The Empire project

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Meet the Dutch-Indonesian Charles Bronson

Norman De Buck was born in Indonesia in the 1950’s. Even as a child, he was fascinated with cowboy and Indian lore. He came to Southern California via The Netherlands as a teenager, and settled in El Monte, a town rich in frontier history. He’s now living the dream in the San Gabriel Valley, where he makes a career for himself playing Mexicans in Hollywood westerns and commercials.

The hat is his own.

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Westward the course of Empire takes its way.

Empire is coming to America

And guess what? We won’t be making anything about the Henry Hudson-led VOC mission that brought New York City into existence. Instead, we’re headed to the West Coast to learn about Southern California’s twice-displaced “Indo” community.

In the 1940’s, 50’s, and even 60’s, some 300,000 people of mixed Dutch-Indonesian descent left behind the conflicts of their newly independent tropical homeland and relocated to The Netherlands. Not all of these new immigrants felt comfortable with the cold winds of Northern Europe, and so a small number immigrated to the States and settled in warm climates like Florida and California.

Despite encountering some early setbacks—including various straight up racist, quota-driven immigration policies—the US’s Indo population integrated and assimilated rather seamlessly into American culture. In the US, as in The Netherlands, they were considered to be a “model” immigrant population, with all of the baggage that that label implies.

For the new Empire story in California we’ll be investigating how multi-generational families in the Indo community resolve the friction between the congruent Dutch, Indonesian and American parts of their identity. With any luck, we may even meet the most American of Indos, Mr. Zack Morris himself, Mark-Paul Gosselaar (pictured above after a blond dye job).

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And so it begins…

And by “it,” we mean digital development on the online Empire adaptation.

We’re happy to announce that ace designer Clint Beharry and master developer Sam Bailey have jumped on the Empire crazy train. In the coming months, we’ll be working with Sam and Clint to come up with imaginative ways to transform the Empire video installations into interactive whatsits like this thing. Our shared goal is to bring the 3-dimensional work into the 2-D world of the web, and show you something you’ve never seen before. If it sounds like we’ve set the bar high for ourselves, that’s because we have.

More soon…

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EMPIRE & MÜÜRILEHT

This article by the independent Estonian culture publication MÜÜRILEHT starts with a review of IDFA and is then followed by an interview with the EMPIRE team. The translation goes something like this:

Q: How this kind of experimental multi-screen work has been received so far?

A: We started producing and exhibiting EMPIRE in 2010 and we’re now almost 3 years later, so the project has been very successful so far. Young people across the world are extremely receptive. They have grown up in globalized world, so they understand the subject matter intuitively. They also accept the multi-screen format easily. Older generations seem to gravitate mostly to the historical element of EMPIRE, which is great as well because EMPIRE uncovers ‘hidden’ histories and unknown subcultures.

Q: Why did you choose your way of storytelling and what has been your experience with the outcome?

A: We chose to structure EMPIRE as a series of video installations that are exhibited simultaneously in one room. We refer to it as an ‘exploded’ feature film: viewers wander from installation to installation, from story to story. As a viewer, you create your own narrative and come to your own conclusions about what it all means. We want viewers to pick up on the thematic threads that exist in several installations. Themes like the sense of dislocation that comes from having a mixed Asian/European or African/European background run through many of the pieces, and there are also strong threads about labor, power and the exploitation of natural resources—it’s not a coincidence that we have one story about gold mining in Suriname and another about granite quarrying in India. So there are a lot of recurring elements, but there are also situations that are unique to one country/piece, which contributes to this feeling that EMPIRE is more than the sum of its parts. A frayed history asks for a frayed way of telling the story.

Q: And more general to inspire and encourage (or the opposite) Estonian young people interested in film -what are the possible channels to market this kind of documentary?

A: The EMPIRE video installations themselves can travel physically via the regular channels. However, in order to show the full scope of the project: platforms for this kind of work are currently being invented. EMPIRE cross-references several disciplines: documentary film, video art, journalism, transmedia. There is no fixed model out there, so it’s really going to depend on technological inventions to get the work out there in its intended form. We’ve just been invited to participate in the POV Hackathon, so it’ll be interesting to see what comes out of that.

Q: Does the experimenting with the form so much actually makes sense?

A: Ha ha ha! What DOES make sense? We believe that this way of working and combining media is still in its infancy. People are trying to figure out how to communicate information, stories, visuals, data, etc, while using new technologies wisely. It’s exciting. We’re in a Wild West period, which is good, because our heroes have always been cowboys. And Indians.

Q: You worked in so many different cultural contexts, which all had something that connected them, but still totally different cultures. What was the most enlightening and most devastating experience of all these travels and series of mini-projects in each country?

A: Well, we worked in every country in the context of EMPIRE, so that already limits your scope. For the first four installations, we collaborated with local arts organizations in the countries that we visited. That way we could have a small safety net and meet incredible people. That was definitely one of the highlights. You can file witnessing the environmental destruction in the gold camps of Suriname under devastating.

 Q: How did you cope with adjusting with so many totally different cultures within relatively short period of time?

 A: We didn’t. You can’t. You just try to roll with it and focus on the work that you’re doing.

Q: What did you learn?

A: That the world is so incredibly small and the people in it are connected in more ways than they know. But you can find that out on Facebook as well.

(by Terje Toomistu, published in February 2013)

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Calling, Career and Commitment:

EMPIRE presentation at The New School

On Thursday March 14th we will be presenting EMPIRE at the inaugural event of the annual The New School/Eugene Lang College religious studies series “Calling, Career, and Commitment,” presented by Prof. Katherine Kurs.

This presentation will mark the first EMPIRE event in New York, so be sure not to miss it!

Address The New School: 66 West 12th Street, New York. The presentation is in ROOM 404. Please bring ID. 

From 6:45 PM until 8:30 PM (EST)

Open to the public and free of charge.

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Space Colonialism is a thing now

“By the end of my second term, we will have the first permanent base on the moon and it will be American.”

With these words, spoken on the campaign trail in 2012, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich pulled off a hat-trick of self-sabotage. The line is a model of rhetorical economy: rarely have hubris, ignorance and jingoism sat so comfortably together in a single sentence.

Gingrich’s ideas about space exploration are not only deluded, but are also outmoded. His words appeal to a conception of Manifest Destiny that is rooted in idealism rather than economics. Despite his hollow talk of the lucrative scientific discoveries and tourist revenue dangling above the stratosphere, Gingrich is clearly a man who wants to boldly go where no man has gone before just ‘cause. This sense of adventure may be laudable, but it is unrealistic. Now, as in the 17^th century, we expand into new frontiers in pursuit of resources, not knowledge.

Enter Deep Space Industries. In January of 2013, almost exactly one year after Gingrich’s comments, DSI declared that it would become the first deep space mining company. DSI will focus on mining asteroids, which are chalk full of minerals like platinum, gold and in-demand elements like Iridium and Palladium.

DSI’s underlying business model of finding scarce resources in inhospitable places isn’t particularly original, but it does bring the international scramble for resources to a whole new level. Throw a few interstellar rockets into the mix and China’s mineral-grabbing efforts in Africa and South America seem positively quaint. Admittedly, DSI’s efforts are still in their infancy, but the company already has its a strategy laid out. In its first years, DSI will focus on unmanned, robotic mining. Manned missions come later, presumably after the earth becomes so thoroughly depleted of resources that space miners become a viable economic option. When that happens, colonies are sure to follow. By the end of our lifetimes, we may even see Gingrich’s prophecy of a moon base come true. But we seriously doubt that it will be American.

Image by Brian Versteeg Studios from the DSI website.

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Film Comment’s review of the Empire project

“Hovering around 10 minutes apiece, the uninflected loops don’t need to press the points of the complex human narratives they unearth, each of which short-circuits one’s usual conceptions of a history long laid to rest.”

This quote and more in a beautiful review from Film Comment (Film Society Lincoln Center’s publication) about the Empire installation at IDFA. Read it in full here.

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REVENGE OF COLONIAL COCKTAILS (part 2)

Welcome to the second installment (of the second installment) of “Colonial Cocktails,” the interview series that combines hard drinking with hard truths.

On the last day of IDFA, we interviewed San Fu Maltha. San Fu was born in Rotterdam in 1958 to a Chinese-Indonesian mother and a Dutch father. He is currently one of the most powerful film producers in the Netherlands, and is the force behind such high-profile Dutch films as Blackbook and Suskind. We sat down with San Fu to discuss WWII-era Nazi sympathizers in the Netherlands, and ended up talking about immigration, Geert Wilders, and the Dutch-Indonesian experience.

Eline Jongsma: How do you like the cocktail?

San Fu Maltha: It’s a bit strong, but I’ll probably get used to it. Right now since I really haven’t had a decent lunch it’s pretty stiff. But it’s okay. There’s a taste in it that… I don’t know what it is. What is it? It’s spices or something.

Kel O’Neill: This cocktail is called the Banda Massacre and it was created to commemorate the massacre of 90% of the population of the Banda Islands by a combined force of Dutch and Japanese mercenaries. But you know, 400 years later, it’s just a cocktail.

SFM: That’s why it has to be stiff. It has to be a strong drink.

KO: We were speaking earlier about the NSB, and specifically about Indos [mixed-race Dutch-Indonesians] who were members of the NSB. Why do you think that the Nazi ideology appealed to some of them?

SFM: I’m not sure if it was completely the Nazi ideology that appealed to them. It was a combination. They felt, specifically at the beginning of the war, that their country was going into the wrong hands. The nationalist element of the NSB, I think was the strongest element. They wanted to be a strong nation again.

If you read this article about Wilders which was written, he comes from this kind of family that has all of these elements to it. Because they were thrown out of Indonesia, and they were feeling really bad about it. And so that’s why this nationalist element in them was very strong. It’s not particularly that they hated Jews. Most of them were mixed-race!

The funniest thing, if you look at Dutch Indonesians, is that even within that community, they don’t look at each other and try to find out what they have in common. They look at how they differ and how white they are. So the whiter they are, the more powerful they are. They try so hard to belong to this white society. It’s a really difficult thing.

EJ: I’m actually a member of that Wilders family.

SFM: You are?

EJ: I found out because of this [Empire] project we’re doing, because a cousin of my dad is a geneologist. And I was looking into the Jewish heritage in my Indonesian family, and I stumbled onto this website where he writes about Wilders and this genetic link. And I thought it was so perfect that I was related to Geert Wilders. When I told my father, he said “yeah, Wilders is from the intolerant branch.” And I’ll never know if my father was serious when he said that.

SFM: I’m not sure either. I do know that when people feel free to talk, then you see that a lot of that generation feels linked in with what he stands for.

I know, of course, a lot of older Dutch Indonesians. And Wilders appealed to them. They were thrown out of their own country. Some of them were almost killed. Some of their families were killed. And even though they were fleeing for their lives, they had to pay for their own tickets. And now they feel this resentment to the new immigrants. It’s of course also natural. I’m not saying it should be this way, but it’s almost natural. In fifty years the ones who will be against that time’s new immigrants are the ones who are today’s new immigrants. It’s a game that goes on and on and on.

I mean, you can’t deny that in Holland there are some young Moroccans who cause a lot of problems. You shouldn’t deny it, but realise that there are also many others that cause problems, and it doesn’t mean that the first Moroccan who comes in is bad because of that. And it’s not strange that if you’re only used to meeting white people that the first time you meet somebody who’s black that you’re maybe even scared. The problems come when it’s the third time or the fourth time, when you find out that this guy’s actually really nice and really decent but you are still scared.

KO: There are people who say that the era of Wilders is over, and that The Netherlands has much important things to worry about than the issues that arise from immigration. Do you think that’s true?

SFM: I hope it’s true, but I’m not sure. It depends on how long this crisis will last, and if it will last long enough for people to actually realize that Wilders has added to our economic crisis. If we believe in economic growth, then we need immigrants.

EJ: Do you think if all the immigrants in Holland—starting with the Indonesians or Indo’s, leading up to the Moroccans—do you think if all of these people came from Scandinavia we would be having this conversation?

SFM: I think so. I once tried to explain this to my son. We live in a very white environment. We are actually the foreigners, in the city where we live. One time he said “Oh, there are so many Moroccan people living here.” And I thought this can’t be true. Because there are only 300,000 and something Moroccans living in Holland. So the chances that they live in this very white city are slim.

So I said, listen, you have to see it like this: if you take a city of 40 or 50,000 people, and you take 1,000 people from one small village in Limburg, which is in the south of Holland, and you bring them over, then those people from Limburg will act even more Limburg than the people there. Because they want to keep up the tradition. They will cluster. They’ll go to the same bar. They’ll create their own identity. And everything will go well until some person from this community will get something that the people from the other community wants. Could be a woman, a job, anything. Then the problems will start.

Don’t forget that a couple of hundred years ago, when a lot of Dutch people immigrated to England, it was on the front of an English newspaper: “These awful Dutch, they take our jobs and they have bad culture and they don’t adapt.” They were talking about the Dutch then.

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REVENGE OF COLONIAL COCKTAILS (part 1)

Hey kids! Welcome to the latest installment of “Colonial Cocktails,” the interview series that combines hard drinking with hard truths about the legacy of European dominance.

Before we reveal this week’s guest, let’s find out what he’ll be drinking.

The cocktail

The Banda Massacre is a potent mix of Dutch liquor and Southeast Asian spices. We named the cocktail after a 17^th century atrocity carried out under the orders of Jan Pieterzoon Coen, a “Great Explorer” from the Golden Century of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). The details of the massacre are tough—in an attempt to gain a monopoly on the European-Asian spice trade, Coen and his force of Japanese and Dutch mercenaries brutally murdered of thousands of Bandanese islanders. Coen’s legacy remains controversial in the Netherlands today, and he is known colloquially as “The Butcher of Banda.”

The Banda Massacre

• 40 ml clove and black pepper infused Jonge Jenever
• 10 ml sweet vermouth
• 10 ml Orange Curaco or Grand Curaco (Grand Marnier)
• 2 dashes Angostura bitters

Preparing the Jenever

Two days to a week before making the cocktail, pour a small handful of cloves and a 5-10 black peppercorns into your bottle of Jenever. When the liquor turns a light brown, it’s ready to be mixed.

Making the drink

The Banda Massacre is essentially a martini with more spice and a hint of Orange Curacao (which, by the way, was a Dutch invention). So if you can make a martini, you can make one of these.

Pour all of the liquor into a cocktail shaker, along with as much ice as you can manage. Shake vigorously until the cocktail becomes cloudy.

Pour, drink and contemplate man’s inhumanity toward man.

Next up: hoisting a glass with San Fu Maltha, superproducer and Geert Wilders-hater.

"What is the broadest definition of film? Can we reflect that and help people embrace that?" →

We’d like to take a moment away from posting about Empire to share some words from Ted Hope, erstwhile indie superproducer and current Executive Director of the San Francisco Film Society. Hope’s recent keynote address at the International Film Festival Summit is inspiring stuff, and should be required reading for filmmakers who want to reach beyond the rote and attempt to create work for today’s audience. A brief excerpt:

Audiences, artists, art and technology evolve far faster than markets, business, or infrastructure. In this era of infinite reproduction, audiences crave authenticity and customization. When people don’t get what they want, they move on. Film attendance has been dropping in this country on a regular basis; box office is maintained by price increases. The behavior patterns of our youth influence all we do going forward. My 12-year-old son has said he doesn’t like movies, although he loves most that he’s ever seen. He doesn’t see cinema as speaking to him – and if that doesn’t change, the audience and community he is part of will be lost to us forever… We should not contain our audience by the structure we have, but instead build the structures that carry them further. 

Hope goes on to list 12 questions that film festival organizers should ask themselves when organizing their slate. Our favorite is #10:

10. What is the broadest definition of film? Can we reflect that and help people embrace that? Have we forgotten what show business is and neglected the spectacle and event in favor of the practical and executable?

Find the two parts of Hope’s speech here and here.

EMPIRE at IDFA

A lot of people who couldn’t make it to IDFA have been asking to see what our installation there looked like. So on the last day of the festival, after the doors to the venue were closed and the public had been sent home, we took these pictures. We think they give a nice impression of the feel of the work. 

Big thanks to Rogier, Marc, Veerle and Fleurie at De Brakke Grond for giving us such a beautiful platform for Empire—and thanks to Joost and everyone else at IDFA for an amazing festival.

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Grolsch Filmworks interview

“Ultimately, the Dutch will have to let go of the blackface, whether they like it or not.” 

In this interview by Grolsch Filmworks we talk Dutch Christmas traditions and much more.