What Did the Haji Jawa See in Mecca? A film from 1928 as Primary Source

Abstract

This article discusses Het Groote Mekka-Feest (The Great Mecca Festival), a non-fiction film produced by a Dutch-Indo filmmaker G.E.A. Krugers about Indonesian pilgrims making the hajj journey in 1928. In addressing this unique primary source, the article scrutinises how the film complements and corroborates accounts of the hajj from the early twentieth century and elaborates on how it provides the viewer with an experiential sense of travel as encountered by the pilgrims. Acknowledging the access of digital source material now offered by many archives, this rich visual document is both discussed within the existing literature, and set apart from it, in an attempt to exhume it from early non-fiction film archives of colonial Indonesia relegated to the slow lane of historical research.