Sister Cities on Screen: Memorializing against repression

How does a community keep the memory of racial violence? All members of the community are always forced to process it, whether experiencing or witnessing daily discrimination experiences, integration policies for diaspora, to mass-scale violent events.

In 1998, in the final days leading to the fall of Indonesia’s military regime, racial violence broke out in Indonesia’s big cities. Ten years after, a group of filmmakers revealed their response to the violent events through short films. Our meeting will start by watching three short films from this anthology:

Sugiharti Halim (Ariani Darmawan, 2008, 09’ 52”)

What’s in a name? A satire on how names both conceal and reveal a community’s generations-long experiences

Trip to the Wound (Edwin, 2007, 06’42”)

A conversation between two strangers on a bus. One of them is a collector of stories behind wound

A Letter of Unprotected Memories (Lucky Kuswandi, 2008, 09’37”)

A voiceless exchange about the awkwardness of celebrating Lunar New Year after it was banned for 33 years.

We will open up space for our collective reflections, on how we remember and memorialize these tragedies, 28 years on, while also opening the possibilities to learn from other historical events connected with themes of collective trauma, discrimination, migration histories, remembrance, and how communities move forward. Among relatable examples of historical events in the context of Germany are the recent racially-motivated killings in Hanau in 2020 and the 1992 incident in Rostock.

The discussion after the screening will be facilitated by writer-psychologist Nelden Djakababa Gericke.

Curated and organized by: Lisabona Rahman, Felix Wen, Raras Umaratih, Janty Jie (PMIJ); Management support: Carola von der Dick (Watch Indonesia)

Language of the event is English, with whispered translation to/from German and Bahasa Indonesia as needed.

The event is a collaboration between Jerman Bergerak by PMIJ (Perhimpunan Masyarakat Indonesia di Jerman) and the Sister Cities in Action project, funded by the State Office for Development Cooperation (LEZ) Berlin.

Erinnern gegen Repression

Wie bewahrt eine Gemeinschaft die Erinnerung an rassistische Gewalt? Wir zeigen drei Kurzfilme, produziert 10 Jahre nach den Gewaltausbrüchen zu Beginn der Reformasi-Zeit 1998 in Indonesien.

Wir schaffen Raum für gemeinsame Reflexionen darüber, wie wir diese Tragödien 28 Jahre später erinnern und gedenken, und eröffnen zugleich Möglichkeiten, aus anderen historischen Ereignissen zu lernen, die Themen wie kollektives Trauma, Diskriminierung, Migrationsgeschichte, Erinnern und Wege des Weiterlebens betreffen. Als vergleichbare Beispiele im deutschen Kontext seien die rassistisch motivierten Morde von Hanau (2020) und der Anschlag in Rostock (1992) genannt.

Sprache: Englisch, mit Flüsterübersetzung in/aus Deutsch und Bahasa Indonesia nach Bedarf.

Mehr Infos: sister-cities-action.org