Welcome to Terra Incognita (Timoteus Anggawan Kusno, 2022). Enjoy this short ride through space and time where nothing is out of your bounds. This film will take you not here nor there, but everywhere. The train is leaving its station, and as you look to the window on your left or right, the panoramic scenery won’t be the only thing you’ll see. There it is, that collage of fictional paintings of the colonial times. Still, the train runs. Passing through ancient and deceitful historic pathways.
Terra Incognita (2022) offers a different alternative in unpacking the complexity of the historical dynamics of Indonesia’s postcolonial era where all that’s left are violent echoes of the past, open wounds, and a traumatizing history that still haunts them to this day. The director questions their colonial heritage with a thought-provoking approach; blurring the lines between fiction, imagination, and memory.
“Here’s the thing. If I had refused, I would have been accused. I don’t really get politics, but at the time, we didn’t really ‘do’ law by the book.”
The documentary presented a mysterious man as an informant to share his testimony as a witness to the conundrum of the past. At the end of his testimony, he emphasized that it’s, “For the betterment of coexisting in peace and order.”
Timoteus Anggawan Kusno applied the rhetorics of “rust en orde” on the colonial era and equated it with “peace and order” as a concept, later rephrased by the informant to his request with “security and order” in the postcolonial context. The phrase was then repeated throughout the film until it ended. As a period in Indonesian history, colonialism is one chapter of the book that has ended long ago. However, traces of its systemic thought of process and abuse of power can still be found in patterns that we still see to this day.
Venture the complexity of history and colonial heritage through Terra Incognita (2022), and discover mysteries as they unravel as our train reaches our destination.
Terra Incognita (2022) is selected in Spektrum Festival Film Dokumenter 2023. (Hesty N. Tyas) (Vanis/Adinta)
Film Details
Terra Incognita (Luka dan Bisa Kubawa Berlari)
Timoteus Anggawan Kusno | 22 Min | 2022 | Indonesia | Color | 17+
Screening Schedule
12.06 | Auditorium IFI-LIP | 15.00 WIB
12.09 | Bioskop Sonobudoyo | 15.00 WIB
