Instruction

The film Instruction taps into the unresolved episode of the Dutch military intervention in Indonesia after the end of WW II, euphemistically called a “police action”. The film casts a group of young cadets from the Royal Netherlands Military Academy reading out and discussing a script composed of authentic material relating to the conflict: personal travelogues, broadcast transcripts and memoirs. Instruction questions the position of an individual in a larger political framework and in a different political and social environment, in a condition where the individual is malleable and even vulnerable, but still under the challenge of ethical responsibility. The film thus performs an instructive function but maintains a certain ambiguity that leaves open questions for a public discussion yet to come.