The Look of Silence.
The Look of Silence is Joshua Oppenheimer’s Oscar-nominated documentary film and companion piece to his The Act of Killing. Through Oppenheimer’s footage of perpetrators of the 1965 Indonesian genocide, a family discovers how their son was murdered, as well as the identities of the killers. The Look of Silence focuses on the son, an optometrist, who decides to break the suffocating spell of submission and terror by doing something unimaginable in a society where the murderers remain in power: he confronts the men who killed his brother and, while testing their eyesight, asks them to accept responsibility for their actions. See Portfolio Booklet for documentation of research dimensions.
- Submitting institution
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The University of Westminster
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- q25y1
- Type
- Q - Digital or visual media
- Publisher
- -
- Month
- August
- Year
- 2014
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- The research culminating in the documentary took fifteen years. This includes four years of fieldwork among survivors of the Indonesian genocide, filming and analysing 320 hours of interviews documenting their responses to filmed re-enactments by the perpetrators. There was no prior systematic research into the genocide in the North Sumatran plantation belt, where the documentary takes place. Oppenheimer and collaborators produced the world’s largest audiovisual archive about the genocide. The film was cut from this archive and material shot in 2011-2012. Oppenheimer developed an unprecedented and ethically committed filmmaking method in which survivors could safely question and confront powerful perpetrators.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Oppenheimer demonstrates the scope of a collaborative approach to documentary- making. Working closely with a family of survivors, he creates powerful, moving mise-en-scènes that draw the viewer into the reality of their lives. Mixing visual poetry with unadorned naturalism he develops an aesthetic that embraces both the routines of daily life as well as the family’s fears, imaginings and dreams. By setting up non-violent encounters between his protagonist Adi and the men responsible for killing his brother, he opens up new possibilities for filming with perpetrators of mass violence.
The Look of Silence is widely recognized as a landmark in the history of cinema by innovating documentary exploration of intimacy, trauma and performance, with marked impact in fields of film studies, trauma and genocide studies, law, psychology and philosophy, history and area studies. It has won over 80 international awards, including the Grand Jury Prize and four more awards at Venice Film Festival. Oppenheimer's research has contributed to the US government's declassification of documents detailing its involvement in the Indonesian genocide.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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