Show of Force: film, ghosts and genres of historical performance in the Indonesian genocide
type: CreativeWork
description: This thesis is a critical reflection on Vision Machine's North Sumatran film project, articulating a cinema practice that seeks to address a genocide that has barely been investigated. The primary footage comprises extensive interviews, re-enactments and dramatisations of the various practices and procedures that constituted the core of the 1965-66 Indonesian genocide in Sumatra's plantation belt. The participants in these dramatisations and enactments are, for the most part, death squad leaders and members who participated in the killing. This data, comprising over 100 hours of video, constitute revelatory primary research into the history and operation of the Indonesian genocide. This research forms the historical context for the project, and is therefore summarised in the thesis. The reflection on the epistemological, cultural and historical status of these re-enactments constitutes the basis for the core argument of this thesis. To this day, in North Sumatra, the genocidaires remain largely in power. This fact transforms our film project into a unique laboratory for exploring the cultural politics of film, media and history within a context of victory and impunity. Specifically, the project examines the ways in which historical narrative - inevitably told by victors - becomes an instrument of terror within a spectral economy of terror. This project is both an intervention into this economy, as well as an analysis of its mechanisms and protocols. As such, the thesis comprises both completed films, extracts from works-in-progress and this writing, and lies at the intersection of the disparate fields of cinema studies, Indonesian area studies, trauma studies and film practice. This thesis proposes a theory of performativity, spectrality and genres of historical performance; specifically, it is argues that spectres are performatively conjured as the obscene to any symbolic performance - including both historical acts as well as their rehearsal and restaging in re-en…
abstract: This thesis is a critical reflection on Vision Machine's North Sumatran film project, articulating a cinema practice that seeks to address a genocide that has barely been investigated. The primary footage comprises extensive interviews, re-enactments and dramatisations of the various practices and procedures that constituted the core of the 1965-66 Indonesian genocide in Sumatra's plantation belt. The participants in these dramatisations and enactments are, for the most part, death squad leaders and members who participated in the killing. This data, comprising over 100 hours of video, constitute revelatory primary research into the history and operation of the Indonesian genocide. This research forms the historical context for the project, and is therefore summarised in the thesis. The reflection on the epistemological, cultural and historical status of these re-enactments constitutes the basis for the core argument of this thesis. To this day, in North Sumatra, the genocidaires remain largely in power. This fact transforms our film project into a unique laboratory for exploring the cultural politics of film, media and history within a context of victory and impunity. Specifically, the project examines the ways in which historical narrative - inevitably told by victors - becomes an instrument of terror within a spectral economy of terror. This project is both an intervention into this economy, as well as an analysis of its mechanisms and protocols. As such, the thesis comprises both completed films, extracts from works-in-progress and this writing, and lies at the intersection of the disparate fields of cinema studies, Indonesian area studies, trauma studies and film practice. This thesis proposes a theory of performativity, spectrality and genres of historical performance; specifically, it is argues that spectres are performatively conjured as the obscene to any symbolic performance - including both historical acts as well as their rehearsal and restaging in re-en…
author: Oppenheimer, Joshua Lincoln
language: en
keywords: South East Asian History, Film & Video
identifier: Oppenheimer, Joshua Lincoln <https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/view/creators/Oppenheimer=3AJoshua_Lincoln=3A=3A.html> (2004) Show of Force: film, ghosts and genres of historical performance in the Indonesian genocide. PhD thesis, University of the Arts London.
date published: 2004-12
date modified: 2026-07-24T01:00:35Z
provider: University of the Arts London
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of the Arts London