Let's Talk About the Film Wonderen uit Pygmy-Land

Overview

1926 marked the Dutch and American colonial expedition to Dutch New Guinea, later documented in Matthew W. Stirling's film By Aeroplane to Pygmyland (1927). Mahardika Yudhas latest film Let's Talk About the Film Wonderen uit Pygmy-Land documents the exhibition, discussions, and informal conversations he staged in Jayapura in August 2025 to revisit the infamous expedition and its lingering repercussions in Papua, Indonesia. In this research sketch, he maps the aesthetics of colonial film and how they continue to infiltrate Indonesian cinema and interpretations of history more than a century later. Yudha reflects on how these decidedly one-sided colonial archives can be used to recuperate lost traces of Papuan heritage and form a new basis for Papuan cinema today.