Imagining “Indonesia”: Ethnic Chinese Film Producers in Pre-Independence Cinema

In his 2009 historical anthology of filmmaking in Java 1900-1950, prominent Indonesian film historian Misbach Yusa Biran writes that although production of locally made films began in 1926 and continued until 1949, these films were not based on national consciousness and therefore could not yet be called Indonesian films. He holds up Usmar Ismail’s Darah dan Doa (Blood and Prayers) (1950) as the first such film to reflect national consciousness and signal the genesis of Indonesian film history (2009:45).