A self-taught filmmaker, in the mid-1930s, he released a documentary and two feature films, before immigrating to the United States and resuming his journalistic career.

[4] In 1934, Balink established the Java Pacific Film production company with the Wong brothers, headquartered in an old Bandoeng tapioca flour factory.

As well as writing the screenplay, Franken co-directed and co-produced the film with Balink, who worked to secure funding from various sponsors and was in charge of casting, searching the country extensively for appropriate actors.

[2][11][4] Balink established renewed financial backing to found the Dutch Indies Film Syndicate (Algemeen Nederlandsch Indisch Filmsyndicaat, or ANIF), which produced its first newsreel on 22 December 1936, featuring the Gambir Market, and festivities at the palace of the Governor-General, including the inauguration of the last Dutch East Indies Governor-General, Tjarda van Starkenborgh Stachouwer.

[13] Terang Boelan proved to be the most commercially successful Indonesian production until the 1953 film, Krisis (Crisis), released after the country's independence.

[15] Reviewing early Indonesian cinema, in 1991 the American visual anthropologist Karl G. Heider wrote that Pareh and Terang Boelan were the two most important cinematic works from the Dutch East Indies during the 1930s.

[16] In March 1938[17] Balink immigrated to the United States, became a citizen, and worked as a correspondent for Dutch daily newspaper, de Volkskrant.