Circulating Vibrant Matters – Colonialism & the Media

Colonialism continues to reverberate in the present, leaving behind traces of its exploits through images, archives, and inherited narratives. This triple bill examines how media functioned as both instrument and record of the empire, and how contemporary filmmakers reclaim and rework these materials to confront that legacy. Together, the films reveal colonialism not as a closed chapter of history, but as an enduring system whose material and visual logic remain embedded in trade routes, desire, and memory. Moving between Dutch institutional records, timber routes to Rotterdam, and rubber’s transnational afterlives, these films trace the intertwined flows of commodities. Archival footage is recontextualised and reintroduced into the very spaces shaped by extraction, exposing how plantation economies forged racialised landscapes and global hierarchies that persist in contemporary life. Jati Goes to Rotterdam (2015, Otty Widasari) Director: Otty Widasari Runtime: 16 mins Country: Indonesia Prized for its durability and beauty, jati, or teak wood, fuelled the expansion of plantations and the extraction economies that connected Indonesia to Europe. Part of Otty Widasari’s larger project Ones Who Looked the Presence (2015–2020), the short film contemplates the histories of Indonesia’s natural resources and their exploitation under colonial trade. Opening with footage of timber transportation, Jati Goes to Rotterdam repeatedly pulls back to reveal the image as a recording within a recording. Moving across locations in Rotterdam, Widasari reintroduces the archival documents of extraction into the spaces that once received these resources. Tropic Fever (2022, Mahardika Yudha, Perdana Roswaldy, Robin Hartanto Honggare) Runtime: 60 mins Country: Indonesia, Netherlands Language: English with English subtitles Composed entirely of archival and found footage shot by colonists between 1890 and 1930, Tropic Fever scrutinises the colonial project in the Dutch East Indies through maps, photographs, and films of sprawling tobacco and rubber plantations inhabited by indigenous workers and their white-clothed overseers. Based on the semi-autobiographical book by László Székely, Tropic Fever dissects the racialised landscapes forged by colonial plantations and their afterlives in contemporary society. Emergencies (2025, Bart Seng Wen Long) Runtime: 15 mins Country: United Kingdom, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore Language: English with English Subtitles Rating: NC16 An eclectic recollection of a colonial propaganda film and memories of his former Malaysian playmate, Emergencies uncovers memories across time — from European planters and indentured labourers to communist insurgents and contemporary rubber fetishists. Through these overlapping histories, the film reveals how a single resource has shaped lives across generations.