Max Havelaar

Max Havelaar is a 1976 Dutch drama film directed by Fons Rademakers, based on the 1860 novel Max Havelaar by Multatuli. It was the country's submission for Best Foreign Language Film at the 49th Academy Awards, but was not accepted as a nominee. Plot By the 1860, lived a small boy from a farmer's family in Parang Koedjang, Lebak Regency in the Dutch East Indies (present day Indonesia) named Säidjah. He plays with his kerbau (farming buffalo) in sawah when his father and elder brother is farming with a small group of farmers. Suddenly, a Javan tiger attacks his kerbau, yet his kerbau can survive even kills that Javan tiger]]. The farmers names his kerbau as "Pantang" (Malay word for "tough"). Not long after that, the group of the Demang (chief district) of Parang Koedjang, Raden Wira Koesoema, comes to them by horses. He warns them to pay tribute to the Regent (Boepati) because the Regent feels displeased. Yet the farmers do not have money to be collected as tribute. Then Demang plunders "Pantang" from them. Säidjah's elder brother tries to fight against the Demang, but he is shot by a KNIL soldier. His dead body is lying down left by the Demang and nobody cares of his elder brother. Contrary with Amsterdam in the same year, a Christmas night service is held at the church and the Priest preaches about the wealth and prosperity in Java, the Dutch colony, without knowing there is abuses and oppressions in that colony. That sermon is attended by Max Havelaar, an ex-Assistant Resident of Manado and Lebak who resigned from this official charges and becomes unemployed in Amsterdam. Havelaar then meets Batavus Droogstoppel, his childhood friend who becomes coffee broker and also owning coffee trading company, Last & Co. Havelaar offers Droogstoppel help him writing a book about coffee trading from Havelaar's essays which was collected when he was in service as Assistant Resident. Droogstoppel helps him forcefully and tries to read it. Then, Droogstoppel accidentally reads one of Havelaar's essay called "On the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company" (Dutch title: Op de Koffi-veilingen der Nederlandsche Handel-Maatschappij). And the Havelaar's story of colonialism injustice and corruption is just began in Lebak by the 1855. In 1855, Christiaan Ernst Pierre (C.E.P.) Carolus a.k.a.