Amsterdam | Film and heritage between Indonesia and the Netherlands
From April 2026 there are a number of events in Amsterdam that explore the relationship between Indonesia and the Netherlands, from reinterpreting colonial film to a transnational film collaboration that reshapes narratives around restitution.
Eye(s) Open exhibition, 3 April–6 September 2026
In the exhibition Eye(s) Open, 11 artists respond to Eye’s collection of some 2,000 colonial-era films from formerly occupied regions in Indonesia and Suriname. Highlights include the Indonesian artist Riar Rizaldi, who offers a new perspective on phantom ride films, a genre from the early twentieth century in which a camera mounted on a moving locomotive records the passing landscape. In his film installation Tropenkolder, Rizaldi uses re-enactment to bring to life the experience of a group of Javanese railway workers whose unseen labour made such films possible. Eye(s) Open – New Perspectives on Colonial Film Heritage is accompanied by a programme of films, talks and events held in the cinemas
‘Undesirables’ performance lecture, 16 April 2026
During this performance lecture artist filmmaker Sabine Groenewegen shares from her ongoing research on the Dutch colonial plantocracy. Groenewegen's research is a furtherance of her artwork Surrounding Silences that was on display in the exhibition Imprints at Wereldmuseum Amsterdam in 2024-2025. In the early 20th century Dutch planters founded a private secret service in Sumatra to surveil, intimidate and exile those they labelled as ‘undesirables’. Their reports reveal anxiety about union organisers, women’s movements and satay vendors passing revolutionary messages. Using the archival documents against the grain, the artist unearths resistance to racial capitalism despite attempts to suppress it.
Beyond Provenance: Restitution Seen Through Artistic Collaboration, 18 April 2026
The Research Center for Material Culture at the Wereldmuseum invites ‘Beyond Provenance’, a transnational film collaboration, to screen and discuss its three films that artistically explore repatriation of looted objects. The project responds to the Dutch government’s 2023 announcement of its intent to return artefacts taken from Indonesia. It examines how film and collaboration can reshape narratives around restitution—embracing not only what happened but also what could happen when these objects return.