In the late 1920s, researchers and collectors captured Bali's ceremonies, rituals, gamelan orchestras, and everyday life. They pressed recordings into shellac and stored it all in archives abroad. For decades, this material remained largely inaccessible to the island it belonged to. Arsip Bali 1928 has spent years repatriating it from collections across Europe and the US, restoring it, and returning it home.
Starting this July at Klymax, Bali 1928: Live Score Cinema resurfaces that footage every month through the end of 2026 — rare archival film with a live score and live narration, each edition a meeting of past and present.
The first features Putu Septa playing a live contemporary gamelan improvisation with Dea Barandana shaping sound design, and cultural archivist Marlowe Bandem narrating the journey live.
Marlowe Bandem is a cultural archivist and project coordinator for Arsip Bali 1928, where he has spent over a decade repatriating Bali's earliest recordings and film footage from archives around the world. Born into one of Bali's most distinguished cultural families, he brings a background in finance and tech to the work of cultural preservation.
Putu Septa
Putu Septa is a Balinese composer and musician whose practice spans traditional gamelan and contemporary composition. His work is rooted in the ceremonial and ritual soundscapes of Bali, music as an offering, as architecture, as living inheritance.
Dea
Music Director at Desa Potato Head Bali and a founding member of Precious Bloom. A bassist and musician shaped by Psych and Balearic sensibility, Dea's work moves between performance, curation, and the shaping of sonic environments.
Bali 1928
Bali 1928 Archives is the result of an international collaboration between Dr. Edward Herbst, Arbiter of Cultural Traditions New York, and ITB STIKOM Bali since 2013, dedicated to the repatriation, restoration, and dissemination of historic Balinese music recordings, films, and photographs from the 1930s. Formally launched on 12 July 2015 at Bentara Budaya Bali, the archive brings together cultural heritage once scattered across archival centres around the world.
Gallery
Address
Klymax Desa Potato Head Bali, Jl. Petitenget No.51B, Seminyak, Kec. Kuta Utara, Kabupaten Badung, Bali 80361
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Desa Potato Head Bali
Jalan Petitenget no. 51B, Seminyak, Kuta Utara Kabupaten Badung, Bali — 80361, Indonesia
