Tellurian Drama (2020)
Indonesian with English subtitles | DV w/ h.264 video codec | Colour and Sound | 21 min

Riar Rizaldi’s Tellurian Drama unfolds between the 1923 opening of the Dutch East Indies’ Radio Malabar, for which forced indigenous labourers cleared two mountain peaks in West Java, and its 2020 reopening by the Indonesian government as a historical site and tourist attraction. Fictionalised after a forgotten text by prominent pseudo-anthropologist Drs. Munarwan, the film addresses notions of decolonisation, geocentric technology and the historicity of communication.