Amandari will host a viewing of heritage films of Bali in conjunction with the French Cinémathèque of Dance and the Swedish Dance Museum.  The films focus on the theme of dance, with rarely-seen screenings of Rolf de Maré, a Swede who compiled outstanding footage of dance from Indonesia in the 1930s.

Films will be screened in Kedewatan's village wantilan, or open-air meeting place, adjacent to Amandari.  Each evening's showcase will feature two films with an intermission in between.

The first film to be screened on July 1 is "Goona Goona," (also known as "The Kris"), from 1932, which runs 65 minutes.  It was directed by Armand Denis and Andre Roosevelt.

This film, when it was shown in New York in the 1930s, became a huge success and put Bali on the international map. The term "goona-goona" became the equivalent of "that old black magic" of the popular song title (by Frank Sinatra). Released in 1932, its American title was "Love Powder." Amidst reams of expedition footage, the producers endeavored to contrive a dramatic plotline involving the romance between a Balinese prince and a servant girl.  Our hero finally wins the heroine's love with the help of a magic potion concocted by the local witch doctor.

A parallel will be drawn between Bali and Harlem in the '30s. While the Bali film was sweeping New Yorkers away, the Nicholas Brothers, child dancers from Harlem, were the stars of the Cotton Club. Both Bali and Harlem nightclub life inspired the artist Miguel Covarrubias. This screening will be combined with a 45-minute montage of the Nicholas Brothers' most sublimely virtuoso moments.

On July 2, Amandari will screen a film of Rolf de Maré's 1938 expedition to Nias, Sulawesi, Sunda, Java and Bali preceded by a short montage of photographs of deMaré presented by Erik Naslund.  This runs 90 minutes.

The film will be shown in two parts with musical accompaniment by two or four musicians.  Sequences are silent and show dances from what was then the West Indies. The trip was "curated" by Claire Holt who delegated the choice of dancers in Bali to Walter Spies. This unique document seldom travels and will probably never be shown again in Indonesia for technical reasons; the films are now too fragile. The evening will be presented by Erik Naslund, director of the Dansmuseet of Stockholm, Sweden and author of a biography of Rolf de Maré.

Rolf de Maré (1888 – 1964) was a Swedish art collector and leader of the Ballets Suédois in Paris from 1920–1925. In 1933, Rolf de Maré founded "Les Archives Internationales de la Danse" (AID) in Paris – the world's first museum and research institute for dance. The Archive became a famous centre for studies in dance and visitors came from all over the world to see exhibitions or to study in its vast library. After the War, de Maré donated his collections from the Swedish Ballet in Paris and the fruits of his expedition of exploration to Indonesia in 1938 – the first to have been undertaken with the purpose of documenting dance – to Stockholm to form the Dance Museum, which he opened in 1953.

The final day of the programme sees the screening of "Island of Bali — La Isla de Bali," from 1930, which runs 60 minutes and was directed by Miguel Covarrubias. This screening will be preceded by a documentary on the life and works of Miguel Covarrubias, the Mexican caricaturist, author and painter. This film is an edited compilation of footage taken by his wife, Rose Covarrubias, in 1930 and 1937. It covers every aspect of Balinese life following the chapters of the famous book "Island of Bali" which was a best-seller in the United States before the War.

source: eglobaltravelnews