He was born in Batavia, Dutch East Indies (modern day Jakarta, Indonesia) on 18 June 1902 to a rich businessman name The Kim Ie.

However, instead of following his father's footsteps The studied filmmaking at the Palmer Play Theater;[3] one of his fellow film students was Fred Young, another peranakan Chinese from the Indies, who would collaborate with The.

[2] After five years of studies he went to Shanghai and became involved in the country's cinema industry, working on exporting films from China to the Indies and trying his hand at filmmaking.

[10] By 1938 JIF had begun focusing on stories dealing with modern issues,[1] possibly in response to Albert Balink's 1938 film Pareh.

[1] After Indonesia's independence and the cease of the National Revolution, he and Fred Young established the Bintang Soerabaja film company, which continued production until 1962.