feature film by Wendelien van Oldenborgh
Even in our best efforts to decolonize our gaze, the Dutch typically isolate their relationship with Indonesia from the power relations in the Asian region and maintain a national lens regarding this ex-colony. The film Lyrical Vengeance (working title) draws on five historical women intellectuals whose lives and work have a relationship with the Netherlands, Indonesia, and Japan to move beyond the binary victim-perpetrator narrative. The film reveals links and contradictions in the lives and work of these women that often go unnoticed in their individual historicizations, and in the larger narratives of their time.
Themes of intersectional feminism, gender variability, (inter)nationalism and sovereignty emerge by zooming in on these five women who were active as writers, filmmaker or artist in the first half of the last century. These themes play a major role today in a rapidly changing world, and the film uses a historical perspective to also shine light on contemporary ideals and opposing forces.
By reflecting on complex emancipatory processes in times of major political power shifts with an intergenerational and multilingual cast of non-professional actors, the film aims to articulate new forms of solidarity.
Wendelien van Oldenborgh is a visual artist who is known for film works reflecting on the present through the lens of historical processes, events or figures. Lyrical Vengeance is Wendelien’s first feature-length film specifically created to be watched in a cinema. The project is selected for developing by De Verbeelding, a collaboration between Netherlands Film Fund and Mondriaan Fund.
