Featured Article Summary #243

George Edward Albert Krugers (1890–1964) was a filmmaker who worked in the Dutch East Indies, in what is now Indonesia, in the early 1900s. Born in Banda Neira, he moved to Java in the 1920s, lived in Surabaya, and later settled in Bandung, where he helped make the colony’s first feature film, Loetoeng Kasaroeng. He made his first film as a director in 1927 and then started the Krugers Film Company, which produced Het Groote Mekka-Feest in 1928—widely seen as the first documentary about the Hajj pilgrimage. In 1930, he began making sound films, including Karnadi Anemer Bangkong, which may have been the first domestic sound film, but it did not do well commercially. After that, he worked for Tan’s Film, although his time there was brief, and during the Great Depression he tried to find work in Hong Kong without success. He spent the rest of his life in the Netherlands, often struggling financially, and only Het Groote Mekka-Feest survives because his other films are lost. George Krugers was born in 1890 on Banda Neira in the Dutch East Indies and grew up in the island’s Christian community. He developed an early interest in technology and studied architecture while learning photography, film, and sound recording, then later worked as a water engineer in Surabaya before moving to Bandung around 1925. In Bandung, Krugers helped lead the Java Film laboratory and worked on the first Dutch colonial feature, Loetoeng Kasaroeng, as cameraman and lab technician. He later directed Eulis Atjih, which did well locally, and was praised by Dutch film pioneer Willy Mullens—an experience that helped push him to leave Java Film and start his own company in 1928. He completed the documentary Het Groote Mekka-Feest, which followed Hajj pilgrims, and after screening in the Indies it premiered in Leiden in 1928, attended by prominent Dutch society figures. In late 1929, US sound films introduced new technology to the Dutch East Indies, pushing George Krugers to create the 1930 comedy Karnadi Anemer Bangkong, which is often seen as the first locally made sound film in the Indies. It received poor technical reviews and became controversial, after which Krugers made further films, including the 1931 documentary Atma de Vischer, worked with Tan’s Film, and faced both business pressure and legal trouble over censorship edits. Economic hardship limited local film profits, and after leaving the Indies in 1935, Krugers struggled financially again in the Netherlands, later going bankrupt in 1945, before dying in The Hague in 1964. Most of George Krugers’s films are lost, because his family had to leave Hong Kong quickly and the materials he brought from the Indies were abandoned. Only Het Groote Mekka-Feest survived, saved by a copy he kept in Amsterdam, which was later donated to the EYE Film Institute in 1988; the rest of his family archive is held at Leiden University Library. Academic attention to Krugers has been limited, though interest grew after a 2015 screening of Het Groote Mekka-Feest at Leiden University, when it was recognized as the first film record of the Hajj.