Monisme
Fall Grants 2022 - Post-Production Stage
Riar Rizaldi / Feature Documentary or Essay / Indonesia, Qatar / 2023 / 115 min / Original Language: Indonesian / Interests: Documentary, Mystery
Synopsis
Repressed by state-sponsored violence, a mystic is determined to remain on his land in the foothills of Mount Merapi. Nothing can change his determination to stay and keep practising his belief of being one with the mountain. On the other side of the ridge, a volcanologist—gaining knowledge from earth-sensing technology—declares that mitigation is the only way for humanity to survive the colossal eruption of Merapi that he predicts. Not far from where the volcanologists conducted their research, the sand mining industry blooms. While documented by a filmmaker, one miner contemplates the impact of sand mining and the extraction economy on the community, the mountain, and his psyche. Meanwhile, in Merapi, everything is connected to the presence of paramilitaries.
Formed between factual and fictional, future and past, material and incorporeal, scientific and magic, ‘Monisme’ reflects the intermingled relationships between people in Mount Merapi. Constructed through a spirit of collective filmmaking, the film trips to a place where actuality is intertwined with myth and legend.
Credits
- Director
- Riar Rizaldi
- Producer
- B.M. Anggana
- Production Company
- New Pessimism
About the Director
Riar Rizaldi is an artist and filmmaker. He works predominantly with the medium of moving images and sound, both in the black-box of cinema settings and in spatial presentation as installation. His artistic practice focuses mostly on the relationship between capital and technology, labour and nature, worldviews, genre cinema, and the possibility of theoretical fiction. His works have been shown at various international film festivals (Locarno, IFFR, Viennale, BFI London, Cinema du Reel, Vancouver, etc.) as well as at NTT InterCommunication Center Tokyo, Centre Pompidou Paris, Times Museum Guangzhou, Istanbul Biennial, Venice Architecture Biennale, Biennale Jogja, and National Gallery of Indonesia amongst others. His short film 'Tellurian Drama' (2020) won the Silver Screen Award for Best Southeast Asian Short Film at Singapore International Film Festival 2020 and was awarded Honourable Mention at DOK Leipzig 2021.