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Introduction to MIAP

November 11, 2003

Orphans Assignment

Pamela Smith, Margaret Mello, Tanisha Jones, Huiming
Yu

Fox
Movietone Newsreel:

Javanese Dancers

Content description of Javanese Dancers footage:

Four dancers in semi-formal
dress face the camera in a horizontal formation.  Behind them sit
eight gamelan players, also in semi-formal attire.  The rebab player
begins with a stroke of his bow, followed by the percussion of metallophones,
drums and gongs.  After the first note of the rebab, the women
shift into a clockwise rotation, with one woman leading the other three. 
As they walk in a slow circle, their arms, elbows and wrists move in
a fluid motion with their palms upturned to the sky then flipping down
toward the ground; sometimes they hold their arms limply away from their
body as they walk.  The first woman sings intermittently and stays
ahead of the others, determining the speed and direction of their circular
formation.  As leader, we notice her arm movements are subtly more
dramatic as she shifts her weight from left foot to right foot. 
Sometimes she stops and puts out a foot for emphasis.  Their movements
are not synchronized at times it seems like the first woman determines
the consecutive movements of the others behind her.  Each woman
that follows the leading woman seems to have a slightly less dramatic
posture until the last dancer in line is almost imperceptibly gesturing. 
Expressionless, it is hard to know if the womens blank stares are a
result of their meditative, trance-like dance or they are just bored. 
Each take of the dancers and musicians abruptly starts and stops at
the command of someone off camera, and many times the performers pause
at attention and look in anticipation toward this voice.  A contextual
question in particular arises when viewing this footage.  Is this
authentic documentation of a village tradition or is this a performance
made for an overseas, tourist audience?

Javanese Dancers: Research on Production History

Researching information
on the production history of Javanese Dancers has presented a number of challenges. 
The key challenge has been that potential sources of information for
the Fox Movietone collection are licensed stock footage houses that
are solely commercial enterprises.  These facilities will not provide
researchers the opportunity to review their collections library, which
could have a wealth of relevant material.  Through extensive internet
searches and telephone inquiries we have yet to find any repositories
that have holdings relative to this piece.  However, there does
seem to be a prospect.  Per information provided by Dan Streible,
a voicemail message and e-mail was sent to Cooper Graham, Staff Researcher
at the Library of Congress.  Mr. Graham sent a reply e-mail on
Tuesday, November 4, 2003 stating that there is no catalog or finding
aid created for their Fox Movietone collection, but there are many file
cabinets in a warehouse that he is beginning to determine how to use. 
Mr. Graham has proposed that a trip to the Library of Congress be planned
where we will visit the warehouse and be shown how to review these paper
sources. He went on to say in his e-mail, Unfortunately, Fox News did
not copyright its news programs before 1932, so there are no copyright
descriptions to the finished newsreels in our general collections. 
But in the Fox collection, there are cameramans dope sheets, which
often have a lot of info on what was shot on any particular story. 
I have seen some from the file cabinets that seem to go back to the
1920s, so we will probably find something on your items of interest. 
There also seems to be description of the volume/issue on at least some
of the finished newsreels for the twenties in the files.  There
is also a card file on various subjects covered by the newsreels. 
Whether we have the finished stories we do not yet know, but your research
would be a big first step in finding out.

Mr. Grahams reply is extremely
encouraging.  These warehouse files will hopefully have pertinent
information on the production of this piece and other Fox Movietone
footage.  Coordinating a trip to visit Mr. Graham at the Library
of Congress is a priority.

Although the Library of
Congress Fox Movietone records may have conclusive proof to identify
the footage, research on Javanese Dancers is definitely a work in progress. 
It will require a substantial amount of time to locate additional sources
that will provide further links in identifying the piece.  Following
is a comprehensive list of research measures undertaken thus far:

Fox News, Inc. in New York has a Fox Movietone News department that
licenses Fox Movietone newsreels footage.  Peter Bregman is the
archivist and sole contact for this office.  Researchers are ineligible
to obtain information on the collection.


Contacted a researcher via telephone at the National Archives and
Records Administration (NARA) in College Park, MD and inquired as to
whether they had a finished newsreel entitled, Javanese Dancers in their collection.  A review of their
Fox Movietone Newsreel Index showed that they do not have this particular
Movietone piece in their collection.  An e-mail was also sent via
NARAs Inquire Form located on their website to obtain research information
and have yet to receive a reply.


In considering that the Javanese Dancers outtake is an international subject, we pursued
the idea that the piece may have been filmed by a subsidiary of Fox
Movietone News.  Discovered that on June 9, 1929 Fox Movietone
created a British component to their company entitled, British Movietone
News.  Although the original Fox Case Corporation Library Index
Card for Javanese
Dancers (from the University of South Carolinas catalog records)
lists January 29, 1929 in the date submitted field (which precedes
the date of the founding of British Movietone News), it is possible
that this could be a potential source.  British Movietone has a
website (http://www.movietone.com)
with a link to their collections database of licensed footage. 
Was unsuccessful in acquiring access to this database.  The British
Universities Film & Video Council (BUFVC) publishes an online database
entitled, British Universities Newsreel Database (BUND).  A search
on this database did not produce any materials connected to the piece. 
Additionally, learned that ABCNEWS VideoSource is the exclusive representative
for the 1929-1979 British Movietone Newsreel collection in North America. 
Was also denied access to the VideoSource online database.


Researched ScreenSound Australia/National Screen and Sound Archives
online National Collection of Screen and Sound database.  Although
they have some Fox Movietone newsreels in their collection, this research
produced no results.

Javanese Dancers: Social & Historical Context, 1920s 1930s Indonesia

Geography

Located in Southeast Asia between the Pacific and
Indian oceans, Indonesia is comprised of 13,667 islands, of which 6,000
are inhabited.  The archipelago covers both sides of the Equator,
stretching 1888km from North to South and 5,110km from East to West. 
The Indonesian capital of Jakarta (formerly the city of Batavia- where
this clip was supposedly shot) is located in the westernmost region
of the island of Java.

Demographics

A census conducted in 1930 recorded 61 million people
in Indonesia.  This was quite a large increase from the estimated
population of 35 million in 1900.  The estimate of Indonesian population
in 1800 was no more than 10 million people; a 1980 census recorded 147
million people.