Every just nation resembles one another; every unjust nation suffers its own injustice. The Indonesian nation has suffered a lot from its past trauma that has never been reconciled until now, especially due to the 1965 and 1998 events. This is what
Buried Chapters, a short documentary anthology series produced by Talamedia which can be accessed for free on YouTube, tries to reveal.
At the end of 2022, C4C assisted Talamedia to market
Buried Chapters to their target audience: young people aged 15 to 25 years who are not aware of Indonesia’s history, a.k.a. not "
history buffs ". Talamedia wants their target audience to not only watch the documentary series, but also talk about the issues brought up by
Buried Chapters. The aim is to let young people know that these two events really happened and should not happen again.
This age group did not directly experience the two major events mentioned above. However, there is a
"politics of remembering" that the regime continues to maintain to legitimize their power. This means that young Indonesians are shaped to believe the version of history written by the ruling government through history books, films, monuments or museums, and other cultural products.
This propaganda then becomes their default belief from the start (
default position). Since young we’ve been spoonfed with various labels and stigmas. Who doesn't know the term communist? (We as Indonesian people have to be anti-communist, right?) Or the Native versus Chinese dichotomy? (Chinese people can't be called native Indonesians, right?).
From the start we knew that our task was to start a difficult conversation anchored in the perspective of historical victims. The question is, how do you get young people to watch and then talk about something that feels like it has nothing to do with them? What's in it for them?
The key lies in understanding their needs and concerns.