JALAN RAYA POS - The Great Post Road

Bernie Ijdis
Netherlands 1996 | 155 Min. | 35 mm, OmeU

The great Post Road, built last cen­tu­ry by the Dutch set­tlers at the expense of many human lives, covers a thou­sand kilo­me­ters on the island of Java. The camera skims along the road, serv­ing as eyes and ears through­out this jour­ney now for­bid­den to Pramoedya Ananta Toer, one of the most famous con­tem­po­rary Indone­sian writ­ers and former polit­i­cal pris­on­er now under house arrest. Toer man­aged to write an essay about the road for this film. This film is both, the por­trait of a man in a dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion and a jour­nal of a trip reflect­ing the marks of coloni­sa­tion and the present-day context.