40 Years of Silence: An Indonesian Tragedy

Overview

"40 Years of Silence: An Indonesian Tragedy" is the first documentary to explore the personal effects of the mass killings in Indonesia in 1965-66. An estimated 500,000 to 1,000,000 people were secretly killed during a bloody purge of suspected communists throughout Indonesia, making this one of the largest unknown mass-killings of the 20th century. General Suharto, in control of the Indonesian military after a failed coup d'etat on September 30,1965, was the man most historians cite as being directly responsible for the killings. As the killings unfolded, he wielded his growing influence to install his New Order regime to ultimately gained power and presidency of the country. For decades, the Indonesian government repressed all memory of this event. The film follows the testimonies of four individuals and their families from Central Java and Bali, two regions heavily affected by the purge. As they break their silence for the first time, each family provides an intimate look at what it was like for survivors of the mass-killings. They describe the events of 1965 through their own experiences and reflect upon the stigmatization and brutalization they continued to endure on both the village and state levels.

The film uses three historians of this period (Romo Baskara Wardaya, Geoffrey Robinson, John Roosa) and the anthropologist and filmmaker (Robert Lemelson) as the narrators providing the historical setting for the families’ stories. These historical explanations are intercut with the character's narrations of living through the killings and their aftermath. As the stories unfold, the film narrates the significant political, economic and cultural events underlying the massacres. Aspects of how the extrajudicial killings were enacted, as seen through the survivor’s eyes, are described in chilling detail. The film progresses to demonstrate what life under Suharto’s autocratic “New Order” regime (1966-1998) was like for survivors, who were stigmatized as family of PKI communist party members. Finally, with the fall of the Suharto regime, and the the establishment of a period of democratization and reformation in Indonesia, the last section describes the beginnings of a more open period where narratives and memories of this event are allowed to be expressed.

The film was shot on the islands of Bali and Java from 2002-2006, though earlier footage from the director’s anthropological research are also included. The score is a collaboration between the British composer Malcolm Cross and the Balinese musician Nyoman Wenten, that combines Western tonalities and chordal structures with Balinese and Javanese scalar progressions and melodies. The film was released in the United States in 2009, and has had limited screenings in Indonesia.

Official Website

• 40 Years of Silence: An Indonesian Tragedy

Distribution

• Institutional sales at Documentary Educational Resources
• Home use sales at Elemental Productions and Amazon

Awards

• 2009 Accolade Competition. "Award of Merit Winners - Film"
• 2009 Indie Fest Awards. "Award of Excellence"
• 2011 History Makers Awards. Nominee for "Most Innovative Production"

Festivals

• April 2009. Boston International Film Festival. Boston, Massachusetts
• June 2009. Amnesty International "Films That Matter"
• August 2009. Globians World + Culture Documentary Film Festival. Berlin, Germany
• October 2010. Taiwan International Documentary Film Festival. Taipei, Taiwan
• October 2010. XIX International Festival of Ethnological Film. Belgrade, Serbi
• December 2010. Psychocinema Festival. Jakarta, Indonesia

Reviews

• UCLA Today, 10 Questions for Robert Lemelson
• The Harvard Crimson, "Breaking from the 'Silence'"
• Jakarta Globe, "Breaking the 40-Year Silence About the Anti-Communist Purge"
• Voice of America Interview with Director Robert Lemelson
• Jakarta Globe, "1965 Mass Killings Erased From History, Scholars Say"
• Jakarta Globe, "1965: Giving Voice to the Silenced Past"