Jalan Raya Pos or ‘the Great Post Road’ tells the story of the writer (Pramudya Ananta Tur), a road and the history of a country, Indonesia. The film is different from other recent films about Indonesia: the story is told from an Indonesian perspective and is entirely contemporary. It doesn’t even use archive material. The Great Post Road is a road of one thousand kilometres across the island of Java. The road was laid early last century by the Dutch and cost many lives among the ‘little people’ who were forced to work in on it. Pramudya Ananta Tur (1925), one of Asia’s most important contemporary writers, put a lot of effort into writing an essay especially for this project about the Post Road, despite a lengthy case of writer’s block. Because Tur is ‘ex-tapol’ (ex-political prisoner), he is restricted in his freedom of movement, so the makers acted as his ears and eyes on the journey along the Post Road – a journey that Tur himself is not allowed to make. Using encounters along the way, social and historical parallels become apparent between the colonial era and the present situation. At the same time, the film provides a portrait of Pramudya, and as the film progresses the grimness of his situation and that of his country becomes apparent.
