Thursday, May 10, 2007

Film of Bonaire In The 1950s

Sometime in the early 1950s, Polygoon-Profilti, a Dutch production company, produced a short documentary about Bonaire, entitled “Eiland van rust” (Island of Rest). The film shows fascinating scenes from life on Bonaire over half a century again, documenting salt harvesting, charcoal creation, aloe farming, and fishing off fishing sail boats. Late last year that film was released on-line. And thanks to a BonaireTalk participant, we now have a link to that film to share with our readers.

The film can be found here. Once you pull up the page at that link, click on the link in the left column which says “BONAIRE: Eiland van rust”, and a window will pop up. The first time you pull up the video page, you will be asked (in Dutch) to select whether you want to view the streaming video in Windows Media or Real format (Windows Media is probably better for Windows users). A second set of options allow you to choose your Internet connection speed. “Langzaam” means slow (dial-up, for example), while “Snel” means fast (broadband). Once you have set the proper settings for your computer and connection, click on the button that says “opslaan” to start streaming the video.

It’s an amazing look at a Bonaire we no longer see. The same page, incidentally, has links to videos from Aruba and Curacao too. (Source: Post by Iris van den Berg on BonaireTalk)