Discovering Pramoedya
POSTCARD
By Adam Gartrell, Indonesia Correspondent
JAKARTA, July 4 AAP – One of the greatest pleasures of living in
Indonesia has been discovering the work of the country’s finest
novelist, Pramoedya Ananta Toer.
I’ve just finished reading Pramoedya’s Buru Quartet, a sweeping
four-book 1500-page semi-fictional epic about Indonesia’s first
tentative steps toward independence.
Set between the 1890s and 1920s in what was then the Dutch East
Indies, the books – This Earth of Mankind, Child of All Nations,
Footsteps and House of Glass – tell the story of Minke, a
well-educated Javanese native.
Read more…
NEW ARTICLE: “Rendra knew on whose side he stood” by Max Lane in Special Issue on Rendra in latest issue of INSIDE INDONESIA. See this issue for articles be several other authors also.
Sydney PEN’s May 2010 edition contains:
“Book bannings spur struggle for free speech in Indonesia” by Max Lane, pp. 4-5
A poem: “The dry eel of Indonesia” by Max Lane, p. 26.
Go to Sydney PEN Magazine click on May, 2010 issue to download PDF copy of magazine.
NETHERLANDS PERFORMANCES OF: THEY CALL ME NYAI ONTOSOROH
The performances will be in Indonesian with English sub-titling.
Van onrechtvaardigheid naar onafhankelijkheid
In dit toneelstuk, gebaseerd op Bumi Manusia (Aarde der mensen) van Pramoedja Ananta Toer, volgen we de levens van Nyai Ontosoroh, haar dochter Annelies (een halfbloed) en haar ‘inlandse’ schoonzoon Minke. Tragische levens, want in Nederlands-Indië was sociale status afhankelijk van de hoeveelheid Europees bloed die door de aderen vloeide. Vier acteurs tonen hoe de onrechtvaardigheid van het koloniale systeem de basis legt voor het Indonesische streven naar onafhankelijkheid.
Regie: Wawan Sofwan \ Tekst: Faiza Mardzoekie\ Bahasa gesproken, Engels boventiteld
Click HERE for more.
For more on the background of Singapore’s music pesona “Max Lane” and his music:
“About The Mim Project
Read more…
It is new and unfamiliar to me too but check out the website http://www.myspace.com/uppmaxlane
It is a site which contains information about and the music of the band “MAX LANE”.
The piece “Pembukaan” uses excerpts from a speech from Pramoedya Ananta Toer
Tjidurian 19, directed by Lasja Susatyo and M. Anduh Aziz, screned Jakarta, November 17, 2009
This film is about some of the people who were leading writers and artists in the Peoples Cultural Institute (LEKRA) in the 1960s. LEKRA was aligned with the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), and like the PKI was banned after 1965. Many of its leading figures were imprisoned for lengthy periods and tortured. Their writings were banned. In fact, they are still banned today even though since 1998 and the fall of Suharto these works have been easier to buy in bookshops.
The film focuses on those LEKRA writers and artists who worker out of the LEKRA office in Jakarta, a house at Jl. Tjidurian.
The film is easy to watch and flows well. The personalities of the various writers come across clearly, often their emotions stirred by memories. The film is also interspersed with clips from newsreel or official government footage from the period before 1965. The focus of the film makes it clear that one purpose of the project was to counter the demonisation of LEKRA writers that took place during the Suharto period and which has a strong legacy. More than 1 million people were murdered; thousands more tortured and imprisoned for up to 14 years without trial. And there still has been no process to either end the demonisation, or to tell the truth about these events to all those who were brought up under the New Order regime who systematically told lies for 33 years. The efforts of the producers, the film-makers and the participants to defy this demonisation should be supported by all. However, I think the dominant framework in which this de-demonisation takes place does not make good political education. Read more…
The first event at the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival that I was scheduled to speak at was the Tribute to Rendra, being held in the evening of the first day, immediately after the opening ceremony. Rendra, one of Indonesia’s most interesting, active, prolific and political playwrites and poets, had died a few weeks earlier at age 72.
I was asked to speak for just seven minutes or so. I had met earlier with the organisers of the event and also asked them to arrange to use a tape recording I had of one of pre=”of “>Rendra’s most dramatic poetry readings back in 1978. It was at the open air theatre in the Taman Ismail Marzuki (TIM) at the Jakarta Arts Centre, which could seat (and stand) a few thousand people. It is gone now, replaced by an enclosed theatre that seats about 400 hundred. In 1978 Rendra was in the vanguard of protest against social injustice and military dictatatorship. He was arrested the day after that 1978 poetry reading and spent almost a year in jail. Besides myself, and the tape recording (which had been made by Professor Doug Miles, an Australian anthropologist, who had been in the audience in 1978), there were to be other speakers and performers.
Read more…
The Thinker: Joesoef Was Right
Monday was Independence Day, the anniversary of the proclamation of independence by Sukarno and Hatta and the beginning of a four-year struggle by millions of Indonesians to prevent a colonial army from seizing back the land they had plundered for 350 years. “ Merdeka atau mati! ” (freedom or death!) was the cry of the day, and many did die, killed by the bullets of the Dutch army. “Better to go to hell than live under colonialism again!” was the slogan written on the trams and buses of Batavia.
“Merdeka”. It means freedom, and that was the great victory for the Indonesian people: freedom from colonial rule. But it was not the end of the struggle for freedom in its fullest sense.
Read more…
by Max Lane
14 September, 2006
On April 20 2004 in a gala ceremony in New York the American PEN Center honoured Indonesian publisher, Joesoef Isak, with the 2004 Jeri Laber Freedom to Publish Award. The award was given to Joesoef Isak in recognition of his long record of courageous publishing during the years of the Suharto dictatorship in Indonesia. Joesoef isak is not just a courageous publisher, he is one of Indonesia’s finest intellectuals who has been at the forefront of a cultural guerrilla war to win back for Indonesians their own history, stolen from them during the 332 years of dictatorship.
In April 2005, Joesoef was awared the Australia PEN Kenealy Award.
Joesoef Isak at the PEN Sydney event where he was awarded the Australian Pen Keneally Award, April, 2005. He is with authopr Thomas Keneally and publisher and broadcaster, Brian Johns. Brian Johns waspublisher at Penguin books and was responsible for Penguin decideing to publish This Earth of Mankind in English.
Read more…
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