Page - 22 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 04/01

22 | Lucien van Liere www.jrfm.eu 2018, 4/1, 15–34 man Sinaga and with workers discussing what happened and why. At one point the camera’s focus is on Sinaga as he recounts how he tortured people while his wife laughs and encourages him in the background. Sinaga enthusiastically boasts about how he killed, narrating grisly details while the camera moves to a young girl (Sinaga’s granddaughter?) sitting at the table. In a close-up, the girl looks back, somewhat shocked or amazed (00:25:52) and while the suggestion is made that her amazement might be because of Sinaga’s horrific story, the girl is looking straight into the camera, which might be the reason for her surprised face. The producers seem to have been seeking to contrast the killing narrative of Sinaga and the innocence of a subsequent generation that has grown up with the G30S genocide normalised. The discussions of the workers, who share a local context with Sinaga and killers like him – they are probably referring to Sinaga when they speak about “the old man” – focus less on Sinaga’s crimes than on the causes of the killings: the massacre was because of businessmen, they recall (00:25:36), and the killer Sinaga is obviously not a businessman. METHODOLOGY In 2004 Oppenheimer defended his PhD thesis at the University of the Arts Lon- don.26 His thesis shows a fascination similar that which lies behind The Act of Killing. Based on interviews he conducted in Indonesia, his thesis comprises more than 100 hours of video. These interviews contain “revelatory primary research” into the Indonesian genocide, the author claims.27 Oppenheimer de- scribes his project as a new model for film-making which he terms “archaeologi- cal performance”. With this approach, he desires to go “beyond” the more in- terview-based approaches of works such as Shoah (Claude Lanzmann, FR 1985) or Hôtel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie (Marcel Ophüls, BRD/ FR/USA 1988). Archaeological performance covers a form of movie-making in which a buried historical event is restaged with historical actors. Oppenheimer recorded, “this method opens a process of simultaneous historical excavation (working down through strata), and histrionic reconstruction (adding layers of stylised performance and recounting). An ‘archaeological performance’ entails successively working with, and working through, the gestures, routines, and rituals that were the motor of the massacres.”28 This description of archaeological performance has a focus on gestures, routines and rituals related to the killings. In Oppenheimer’s description, the method works “with” and “through” these phenomena, as if the filmmaker is 26 Oppenheimer 2004. 27 Oppenheimer 2004, 5; 10. 28 Oppenheimer 2004, 79.