Genocide, paramilitary and victims in Indonesia. A review of the documentary film The Act of Killing (2012)

Abstract

Contemporary documentary cinema continues to seek innovative ways to produce subjectivities. This paper centers around the Danish documentary film The act of killing (2012) made by two American filmmakers —Joshua Oppenheimer and Christine Cynn—, along with a third one, who does not disclose his/her identity appearing in the credits as Anonymous. The way in which a process of investigation conducted in Indonesia, a territory swarmed with impunity, can expose before the international community several decades afterwards the effects of a genocide that was orchestrated by huge economic and political forces and carried out by executors such as Anwar Congo, Herman Koto, gangsters and paramilitary groups who up to today have ties with the current democratic regime, is here commented and analyzed.  The documentary film is reviewed noting violence devices and the  continuity between violent acts and their representations and imagery in mass media and sometimes in artistic productions such as film and television programs. One of the questions raised has to do with the role of victims in the documentary, since they seem part of a backdrop while perpetrators are visually given a huge power.