Apologies for the lack of recent updates, I’ve been busy with work and life in general, which left me precious little time to research my favorite subject: forgotten islands.
The next series of material will focus on Indonesia, probably the country with the most isolated islands and eclectic cultures. A particularly interesting – and unfortunately threatened – area lies in the Southwest of Sumatra. Stay tuned.
When I first heard about the Act of Killing last year, I couldn’t wait to watch this documentary. Being fascinated by the history of Indonesia, I found it very hard not to read anything I could find on the movie: I have this old habit of coming to a movie without preconceived ideas.
Joshua Oppenheimer shot the movie over a 10 year period with the help of many anonymous Indonesians, who are referred to as “Anonymous” when the credits roll. That itself is a very powerful reminder of Indonesia’s continuous repression. And this movie is a lot about continuity. While Joshua Oppenheimer interviewed killers from the 1965 massacres that took the lives of an estimated 1 million people, those killers and this era are still being glorified by today’s powers that be. The death squads responsible for most of the killings originated from the Pancasila Youth, a paramilitary organisation founded in 1965 and still pretty active in Indonesia, with over 3 millions members countrywide.
Pinaki is an small and unhabited atoll in the Pacific Ocean, part of the Tuamotus. Contrary to a typical atoll, Pinaki’s lagoon remains very shallow.
A small island in the Andaman Sea, North Sentinel Island might be the least visited inhabited island on earth, a testament to cultural survival through isolation.