National Film and Sound Archives
On the theme of Canberra and living here I enjoy viewing their films.
The images and sounds of film, television, radio and recording are a reflection of our creativity – a window onto our life and times, our dreams and stories, our place in the world. The National Film and Sound Archive is Australia’s audiovisual archive, collecting, preserving and sharing this rich heritage. On 1 July 2008, the NFSA became an independent statutory authority.
Have a look
Films on labour history. I saw this weekend at ARC John Huges film on Film Work the film unit of the Waterside Workers Federation. (The MUA film unit is alive again under the Your Rights at Work campaign and going today).
Then a first release in Canberra of his new film Indonesia Calling: Joris Ivens in Australia, the new Australian documentary film – and work of Australian film history. John Huges introduced this most interesting film.The film completes a trilogy (alongside Film Work (1981) and The Archive Project (2006)) in which Hughes takes an alternative look at the cinema culture. Documentary thinker, maker and historian John Hughes returns with his latest in a series of alternative Australian cinema histories. Following The Archive Project Hughes uses NFSA collection footage to examine the post-WW2 radical film culture of Sydney and the influence of globetrotting Dutch documentarian Joris Ivens. Brought to Australia to work for the Dutch East Indies government-in-exile, Ivens’ disaffection and radical filmmaking aesthetic led instead to the first classic of Australia’s independent cinema, and to our first cinema new wave that emerged in post-war Australia. The film Indonesia Calling is an important political statement of support for Indonesian independence against the Dutch colonialists. The use of ASIO spy information against the film-makings is fascinating as is the militant action of waterside workers and seamen to suppport Indonesian freedom fighters of that time. Look out for this new film.
I was very pleased to see a reference to the film “Indonesia Calling” as it brought back some very warm memories and highlights Australian working class history of which we can all be proud.
In my early working life, I was a teacher and spent 2 years working as an Australian volunteer teacher in Malaysia. During a school vacation in 1974, I went to Sumatra  to stay on Samosir Island which is on Lake Toba – a very beautiful place.
When I was in Medan, the major city on Sumatra, I had an encounter with an Indonesian man who told me about the history which is presented in the film “Indonesia Calling”.
Below is an excerpt from an article I wrote about this holiday, which is pertinent to the report that a sequel has been produced by John Hughes.
“Back in Medan, I was to have a chance encounter that would educate me about the common history of Australia and Indonesia.
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One day I was crossing a street and an elderly man stopped me and asked “Darimana, tuan (Where are you from, sir)”
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“Dari Australia”, I replied. With that, he grabbed my hand firmly and told me that Australia had helped Indonesia win its independence”.
There were tears in his eyes and he was obviously very moved to meet an Australian. I was moved by his very friendly manner, but
I did not have a clue what he was referring to until the next year when I was back in Adelaide and saw the film “Indonesia Calling” at
the former Trades Hall on South Tce.
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The film was actually made by a Dutch film maker who was on a contract with the Dutch government to make a propaganda film
about the heroic return of the the Dutch Army to re-occupy Indonesia after WW2. The Netherlands had about 170 ships and barges in
Australian ports to pick up soldiers, armaments, ammunition and supplies to crush the Indonesian independence movement.
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The film maker did not like what he was supposed to do and visited the Sydney HQ of the Waterside Workers Federation (WWF) and
offered to make a film for them. Australian unions put black bans on those Dutch ships (also known as the Black Armada) that lasted for a period of 4 years.
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 It is a very remarkable story of international solidarity. The unions befriended left wing Indonesian political prisoners who had been held
at Tanah Merah in West Papua from the early 1920s because, being inspired by the Russian Revolution, they staged an unsuccessful
uprising against the Dutch. They were brought to Australia by their Dutch captors as POWs, but as left wing Indonesians, they did not
support Japanese fascism and were supporting the Allies. Their comrades in Indonesia were partisans and they fought courageously
against Imperial Japan.
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These political prisoners formed very firm friendships with members of Australian unions
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I later discovered that members of the Australian armed forces who fought in the Indonesian islands often fought alongside the
Indonesian partisans. Progressive Australians often set up support committees to assist the Indonesians who were preparing their
people for independence from the Dutch as they fought the Japanese fascists.
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Graham Smith, a teacher who was at Unley High School when I was a student there, fought on Morotai, the major island of the
Moluccans (Maluku Province) and he gave me some more information about these cooperative ventures between the Australian
soldiers and the Indonesian partisans. And it was only today that I discovered from Leonie Ebert, Graham’s widow, that a book about
Graham written by Don Sutherland is soon to be printed. I know there is a chapter in the book about his adventures on Morotai, so
I await its publication with some excitement.
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Before he died, Graham told me that the film “Indonesia Calling” was taken to Indonesia and was seen by literally several hundred thousand Indonesians. I have often thought that the old man who stopped me in a street in Medan all those years ago and wonder
if he may have been one of those Indonesians who had seen the film. There was great friendship between the ordinary people of
Indonesia and Australia in those days, but sadly, that changed with the overthrow of Sukarno’s coalition government by by the
mass murdering Suharto. Many of the 3 million people he had butchered in 1965 were those who were involved in the anti fascist resistance
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(It is interesting to note that both Sukarno and Suharto fought for Imperial Japan during WW2 – not the Allies
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I just kick myself that I did not take the old man’s name and address”.
During my teaching career and involvement in development education (or general subversive studies as some would say!), I was able to screen this film on a number of occasions and it always received a positive response.
A very good book that gives background to Joris Iven’s film and the history of the Australia union movement’s solidarity with the Indonesian independence is “Black Armada” by the left wing Australian journalist and author.
Many may not be aware that Joris Ivens was a socialist who directed over 40 documentaries about important struggles
eg the Spanish Civil War, the struggle against Japanese fascism, the US War in Vietnam, developments in the USSR and the People’s Republic of China and many working class themes.
The Netherlands government considered him a traitor because of making “Indonesia Calling” and residing in Eastern Europe for a number of years. However, he was givan an award in 1989 shortly before he died.
He was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize in 1967.
PS The author of “Black Armada” was Rupert Lockwood.