The Indonesian artist and filmmaker Timoteus Anggawan Kusno works at the intersection of film, history and memory with a particular focus on colonial and dictatorial legacies. His art projects have been exhibited around the world including at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Taipei, Bozar in Brussels and the Gwangju Biennale. His films have screened in Rotterdam, at CPH:DOX in Copenhagen and DOK Leipzig. He received a Locarno Residency in 2024.
What was your starting point for „After Colossus“?
I had been thinking about this film for quite a few years, but only in a scattered, abstract way; more like rough sketches of an idea rather than something concrete. The starting point was when I began my artistic research for my installation art project, exploring the connection between people, colonialism, and tigers in the Indonesian archipelago. That led me to the myth of the weretiger and the ritual of rampog macan, a staged fight between bulls and tigers during the colonial era in Java. Most of this research fed into my art installations, The Death of a Tiger at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (Seoul) and Wounds and Venom I Carry as I Am Running at the Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam), which I worked on between 2017 and 2020.
Then, during the pandemic, I stumbled upon some Pathé news footage from the late 1960s in Indonesia. It showed a staged fight between a lion and a man. Can you imagine? A spectacle like that happening at the time, in the capital city (Jakarta), attended by the foreign minister, guarded by the military, internationally broadcasted, and cheered on by more than a hundred thousand people in a massive stadium. The much-anticipated battle never actually happened, leaving the audience disappointed. The lion refused to fight the wrestler, Bandot Lahardo, for 90 minutes. In the end, they released a bull to fight against the wrestler, who managed to injure Lahardo’s chest.
What struck me was the fact that this staged fight took place in 1968, just three years after Indonesia’s political upheaval and the mass killings of suspected communists—an era where hundreds of thousands were systematically murdered and many also exiled or imprisoned without trial. It also marked the early years of the New Order regime, a dictatorship that lasted over 30 years, a regime defined by widespread violence and leaving so many blind spots in our history. Later, at the end of that dictatorship in the late 1990s, there was another wave of violence: the witchcraft killings, where people believed to be „sorcerers,“ „shamans,“ and anyone accused of „black magic“ were targeted. Those cycles of violence continued, and unfortunately, most of them are still unresolved today, nearly three decades after the regime collapse.
Discovering that footage of what you could call Indonesia’s „modern gladiator“ reignited something for me. It made me revisit those old sketches and ideas, which led me to create a film where the tiger or the weretiger serves as a powerful metaphor for our obscure and turbulent past.
For me, this film is a way to explore those blind spots in our history, to speculate about what’s been suppressed, and to intervene in how we remember. The tiger becomes a symbol to talk INTERVIEW about trauma, violence, and buried truths during the authoritarian regime that resonates with today’s reality.
Do you have a favorite moment in the film? Which one and why this one in particular?
My favorite moment in the film is when the young Rafflesia (a child in his formative years of indoctrination), sits with the “monster,” an older version of himself, on the army hospital bed in the middle of the night. The light outside the window is as bright as day, perhaps from a guard tower or maybe just a figment of their imagination. It’s unclear and uncanny, yet profoundly cathartic, which is what makes it so evocative. This quiet moment, where they simply sit together, doing nothing, speaks volumes. It feels as though the unconscious is reaching out to the self, the past merging with the present. The scene holds so many layers of meaning that are difficult to put into words. Yet every time I revisit it, the moment reveals something beyond what’s immediately visible.
What do you like about the short form?
The short form, with its time limitations, actually gives you a surprising amount of creative freedom. It allows you to experiment with editing, pacing, and how you play with time, moments, and storytelling in a short span. On a practical level, the scale of its production makes it manageable to improvise and play around, turning it into a great space for trying out new ideas. As for the story, I really enjoy the challenge it offers on how to pack (and unpack) complexity into such a brief time, create meaningful shifts, and engage in the most experimental way possible on screen.
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„After Colossus is a deeply obtuse experience, obliquely navigating the horrors of dictatorship through low-res reconstruction, off-hand dialogue, disembodied voices and a mixture of film formats.“
review by Redmond Bacon for Journey into Cinema
„[A]fter the collapse of Indonesia’s dictatorship, a team of researchers discovers a forgotten archive revealing a covert operation that manipulated dreams and memories. Utilising a heady mix of genre tropes and mediums, this dreamlike affair reflects a past that seems lost to us, even though it remains embedded throughout “obsolete” media.“
review by Laurence Boyce for Cineuropa
„Magischer Realismus kennzeichnet wiederum den fiktionalen Kurzfilm After Colossus. Reflektiert werden hier jedoch ganz reelle Ereignisse der indonesischen Vergangenheit, namentlich die Ermordung und Gewaltwelle gegenüber angeblichen Hexern im Jahr 1999 auf der Insel Java, nach dem Zusammensturz des autoritären Suharto-Regimes. Damit reiht sich der Film nahtlos in das Werk Timoteus Anggawan Kusnos ein, das sich insbesondere mit dem Erbe von Diktatur und Kolonialismus beschäftigt. Ein herausfordernder Film, der mit verschiedenen Filmformaten spielt und eine starke Bildsprache besitzt.“
review by Peter Bratenstein für zeitgeschichte online
„In this fiction film, steeped in magical realism and mysticism, formats like Super 8mm, Hi8, Video8, digital 35mm and AI-generated images are employed to reflect on Indonesia’s turbulent past.“
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