Still: Selling A Colonial War - In-Soo Radstake

Dutch audiences may be disturbed by aspects of In-Soo Radstake’s new feature documentary Selling A Colonial War** (a world premiere in IDFA’s International Competition), which looks at the Indonesian War of Independence (1945-1949). It is very frank in its account of Dutch propaganda, so-called police actions and what some saw as war crimes and government cover-ups in Indonesia. 

Radstake, born in Seoul, comes from a Korean background. Adopted as a baby by a Dutch couple, he explored his family background in his 2006 feature Made in Korea: A One Way Ticket Seoul-Amsterdam? He is a journalist and producer as well as a director.

“I’ve done quite a lot of work on my own Korean background and also on colonialism in the west. [But] I actually realised I didn’t know enough of what was going on in the east,” he says. “I have an Indo-European girlfriend and two children, who are Korean and Indo-European, therefore I thought I should know more about their background.”

Back in 2017, Radstake was sharing offices in Rotterdam with producer Nadadja Kemper of Holland Harbour. They were keen to work together. Nadadja had produced two documentaries on the Indo-European experience during and after World War II. She asked In-Soo to have a look at ten oral history interviews that her company had conducted with a handful of very old war veterans who had served in Indonesia. 

“What struck me was that they all used the same terminology when they were describing their experiences. They all were thinking they were going to be fighting against the Japanese. They would be liberators. They would create order and peace.”

That is not how it turned out. They were being dragged into a colonial war. After Radstake intensified his research he stumbled onto the records of the military information services. “That’s when we dropped into this rabbit hole of propaganda and realised how complex this history is,” he says.

The film includes testimony from many experts as well as large amounts of archive footage.  Nonetheless, the director keeps the story flowing. Audiences won’t feel they are suffering from information overload. Radstake has a very distinctive and engaging way of shooting interviews, keeping in moments when the experts lose their thread or can’t quite remember a date.

“Although this is about history, I really tried not to make a historical documentary,” Radstake says of his fluid and freewheeling approach to often dense subject matter.

He was determined to make the interviewees (who include leading Dutch politician Ben Bot and Irish academic Paul Doolan) accessible and human.

The director steeped himself in the history of the period. To him, everything was fresh. The experts, though, were being asked to talk about books and articles they had written sometimes decades before. On occasion, they needed his help to remember key facts. He then instructed the crew to record not just the experts’ testimony but also the moments before and after, when he was talking to them. “Because it was so complex and so serious, I really wanted to put some air in it,” the director says of the light-hearted interludes when interviewees slip up or speak out of turn. 

The editing process was “a nightmare.” At times, Radstake felt lost in the maze. He started cutting by himself because only someone who knew the story as well he did would understand how and where all the different pieces fitted together. After four months or so, he began working in tandem with a professional editor. He had 70 days budgeted to pay the editor, but this money soon ran out. 

“At that point, I picked it up myself.” He was working “Kobe Bryant-style,” putting in 16 and 17-hour days. The moment he had a few minutes he was happy with, he would send it to the producers who gave him notes. But little by little the cut came together, and Radstake realised he had a film which would show Dutch colonial history in a light that many viewers will never have seen before.

San Fu Maltha’s Periscoop is handling the Dutch release of the film.

IDFA takes place on November 8 - 19. For more information, click here. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
*Film is supported by the Netherlands Film Fund
**Film is supported by the Netherlands Film Fund and Production Incentive