Riar Rizaldi

Deep down in the bowels of a mountain, a Dutch geologist’s volcanic theories clash with local cosmologies in the Indonesian archipelago. Colonial science encounters the poetic, radical possibilities of reading nature otherwise.

Modelled after Carl Sagan's classic TV series Cosmos, this film displaces the dominance of Western science and embraces pluralistic worldviews - from tropical Sufi mysticism and monorealism to theories of quantum mechanics.

A docufiction that investigates alternative Indonesian histories through a rumination of colonial ruins, the role of technology, and the invisible power of indigenous ancestry.

In an alternative future of Indonesia, when nuclear technology reaches the point of generating an artificial sun for endless energy resources, a lazy philosopher Sajad Ali wandering around seeks a place to sleep. Told in a semi-essayistic approach, Sajad Ali reflects the dynamics of nuclear technology in the future, the politics of materiality through the search for minerals such as thorium in Indonesia, as well as the complexity of nuclear issue in the Global South and its tension with ecology, energy consumption, nation-state, and productivity.

Running a fishery boat is a labour-intensive operation, and out in the high seas and far from home, the seamen who work on these ships are often vulnerable to abuse by their employers. Under harsh and often exploitative working conditions, some workers have died onboard under uncertain or unclear circumstances. When this happens, employers often wrap the deceased’s body in tarpaulin to either store in a large freezer or to dump overboard.

Formed between factual and fictional, future and past, material and incorporeal, scientific and magic, Monisme reflects the intermingled relationships between people in Mount Merapi.

Natasha, a solar-powered A.I. voice machine, traces its genealogy and the truth of its origin. This investigation leads Natasha to meet its ancestor: the inorganic tin extracted from Bangka Island.

A glimpse into the far future: in search of the ultimate truth about the past, a paleo-media-ontologist scavenges the imagination of the past to recontextualise and reflect what it is called fossil relic in their time; a mountain of invisible electronic waste buried in a tropical landscape of the South.

The third entry in Riar Rizaldi's Mirage series continues his investigation of mysticism through the conventions of educational film and television, a format designed to make complex theories accessible. Framed as a sword-and-sandals historical reenactment, Mirage: Agape examines Sufi mysticism in the Indonesian archipelago, using the spread of various religions from the maritime hub of Barus as a mechanism to introduce the theory of emanation. In contrast to the theories of both creationism and materialism, emanation theory posits that the universe, and everything contained therein, "flows" from a single infinite and unchanging point. Within the world of the film, two protagonists embody matter and anti-matter, creating an endless cycle of destruction and reincarnation each time they touch.

A lost video signal transmitted to the past from the future of remilitarised Indonesia archipelago when demographic dividend reached its peak. Narrated by one of the members of the Operation of Sovereignty for Gestational and Surrogate Mothers, the video dissects the dynamic of natalism, nationalism, agency, and reproductive technology as well as questioning the meaning of kita (‘we’ in Indonesian).

The first in a series that reconfigures and interrelates two parallel modes of inquiry into the nature of reality. Formatted as a Hanna-Barbera and early Disney animation short set in the distant future—moving images format that is frequently used as tools of science communication in the mid 20 century, it rehearses a conversation between two cosmologists about the presence of God in atoms. Particle physics and Malay-Indonesian Sufi metaphysics are brought together as different expressions of the same human endeavor to grasp the transcendental in the material. The film positions Western science as one methodology among many in a constellation of pluralistic worldviews.

If cinema symbolized progress in the 20* century, the railway delivered it. Tropenkolder explores the entanglement between phantom ride films - shot with cameras mounted on moving trains to document the landscape - and the 1923 railway workers strike in Java.

An exploration of the interconnection between ghost stories, tech company culture in South Korea, and the economy of logistics in Indonesia told through a notebook/premake film and dossier of an unmade techno-horror feature-length film set in between port in Jakarta and an unnamed employee assistance programme office in Seoul.

Revisiting the Indonesian horror / exploitation films of the 80s and 90s that he loved as a teenager, Riar Rizaldi examines the ways in which these films – shown outside of the theatre and other formal spaces of the film industry – constitute a ‘cinematic elsewhere’.

Pyroclasts are eloquent storytellers observes the notion of prediction—where humans always have their own methods and apparatus in constructing their predictions for the future. In this context, this film focuses on the eruption forecast of one of the most active stratovolcano in the world: Mount Merapi. For many human who live around the volcano, Merapi as a geological entity is a symbol of a contingent future. Pyroclasts are eloquent storytellers delves into the psyche of the mountain as well as examines the practice of prophecy performed by people who live around the volcano with their multimodal approach to worldviews.