The powerful interventions of the Indonesian artist, cultural studies scholar and filmmaker Timoteus Anggawan Kusno are internationally renowned. What distinguishes them are the empowering attitude and the breathtaking aesthetics he employs to re-interpret in different media the cultural traditions passed on in his homeland. With “Afterlives”, he delivers another unequivocal reckoning with the representations of history shaped by colonial annexation.
The opening sequence is already a declaration: On the soundtrack we hear screaming, in which both pain and its liberating relief are manifest and united. On screen we see an explosion of colours: Jathilan, a ritual Javanese war game, is being performed. Men are dancing on horses made of plaited bamboo until they fall into a trance or the evil spirits are driven away. The impressive precision of the editing to tribal trance music by Setabuhan makes the colonialist archive images expose themselves – and fade. Those of (dance) performances in which the Javan tiger, killed multiple times in historic rituals, is symbolically reanimated come to the fore. In the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, it now guards – in the shape of a re-interpreted colonial sculpture – the empty frames that once gave (representative) power to the governors-general of the Dutch East Indies.

Narrated by the incarnate ghost of a deceased real hair donor. In the post-war era, the export of real hair wigs contributed to Asia’s economic development, with Hong Kong as a major hub. In its heyday in the 1960s, “Asian real hair” was popular with wealthy U.S. women, but then the USA imposed an embargo on the product, now classified as “communist hair”. This is where the intricate and innovatively realised story begins: Starting with complex economical and sociopolitical contexts, it weaves a thread that runs through various historical and dreamlike staged levels.

Hong Kong was and is a space of in-between-ness – between East and West, between communism and capitalism. Perhaps that is why there are so many spooks in the city, one protagonist speculates. Just like the well-travelled ghost, an eternally wandering entity and contemporary witness of an imperial and colonialist past.

“Words are the only instruments I have”, says Aslı Erdoğan in this powerful audiovisual collage. The writer, physicist and human rights activist who lives in exile in Berlin writes against the disappearance and loss of her own language. As a former political prisoner in Turkey, she knows only too well what autocratic violence and oppression intend: to silence people.

In this sense, this filmic portrait sets itself vociferously against the silence. Words flicker between fragments of the history of protest in Turkey. Working with text, photography and archive material, the film embarks on a vibrant visual and acoustic journey through places and times that shaped Aslı Erdoğan’s homeless life. Taking inspiration from her autobiographical collection of prose, “Requiem for a Lost City”, individual history becomes collective. A many-voiced choir reminds us that language is the thing that nonetheless holds everything together.

At first glance, Brett Allen Smith’s memory worlds seem slightly otherworldly but peaceful. There is a little pug – curious, bouncy and, most importantly, alive, a harmless explorer of lawns and living rooms. At the same time, the director is driven by an inner fracture, an irritation to be illuminated by means of phone conversations with family members: How real are the memories that had such a tremendous impact on him? Like the hill towering in front of Smith’s inner eye under which two dogs lie buried. And there are sunflowers, imposing plants that are impossible to pick for his five-year old’s hands because their roots have bored so deeply into the soil.

Today the director is a father and dog owner himself – there are shots of a baby and a pug – and his thought construct, maybe even something that shaped his identity, is blurring. The phone calls with his sisters lead nowhere. On the visual level, “Au Revoir, Pugs” plays with images, animation and nostalgic effects, while melodies can be heard from far away, sweet and melancholy but also a little uncanny. A compact work of less than ten minutes, a soft-toed sneaky jolt.