Filmmaking with archival material creates new spaces, new cinematic possibilities and offers a variety of artistic creations to deal with the conception of truth. How to visualize the blind spots of national narratives was the question that Timoteus Anggawan Kusno and Juanjo Pereira faced when deconstructing their observations of national approaches to colonial and authoritarian legacies. The two filmmakers from Indonesia and Paraguay respectively, found cinematic answers in very different artistic ways.

Timoteus Anggawan Kusno is an Indonesian artist-filmmaker whose work questions the intersection of fiction, history, and memory in relation to colonial and dictatorial legacies. After Colossus reflects on the mass hysteria over the killings of alleged sorcerers following the collapse of Suharto’s authoritarian regime in 1999. A group of researchers discovers a sack of mysterious documents. As they sift through its contents—unsettling reports, enigmatic photographs, and fragmented recordings—they gradually piece together a hidden story: a secretive military project in which rural children were taken and subjected to covert experiments and indoctrination. Kusno’s fiction, steeped in magical realism and mysticism, employs formats like Super 8mm, Hi8, Video8, digital 35mm, and AI-generated images to reflect on Indonesia’s turbulent past.

Under the Flags, the Sun, by Juanjo Pereira was reconstructed from 120 hours of archival footage found in Paraguay and abroad. During its development and production, this national feature film attracted a great deal of international interest, standing out at industry events in Canada, Portugal, Spain, Mexico, Argentina, Chile and Brazil, and receiving the support of important national and international film funds. The production process involved 10 countries and was broadcast in six languages, opening our eyes to lived experiences and building bridges from the past to the present.

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