Reviews

Recent ground-breaking publications, an internationally award-winning film and a major conference are opening up new truths about Indonesia’s past

Joshua Oppenheimer’s groundbreaking new film raises disturbing questions about why perpetrators of the 1965-66 mass killings still enjoy impunity for their actions

Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing is a bold, disturbing and ultimately unsatisfactory exploration of the place of violence in modern Indonesia

In 2012 significant new information exposed critical truths about the 1965 massacres in Indonesia, but there remain major obstacles to recovery and reconciliation

Dan Lev explains how an outsider became a national hero

Eben Kiksey invites the world to wake up to a crucial struggle unfolding in the Pacific

Essays, reflections and poetry on East Timor, 1999-2010

A bold young painter signals new direction in Indonesian fine art

Jeffrey Winters’ Oligarchy is an epic work of comparative political insight but has little that is new to add to the study of Indonesia’s politics

This silat film breaks the mold

Eva Nourma’s novel provides us with a glimpse into the everyday lives of the Sasak community from Lombok – a group often overlooked in Indonesian literature

Marshall Clark examines how masculinity is imagined in contemporary Indonesia

A new book sheds light on the little studied field of male heterosexuality in Southeast Asia

An important documentary film sharpens our focus on the lives of Jakarta’s urban poor

A new book warns against a simplistic understanding of religion, something that its editor feels the Western media does much too often

Conway presents a collection of oral histories that brings to the forefront the role of women in the resistance movement

Jemma Purdey reveals the inner torment behind the charisma, generosity and enigma of the public man that was Herb Feith

Karen Strassler shows how modern photographic practices played a role in the making of national subjects in postcolonial Java

Two recent edited collections on Indonesian politics assess its democratic merits