Film Archive

Jahr

Sections (Film Archive)

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Tellurian Drama

Tellurian Drama
Riar Rizaldi
International Competition Short Film 2021
Documentary Film
Indonesia
2020
26 minutes
Indonesian
Subtitles: 
English

In 1923, the Dutch erected a radio station on Puntang Mountain on Java deploying indigenous forced labourers. 2,000 metres of wire between two mountain ridges were meant to transmit news from what was then the Dutch East Indies across the 12,000 kilometres to Europe. A speculative and poetic examination of the remains of Radio Malabar – in the earth, in the mountain, in dreams of geoengineering, in local history.

Marie Kloos

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Riar Rizaldi
Cinematographer
Adythia Utama, Natasha Tontey
Editor
Riar Rizaldi
Producer
Riar Rizaldi
Score
Nursalim Yadi Anugerah
Winner of: Honourable Mention (International Competition Short Film)
Filmstill Tropic Fever

Tropic Fever

Tropic Fever
Mahardika Yudha, Robin Hartanto Honggare, Perdana Roswaldy
International Competition 2022
Documentary Film
Indonesia,
Netherlands
2022
59 minutes
English
Subtitles: 
English

The semi-autobiographical account of a European plantation manager on Sumatra during Dutch colonial rule becomes a starting point for reflections on the structure of the plantation itself. An essay about local tobacco and rubber cultivation, the construction of skin colour as a social category and the "tropic fever” which rises slowly but inexorably, edited from archive material dating from 1890 to 1930.

Very few films have made use of the extensive material shot by the colonists in the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia. Those who took up the task, like “Mother Dao” or recently “They Call Me Babu”, did so from a Dutch perspective. “Tropic Fever” is the first feature-length film from Indonesia that appropriates that stock, using photos, documentary silent film footage, home movies and feature films as well as development plans from the archives of the former colonial power, along with the report of a Hungarian who managed a plantation on Sumatra in the 1920s. Mahardika Yudha, Robin Hartanto Honggare and Perdana Roswaldy impressively demonstrate how forests and swamps turned into rigidly organised agricultural areas and how the plantation and its structure became the foundation of the colonial project as such. Suddenly the assumption that “tropic fever” arises from the heat seems doubtful.
Marie Kloos

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Mahardika Yudha, Robin Hartanto Honggare, Perdana Roswaldy
Script
Perdana Roswaldy, Robin Hartanto Honggare
Cinematographer
Mahardika Yudha, Syaiful Anwar
Editor
Mahardika Yudha
Producer
Robin Hartanto Honggare
Sound
Mahardika Yudha
Score
Mahardika Yudha
Key Collaborator
Het Nieuwe Instituut, EYE Filmmuseum, Marinus Plantema Foundation
Nominated for: Prize of the Interreligious Jury, FIPRESCI Prize