Bachtiar Effendi

Bachtiar Effendi was born in Padang, West Sumatra, after 1903. He was the younger brother of Rustam Effendi, a communist-sympathising poet. He dropped out of senior high school and became a labourer at Tan's Film, where he worked in decor. He acted in his first film, Si Ronda, in 1930. He then became an assistant director and directed his first film, Njai Dasima, in 1932, becoming the first native Indonesian film director in the Indies. He left Tan's Film to become the editor in chief of Doenia Film, a Malay-language film magazine. He joined the Dardanella theatre troupe in 1936, working as an actor. He left Dardanella with Andjar Asmara to establish the Bollero troupe, where he married Suhara, the sister of Andjar's wife Ratna. He later married Zuhara. He remained the leader of Bollero, which became increasingly politicised and vocal against the widespread corruption of the time. During the Japanese occupation of Indonesia, he made propaganda films for the Japanese. After the Indonesian National Revolution, he became a cultural critic and a press attaché for the Indonesian embassy in Italy. He supported the Revolutionary Government of the Republic of Indonesia, a rebel movement against the central government, and was declared persona non grata by the Sukarno regime. He lived in Italy for most of his life, occasionally returning to Indonesia to act or to facilitate Italian-Indonesian cooperation. He died in Rome on 1 April 1976.