Saturday Short

Today's short is the trailer for the documentary The Look of Silence (Drafthouse Films, Participant Media, Final Cut for Real), directed by Joshua Oppenheimer. (Additional clips may be viewed online.)

The highly praised, award-winning film, now in theaters, uses footage of perpetrators to tell the story of the 1965-1966 Indonesian genocide that followed an attempted military coup. Its focus is on the surviving members of a family who learn not only how the eldest son Ramli died but also who his murderers are. An optometrist named Adi, who is Ramli's brother, decides to confront the killers while they are being given eye exams.

Oppenheimer describes his film as "a poem about a silence borne of terror—a poem about the necessity of breaking that silence, but also about the trauma that comes when silence is broken. Maybe the film is a monument to silence. . . ."

Watch a panel discussion about the film, which is a companion piece to Oppenheimer's The Act of Killing. 

Read about a petition to condemn and bring to justice those responsible for the deaths of an estimated 500,000 to 1 million persons, including ethnic Chinese, trade unionists, teachers, intellectuals, leftists, civil activists, and artists. October 1, 2015, marks the 50th anniversary of the beginnings of the mass torture, rape, imprisonment, forced labor, and murder of the Indonesians.

The Look of Silence on FaceBook and Twitter


Democracy Now!, "The Look of Silence: Will New Film Force U.S. to Acknowledge Role in 1965 Indonesian Genocide?", August 3, 2015 (Interview with Joshua Oppenheimer)

A.O. Scott, "Review: The Look of Silence Confronts Individuals and Ideology of Indonesian Massacre", The New York Times, July 16, 2015

Dr. Katherine E. McGregor, "Case Study: The Indonesian Killings of 1965-1966", Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence, February 12, 2015

"Breaking the Silence Around the 1965 Indonesian Genocide", The Conversation, October 1, 2014