers dances and dines and plays games; coloured people only appear as servants. Passing through places like Algiers and Port Said, the journey leads to Sumatra and Java. Over there, the scenery and streets, but also modern attainments like the postal services and trains are shown. A voice-over explains the slowly disintegrating Dutch rule, but just as often the images are self-explanatory, accompanied by music taken from the Filmmuseum's own 78 record collection.

Credits

Producer
Set geluid
Production company
Eye Filmmuseum
Distributor NL
Filmmuseum Distributie

Title: Tabee
Year: 2002
Duration : 51 minutes
Category: Short Documentary
Edition: NFF 2003

NFF Archive

You are now in the NFF Archive. The archive contains contains information on film, TV and interactive productions that were screened at past festival editions. The NFF does not dispose of this material. For this, please contact the producer, distributor or broadcaster. Sometimes, older films can also be found at the Eye Film Museum or the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision.

Stills

Still