Synopsis
"Mama, I miss you so much," begins a letter Alima writes to her mother. She is one of countless Indonesian women working as a "babu," or nanny, for a Dutch family in the former Dutch East Indies of the 1940s. The voice of a narrator speaking to her dead mother floats through this compelling and insightful piece of cinema, reminiscent of home movies and newsreels. In the days of colonial rule, it was common for Dutch families to make Super8 or 16mm films for friends and relatives to show them life in the colony: the children, the abundance of tropical fruits, the exotic idiosyncrasies. The maids usually played only a marginal role. From this perspective of rule and almost 500 picture sources, contrasted with the narration of many maids, Sandra Beerends compiles her teaching tale on topics such as self-determination, women's rights and oppression and exposes the one-sidedness of the writing of history, as it is still taught in many places today.Sandra Beerends from the Netherlands is a screenwriter, producer and director of feature films and documentaries. She works for the Dutch TV station NTR and runs her own film production company called "Beruang". Her work includes the co-production and script-editing of KAUWBOY (2012, by Boudewijn Koole), and she wrote the script of the short ARIGATO (2012, R: Anielle Webster). THEY CALL ME BABU is her debut as a director.
