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A Hidden Past Revealed: One Viewer's Story
The Forgotten History of 1965

Robert Lemelson’s documentary opens with an astute statement: “It is one of the largest unrecognized mass killings of the 20th century.”

“It” was a nationwide purge by the Suharto-led Armed Forces following an alleged failed coup by the Indonesian Communist Party on Sept. 30, 1965. More than 500,000 suspected communists were brutally and systematically slaughtered, and more were imprisoned or exiled. Under the New Order regime, the event was erased from the nation’s records and, for decades, survivors and families of the victims have kept silent out of fear.

“40 Years of Silence: An Indonesian Tragedy” chronicles the heart-rending accounts of four individuals gravely affected by the 1965 mass killings, and their journeys to come to terms with the past.

Three of the main subjects of trained psychologist Lemelson’s film are living testaments to the violence inflicted on their families.

Kereta was a member of the People’s Art Guild, known as Lekra. During the purge he witnessed many killings and had to continually hide to avoid becoming a target himself, as Lekra was thought to be linked to the Communist Party.

The Balinese farmer saw his father betrayed by a close relative and then murdered in front of him. Kereta has lived in constant fear since, he says in the film.

“They attacked him with a sword, they hit his head until his brain splattered, they stabbed his stomach with a sword, they gouged out his eyes with a pick.”

Lanny, who is from a well-off family of Chinese ethnicity, said her father left the family to escape being killed when she was only 13 years old. During the reign of Suharto, her house was repeatedly ransacked and her family harassed, nobody wanted to befriend her at school and, eventually, she lost faith in God.

“Even my footsteps expressed anger,” Lanny says. “I became very fierce.”

Degung was only 5 when the killings took place. His father was killed, his mother later remarried a guard she met while in prison and Degung was sent to Surabaya, where his uncle repeatedly beat him until he ran away to an area where sex workers lived.

He told the filmmakers that at the time, nobody could be trusted. “What I find most devastating about the violence,” Degung says, “you know, those who initiated the killings were really more like the guys next door — or sometimes it was your cousin.”

Through the words of these four, the 90-minute documentary poignantly recounts the harshness of the purge and the hardships children of victims endured during the period.

Budi, the fourth Indonesian featured in the documentary, was born decades after the purge but is still much affected by its aftermath. His father’s status as an ex-political prisoner meant the whole family was stigmatized.

Fellow villagers tore down their house and Budi says he endured continuous harassment and verbal abuse until his parents finally put him in an orphanage. His older brother Kris was once beaten by five military officers until he suffered a concussion, and became a street kid in an attempt to find safe haven.

“My family was tortured, slandered and terrorized,” Budi says. “I want to kill, to torture people the way they did my family.”

Through its control over education and other propaganda tools, the Suharto regime persistently depicted communists as sadistic killers who had taken the lives of six high-ranking generals during the failed September coup.

Whether intentionally or not, Lemelson’s documentary contests, if not reverses, that prevailing perception in Indonesia by presenting the military as the “evildoers.” However, it fails to fully address the Communist Party’s part in the volatile political tension leading up to 1965.

But Lemelson makes no attempt to sanctify his subjects in his edit.

“If I want to fight them, I’ll need a bottle of chemicals, gasoline, cloth and a match,” Budi tells the camera. “I want to blow up their houses so they experience the grief and pain my family suffered.”

Degung is also unapologetic about his hatred toward his mother, who left him after she remarried. “I hate my mother. Yeah, I wanted to kill her,” he says fervently.

At its conclusion, the film breathes an air of salvation as the subjects each find ways come to terms with their brutal past. Degung becomes a human rights activists, Lanny finds solace in Buddhism, Kereta chooses to live away from society and Budi takes up martial arts to toughen his mind.

“If I still keep the hatred, it’s like I have a bomb inside,” Lanny said. “I think I have suffered enough, why should I suffer more?”

The documentary includes black-and-white footage of the looting, arrests and violence that occurred at the time, which graphically illustrates the subjects’ stories and acts as an emotional time machine that allows the audience to experience the events as if watching in real time.

The somber musical score can be sleep-inducing, but stories as moving as these do not need any audio embellishment — the players have been silenced for so many years it is only appropriate they now voice their story undisturbed. Lemelson does, in fact, incorporate the essence of Indonesia by using traditional instruments and choosing “Genjer-genjer” — a song that was banned due to its strong association with the communists — as the theme music.

The documentary, enriched with colorful stories, leaves its audience with interwoven and conflicting feelings of sympathy, anger, relief and a certain degree of shame for being unaware of such a horrific yet veiled past.

“40 Years of Silence” is not only a documentation that unravels one of the darkest chapters in Indonesian history, it is a medium of liberation that clearly gives voice to victims of an until-now silenced past.


The Forgotten History of 1965
See more at http://www.40yearsofsilence.com/