Docs give ‘a peek behind the curtain’ at Indonesia’s mass killings of the 1960s

There's both a strong element of necessity and cinematic flair in Joshua Oppenheimer's two documentaries about the Indonesian mass murders of the mid-1960s.

The Act of Killing (2012), which focused on two former gangsters, Anwar Congo and Adi Zulkadry, who went from selling black-market movie theatre tickets to leading a death squad, and who re-enact their crimes in the film with fake blood and gore. The approach was both hideously theatrical and pragmatic. The killers remained powerful and untouchable people, and by treating them like stars, Oppenheimer allowed them to expose themselves and acknowledge their own guilt.

The second film, The Look of Silence (2014), was shot while The Act of Killing was in post-production. Oppenheimer used his connections to bring Adi, an optometrist and brother of one of the victims, to confront men who were involved in the murders in a more conventionally cathartic fashion.

The two films were always intended to work together, the culmination of more than a decade's work. Oppenheimer, a Harvard-educated Texan, had gone to Indonesia in 2001 to make a film about the unionization movement, and learned about the 1965 mass murders. He had met Adi in 2003, and the story of the mutilation and murder of Adi's brother, some 50 years before, was still talked about in the survivors' community. In fact, it was Adi and other survivors who suggested that Oppenheimer's best approach to his documentary was to go directly to the perpetrators, who were fearless, rather than the families of victims, who still feared reprisals.

After seeing some of Oppenheimer's footage of the killers, Adi wanted to confront the men in person, though Oppenheimer initially resisted the idea as too dangerous. Eventually, he decided there was a window of opportunity, when no one in Indonesia had yet seen The Act of Killing.

Was it difficult releasing the more confrontational first film, The Act of Killing, out into the world without the other side of the story?

"No," says Oppenheimer, in a phone interview, "It was easy. I feel that Act of Killing stands on its own, which is especially clear if you see the longer director's cut of the film."

The criticism that The Act of Killing received, says Oppenheimer, came from "muddled conversation," and from some viewers' discomfort with the film's purpose, which was to demonstrate that "we're closer to the perpetrators than we care to admit."

If The Act of Killing focused on the rationalizations and fantasies of the perpetrators, The Look of Silence pushes the perpetrators to acknowledge their guilt. Some still pretend to be innocent. Others threaten Adi. Repeatedly, they encourage him to leave the past behind.

"Some people have described this as a peek behind the curtain," says Oppenheimer. "But in Indonesia, reality is the curtain. It's what everyone knows but doesn't talk about, and Adi is like the child in The Emperor's New Clothes."

The Act of Killing has been shown extensively in Indonesia, even leading to an acknowledgment from the President's spokesman that these acts were a "crime against humanity."

But the perpetrators and their families are still powerful. Adi and his family have been moved to a safe part of the country to avoid reprisals, and Oppenheimer himself has received regular death threats for his film. He has no intention of returning to Indonesia.

While the unwritten third act would ideally lead to some form of truth and reconciliation within Indonesia, Oppenheimer would like to see it go further, to the U.S. and British governments acknowledging their support of the slaughter.

There's one clip of archival footage in The Look of Silence, from a 1967 NBC News documentary, which cheerfully reports on the biggest victory over communism in history, and accepts the bizarre explanation from an Indonesian politician that communists volunteered to be killed when they realized the error of their thinking. The clip also triumphantly shows the Goodyear Tire Co. using political prisoners as slave labour.

"Just 20 years after Auschwitz," says Oppenheimer, "we have corporations using death-camp labour. We have to wonder how much American corporations influenced foreign policy, and why the CIA files from 1964 to 1966 remain closed 50 years after the genocide."

The Act of Killing screens at Toronto's Bloor Hot Docs Cinema on July 25 at 1 p.m. The Look of Silence runs at the Bloor through Aug. 6 (various times); bloorcinema.com.