Underground Memory, History and Oblivion: What can documentary film do? Reflections on The Act of Killing (2012) and The Look of Silence (2014) by Joshua Oppenheimer

Abstract

Looking at the way societies remember their history, we often see reflected the perpetuation of the winners' narrative and the obliteration of the losers' history, those who remained in and on the margins of History, on the outskirts of memory. Oppression also exists in the form of collective memory or lack thereof. The case of mass murders in Indonesia between 1965 and 1966 is one such example, in which official memory chose to suppress the victims and with them, the possibility of collective reparation. This article seeks, in this context, to analyze Joshua Oppenheimer's cinematographic diptych’s The Act of Killing (2012) and The Look of Silence (2014), identifying and observing how the documentary film, through engaged authorial creation, provoke and convene discussion about what we choose to remember and forget, and what role the institutions play in this choice that shapes lives and societies, so often shrouded in trauma, injustice or oppression.