Moulding the colonial imagination of Indonesians through documentary films - The case of Pramoedya Ananta Toer by Amgrim Ytterhus

Dutch colonialism in Indonesia lasted for three and a half centuries, from the 17th century until the mid-20th century. The documentary film Pramoedya Ananta Toer by Arngrim Ytterhus is a documentary film that focuses on this entire span of the Dutch colonial rule. Every visual aspect of this documentary was to symbolise subtly thegrandeur of Dutch colonialism despite the fact that Ananta Toer’s writings were about its negative impacts. Since a string of social, technological and external cultural influences has resulted in various imaginations of the Dutch episode among Indonesians Pramoedya Ananta Toer by Arngrim Ytterhus was to quietly inject the historiographyand the grandeur of the colonial Dutch in the eyes of Indonesians. The question is whether the message was able to reach the imagination of Indonesians such as students of higher learning. Interviews with Indonesian students studying in Malaysian universities were conducted to obtain their views on the visual elements shown by thedocumentary. Do they see them as reflecting the actual situations or simply just a symbolism of the colonial Dutch grandeur? Models of visual communication often suggest that the audience will be able to understand each visual element displayed as long as it is overlain by language that they can comprehend. These findings, however, reject such a view: the Indonesian students did not recognise the message of the Dutch colonial grandeur as the reality that existed (Halliday) as authentically experienced by Indonesians did not testify to it.