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Alternative view: Four Indonesian films take another angle on 1965 communist panic
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Directions: 'We Just Following Order, General!' was directed by Ilman Nafai when he was still at high school. (Ilman Nafai) (Film archive/Courtesy of Ilman Nafai)
After the collapse of the New Order, Indonesian filmmakers began producing films with a more objective view of the 1965 massacre.
Essentially a pseudo-docudrama created for propaganda purposes, Arifin C. Noer’s Pengkhianatan G30S/PKI was created by the New Order to push its version of events that happened between 1965 and 1966.
After Soeharto's authoritarian regime collapsed, Indonesian filmmakers began producing films with a more objective view of the 1965 massacre. One that courted much controversy in recent times was 2012’s Jagal: The Act of Killing, directed by American filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer. The film followed Anwar Congo, a former leader of a North Sumatran death squad that killed thousands of people suspected of being members of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) in Medan in the mid-1960s.
Mass Grave, Digging Up the Cruelties (Indonesia's Forgotten Barbarism)
Dir. Lexy Junior Rambadeta, 2001. 30 minutes.
On April 18, 2016, Lexy Junior Rambadeta, a filmmaker and freelance journalist, pushed his way through the crowd at a symposium to commemorate victims of the 1965 tragedy, to speak with Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, Indonesia’s coordinating maritime affairs and investment minister. Lexy wanted to show Luhut footage of a mass grave that was used for victims of the 1965 massacre, in Wonosobo. From inside his car, Luhut, responding to Lexy's question, asked the filmmaker:
