Tales Before the Rain

This work re-examines the relationship between the elements that make up the quality of space, namely: "subject" and "object", "organic" and "mechanical", "reality" and "representation", "wholeness" and "partiality", " determinacy” and “indeterminacy”, “visibility” and “invisibility”, “natural” and “non-natural”.

New cosmopolitanism started with the bromocorah’s (free agent) dynasty. Through Palah (Panataran), we see the legitimacy of his great-grandsons appropriating the power of the Central Javanese dynasty, perpetuating the throne and cultural hegemony through the story of the man in the tkes hat, Panji.

This video is part of Massroom Project (2003) is a documentary video project on Jakarta. The videos consist of nine works that tells nine stories about living experiences in Jakarta. Those experiences pass on various aspects of the city such as: mass transportation, public space, marginalize traditional vendors, voice pollution in the city and survival in Jakarta. These nine works of the Massroom Project has been screened in various film festival and exhibiton in Indonesia and international. Some of the works achieve the nomination for best short filmwork at Oberhausen International Film Festival, Germany. Amongst the important festivals which screened the Massroom Project works is 15th Festival Internacional de Curtas Metragens de Sao Paulo 2004, Brasil; Tales of Two Cities: Jakarta/Canberra 2005, Australia; Seminar and Conference Responsibilities of Criticism 2008, USA.

The Glebagan system was created to force farmers to rotate crops and convert some of their land from basic agricultural commodities to industrial raw materials. This system has changed the face of agriculture and shaped the sugar map in various regions in Indonesia. With psychogeographical documentary approach, the film shows the landscape of the sugar map in a village of Krembung region, tracing step by step the sugarcane plantations that occupy farmers' rice fields. It is an observation of a repeating cycle, interjected with past archival footage of sugarcane and people movements.

A woman looks for traces of surveillance from the urban spaces around her, she uses a camera and takes pictures of things that she thinks are potential surveillance sites, but to understand more about what she is doing, she also positions herself as a surveillance by taking pictures of people, in the middle of her journey, the woman realizes that she is being followed by a man carrying a long lens camera.

The voice of Miriam de la Croix’s letter covers the life of a botanist and her three children. The letter contains Miriam de la Croix’s compassion for the plight of the Dutch East Indies under European colonial rule, especially the Netherlands. The content of the letter became the background sound in the activities of a botanist in doing modern work and science with her three children that day, where modernity and science in the Indies actually came together with European colonialism.

A reflective biography fragment of three friends reminiscing about their college days through the ten years of the ongoing Reformation era in Indonesia.

A small story from the border of Tangerang Regency and Bogor Regency. It was there that Kang Sui Liong, the temple guard, lived with his wife and children.

The Impact of massive Arab tourism in West Java is shown in the documentation of a park, where women must be escorted at all times. Everything – from the architecture and commerce to the edges of social and moral codes – is designed to accommodate the wishes of the visitors.

In May 1998 something happened in Indonesia that no one had thought possible. After persistent demonstrations, primarily by students, the repressive era of President Suharto came to an end. Many film makers from the present generation were closely involved in this revolution at the time. In this omnibus film, ten film makers look back on events.