AMBON A RETURN TO PEACE

A Return to Peace (Beta Mau Jumpa) focuses on the efforts of Ambonese – and especially Ambonese women – to return to a life of relative peaceful co-existence today, some twenty years after the worst of the Maluku violence. The film juxtaposes flashbacks on the Ambon violence with person-centered accounts of the efforts of men and, especially, women to bring about some measure of reconciliation across faith traditions. This moving documentary account has won broad acclaim among viewers in Indonesia.

This is the second documentary in the Indonesian Pluralities series.

About Indonesian Pluralities

Indonesian Pluralities is a film, print, and multimedia project for educators, journalists, NGOs, and policy analysts on cultural and religious diversity, democracy, and civic co-existence in contemporary Indonesia. It explores Indonesia’s religious and ethnic plurality in both its rich promise and ongoing challenges.

This film series looks at the everyday relations between Muslim and Christian communities in a post-conflict area of Ambon; the struggle for equality among indigenous communities whose beliefs and rituals are not fully recognized but slowly secures better legal recognition; the turmoil created by a variety of political Islamic groups; the achievements and controversies surrounding the place of Muslim women in modern Indonesian society; and the public space of religious education on which the future of pluralist democratic Indonesia will depend.

The series portrays Indonesia as a dynamic site of great promise and disputes about what Indonesia is, and what it should best become. This film series is, in short, the story of unfinished but hopeful Indonesia.

The films, which will be made available over the course of 2019-2020, are the product of collaboration between the Center for Religious and Cross-cultural Studies (CRCS), Graduate School, Gadjah Mada University; the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University; and the WatchdoC Documentary. The project was made possible through the generous support of the Henry Luce Foundation, New York.