As Foreign Land Becomes Home Land：The Chinese Indonesian Culture and Artists that Break Through the Ethnic Barriers

Publisher：Tainan National University of the Arts Graduate Institute of Ethnomusicology
Producer: Tsai Tsung-te
Director(s): Tsai Tsung-te, Chen Chun-tien

As Foreign Land Becomes Home Land：
The Chinese Indonesian Culture and Artists that Break Through the Ethnic Barriers
    To the growing economics of the society, the role of those Chinese people who live in Indonesia is important and crucial from the view of the local scholars. “The Chinese people are the backbone as well as the soul of Indonesia’s business industry.” as the scholar of Indonesian studies, Raffles commented. However, the influence of the Chinese Indonesian on the country’s performance art is inevitably underestimated or left outshined by the spotlight on the business field. According to the words from the Indonesian ethnomusicologist Sumarsam: “On one hand, the art and literature of Java is passed down with the Chinese publishers. On the other and, the Chinese also do their best effort to support and save the traditional music and theatre arts.”
    This documentary film is not only going to show how the “Chinese Indonesians” devote themselves to the local cultural development, but also to see how they keep on with their own traditions of performance art in a foreign society. Focusing on the cultural identity through the media of performance art, this documentary expects to capture the progressive image of Indonesia through the experiences of the Chinese who have migrated and lived there since several centuries ago: it’s about the history, and it is about the present; it is their foreign land, and it is their home land.