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Indonesia and the fear 50 years after the genocide

interview with Joshua Oppenheimer

Joshua Oppenheimer

Joshua Oppenheimer (Daniel Bergeron)

After the military coup in 1965, the opponents of Suharto in Indonesia were accused of communism and killed, in a wave of violence that caused around a million victims. After The Act of Killing, nominated for Oscar 2014, the American director Joshua Oppenheimer has told about the Indonesian genocide in The Look of Silence, winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Venice International Film Festival 2014.

50 years after the genocide, we have talked with Joshua Oppenheimer about perpetrators guilt, the way Indonesia is now dealing with its past and the possibility of a reconciliation between victims and perpetrators.

You spent several years in Indonesia. How is your relationship with this country?

I dont’have any family relationship in Indonesia. I only became involved with this country in order to do this work. I worked for a short documentary and I discovered the stories of the Indonesian Genocide survivors… Through making my two movies, The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence, Indonesia became a second home for me.
My documentaries have had a great impact on Indonesian society, raising a passionate debate in the country. A debate I can not personally witness, and it is so frustrating and sad for me. I miss Indonesia very much, but I think my two films are a kind of love letters to that beautiful country.

Usually, to talk about the darkest pages of human history, movies follows the victims. How did you decide instead to turn your camera to the perpetrators in order to talk about the genocide of 1965?

Initially it was an accident. In 2003, after few weeks of work, the army came and told the survivors not to participate in that film. Then Adi - the main character of The Look of Silence - and other survivors told me not to give up, to continue my work and to film the perpetrators and talk about what they have done. At first I was afraid to approach the perpetrators, I didn't know if it was a crazy or a dangerous idea.
When I showed the footage to Adi and other survivors, however, they said to me “you must continue to film the perpetrators, you must show the way they tell their stories, almost boasting for their actions, while the society lives in fear because the perpetrators are still in power”.

In The act of killing you show the life of butchers. How did you feel in telling their stories? There was en evolution in their guilt through the movie?

At the beginning I was horrified by the way the perpetrators talk about what they have done. They talked about monstrous acts in a monstrous way. In front of these stories you may think “they’re monsters, but I’m not like them”. However I think that claiming that the perpetrators are monsters makes impossible a complete understanding of what happened.
I filmed all these perpetrators trying to find a monster and I never found a monster. I just saw more and more human beings, and in each of them I could recognize part of myself.
Quickly I realized that what Primo Levi said about the Holocaust is true, that “there maybe monsters among us but they are too few to worry about, but we really have to worry about ordinary people like ourselves”. Once I realized that, I have tried to understand the reasons of these actions, and the way the perpetrators can now live with themselves. So The Act of Killing is not about what happened in 1965, but it’s about the aftermath of that atrocities in a society that never deals with its past.

Making this film meant for me approaching these human beings intimately, walking into their life and imagination. In the Director’s cut of The Atc of Killing, there is a scene of Anwar Congo - the main character - butchers a teddy bear. While filming this scene Anwar stopped the action and said “Joshua, what are you doing? You’re crying”. I put my hands on my eyes and I felt tears, and that was the first time in my life that I cried without realizing it.
I think for Anwar the film was an opportunity for his pain to be heard and recognized. I could hear Anwar growing awareness of his own guilt, and this made stronger the idea that, to live with himself, he necessarily had to recognize that what he did was wrong and to confront with the moral meaning of his actions.

You told that the Indonesian society never dealt with its past. How is the cohabitation between victims and perpetrator today?

It’s a particular situation, because unlike other countries - I’m thinking about Rwanda, or even the Germany after World War II - the perpetrators remain in power, and therefore the society have been living in fear for half a century. We need a process of truth, justice and reconciliation, that of course is not something that perpetrators will agree.
In response to the debate opened by my films and to the 50 years of work by human rights activists as well, Indonesia is changing its way to talk about its past, but the government is now responding by limiting the freedom of expression. Several books and magazines dealing with the genocide of 1965 have been banned, as the screening of my film.
A survivor of 1965 period went back in Indonesia to look for his father’s mass grave, he was arrested, deported and he’s not allowed ever return to Indonesia again.
Despite that, I’m quite optimistic, because international reaction is today very strong, first of all, and second of all because if it’s true that the government is trying to control what we say about the genocide, now people can not return to the silence anymore.

In front of such terrible events, do you think that forgiveness is possible?

Forgiveness becomes possible only when perpetrators acknowledge the moral meaning of what happened. There is a scene, in The Look of Silence, where a daughter of a perpetrator found the courage and the humanity to apologize what her father was unable to apologize. That shows that forgiveness is not always possible, as long as we can not come together as human beings.
Democracy is impossible without community; community is impossibile when everybody is afraid of each other. And as long as everybody will continue to be afraid of each other there will be no forgiveness.
The government must acknowledge that what happened in 1965 was a crime against humanity. As I told you before, we need a truth commission, to figure out what happened and to provide justice. But justice means not - or not only - punishment of who committed genocide; you reach the true justice when the survivors and the society can feel comfortable this atrocities will never happen again.

Martina Landi, Gariwo Project Manager and Coordinator

11 November 2015

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