BIS funding leads to Academy Award nomination

A documentary from an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded project at the University of Westminster has been nominated for an Oscar.

‘The Act of Killing’, a documentary which came about through an AHRC-funded project has been nominated for an ‘Oscar’ by the Amercian Academy of Motion Picture Arts in Los Angeles.

The film, part of the AHRC-funded Genocide and Genre research project at the University of Westminster explores the Indonesian genocide of the 1960s, telling the story of a group of former members of Indonesian death squads being challenged to revisit and re-enact their earlier crimes.

It focuses particularly on one individual, Anwar Congo, whose initial enthusiasm for the re-enactments slowly gives way to outward expressions of unease and remorse.

The project was supported by a large research grant from the AHRC.

To mark the occasion, the AHRC has launched a short film of an interview with the film’s director Joshua Oppenheimer. Speaking in the film about the many awards and nominations received by The Act of Killing, the director says:

It’s wonderful in two ways. When a film is difficult and has been made in a fundamentally different way and actually breaks through and gets mainstream acceptance that opens a space for more adventurous, more intelligent, more experimental work. It opens a way for film-makers to stand on the shoulders of the The Act of Killing and to try new things.

The awards are also a sign of the willingness of audiences to say, this is about all of us. This is not a case study of the depths of depravity that human beings are capable of on the other side of the world… This is a mirror to all human beings about the nature of impunity, about how we live with guilt, about how we create our world through storytelling.

Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)