ABSTRACT
This essay will examine how the image of children in Indonesian cinema embodies cross-cultural identity framed by dissonance ideas of Indonesia as a nation during colonialism. I employ the discourse of national cinema to explore how the idea of a nation in the cinema emerged while Indonesia, as a state, did not exist. National cinema has been transformed from a classical definition of the limited singular identity of a nation into a complex discourse within the nation. Furthermore, the nation in national cinema is not seen merely from the perspective of the banality of a national symbol, but as the discourse that appears in the cinema and within the nation. In this context, film can be placed as a historical site that reveals the dynamic discourse of the nation. Thus, since the first Indonesian cinema during colonialism has placed children in its main narrative, I argue that Indonesian film during colonialism utilises children’s images to develop a national consciousness to construct the identity of Indonesia within a colonial framework. From this perspective, children are constructed to convey the cross identity of the Dutch East Indies as the Dutch colony and Indonesia as an emerged-imagined nation. The image of children, thus, becomes a cultural agent that crosses the border of identity and culture within the change of Indonesia as a nation.
