Oscar Loss May Cool Push for Closer Look at Indonesia Killings

March 3, 2014 11:50 a.m. ET

Joshua Oppenheimer, an American, directed the film, ‘The Act of Killing.’ Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

JAKARTA, Indonesia—A groundbreaking documentary about the killing of hundreds of thousands of Indonesians in the 1960s has lost its bid for an Oscar, taking with it some of the nascent buzz around establishing an official investigation into a dark period in the Southeast Asian country.

“The Act of Killing,” an at-times surrealistic film by American Joshua Oppenheimer, examines the killing of at least 500,000 people in 1965-66, bringing a rare spotlight onto state-sanctioned killings that have been little discussed by many Indonesians.
Since its release in 2012, the film has garnered dozens of awards, including for best documentary at the 2014 British Academy of Film and Television Arts awards, leaving the government facing uncomfortable headlines about an event that leaders have long said was necessary to prevent a communist takeover in the sprawling island nation. The total number of killings has never been established, but some scholars think it could be as high as one million. The victims included communist sympathizers, members of the ethnic Chinese minority, and in many cases people on the wrong side of score-settling.
The film lost out Sunday to another American documentary, “20 Feet From Stardom.”
“I feel like ‘The Act of Killing’ isn’t going away,” Mr. Oppenheimer said from Los Angeles. “It is a genie that can’t be stuffed back in the bottle.”
The film showcases several men who took part in killings in northern Sumatra island, engaging them to re-enact scenes of murder and torture in the oftentimes bizarre styles of their favorite film genres. The disturbing scenes feature the mock massacre of a village and the matter-of-fact explanation of how to strangle someone with a wire.
No one has ever been prosecuted for the killings, which took place in the tumult following an alleged attempted coup by the communist party that killed six generals that led to the downfall of founding President Sukarno. His successor, Suharto, ruled until his own overthrow in street protests in 1998. The nation of 240 million people has since enjoyed a strengthening democracy and legislative and presidential elections will be held in coming months. Those involved in the killings are now old or dying off.
Yet there has never been a great deal of interest even in post-Suharto Indonesia in examining the purges. Rights experts say that in part stems from what they call a lack of knowledge; students have generally been taught, if they hear of the killings at all, that the actions saved the nation from communism. At the time, the Vietnam War raged and Southeast Asia was a front line in the Cold War.
They also point to the lasting power of people at the heart of the killings, who maintained power for decades in organizations that have survived the Suharto era.
“The people who were involved in some of the violence are still around, the religious groups that were complicit in the killings are still around,” said Galuh Wandita, director of Jakarta-based Asia Justice and Rights. The film has helped make the younger generation “at least be curious about that time.”
Many Indonesians simply would rather look forward, seeing the killings as the beginning of the Suharto era that the new democracy wants to put behind it. Indonesia has taken tentative steps to address its history, if not at the highest levels of power.
In 2012, the national human rights commission–a government-created but independent organization–issued a report on the killings that alleged gross human rights abuses. The Attorney General’s office decided against investigating further, citing insufficient evidence.
But rights workers have held public forums of their own and point to a mayor on the island of Sulawesi last month asking for forgiveness for what happened and promising to provide services to victims as a sign of progress.
Andreas Harsono, with Human Rights Watch in Jakarta, said the film’s impact was most significant in reaching the elite. To stir debate in Indonesia, “what you need is the upper middle class,” he said, adding that the film “is already hot among the elite in urban areas.”
The film was never released in local theaters but has been seen widely in private screenings. The film team distributed free DVDs and uploaded a version without English subtitles–for speakers of Bahasa Indonsia–on YouTube. In its first six weeks on YouTube, it garnered 138,000 views.
Mr. Oppenheimer said public discourse “would have been accelerated had we won, but the discussion will continue.”
—Anita Rachman contributed to this article.
Write to Ben Otto at ben.otto@wsj.com

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