They Call Me Baboo (2019)

Directed by: Sandra Beerends | 78 minutes | documentary

The Indian nanny and narrator in ‘They call me babu’ (2019) explains with some surprise what is meant by ‘baboe’. It is not an existing term in Bahasa. “It’s a word from the Belandas. Like they want to say two words at once. Miss ‘Ba’. And ‘boo’ from mother.” The babysitter, the babu, who has been hired to take care of little Jantje still has to get used to it. A designation that expresses the identity confusion of colonial rule; being addressed in your own language and yet not. It is one of the subtle ways in which filmmaker Sandra Beerends in ‘They call me babu’ fluently sketches a personal history about colonial rule, gender relations, political ambitions and war in ‘They call me babu’.

Alima, who flees her village to avoid a forced marriage, finds work in the city as a babu for a Dutch family. And although she loves to take care of Jantje, she has to get used to the western life that is dictated by the clock. The theme returns more often, Alima is used to getting up when the sun comes up, the Dutch when the alarm goes off. And the Japanese make it even crazier, under their occupation the day starts in the Dutch East Indies when the sun rises in Japan. When Alima travels with the family to the cold and dark Netherlands, she initially feels out of place, but to her surprise, she is addressed as “madam” in shops and she is suddenly entitled to days off. The relationship with the Belandas appears not to be written in stone.

‘They call me babu’ is a series of unique and at times wonderful archive images that bring the Dutch East Indies of the first half of the twentieth century to life. The images support the personal story of babu Alima. Sometimes the images closely match the narration and sometimes Beerends looks for a more poetic fusion of Alima’s melancholy voice and, for example, dreamy, snow-white images of workers in the kapok industry. Effortlessly we allow ourselves to be transported to another world for more than an hour and a quarter through this beautiful interplay.