Screenings of Ouw Peh Tjoa continued until at least 1953 . The film is now likely lost . Movies in the Indies was recorded on highly flammable nitrate film , and after a fire destroyed much of Produksi Film Negara 's warehouse in 1952 , old films shot on nitrate was deliberately destroyed . As such , the American visual anthropologist Karl G. Heider write that all Indonesian films from before 1950 are lost . However , JB Kristanto 's Katalog Film Indonesia ( Indonesian Film Catalogue ) record several as having survived at Sinematek Indonesia 's archives , and Biran write that several Japanese propaganda films have survived at the Netherlands Government Information Service .