Monisme
A FILM BY Riar Rizaldi
PRODUCTION GRANT - SPRING 2021
Repressed by the state-sponsored violence, a mystic is determined to stay in his land in the foothill of Mount Merapi. Nothing can change his determination to stay on his land and keep practicing his belief of being one with the mountain. On the other side of the mountain, a volcanologist keeps insisting that the end of the world is near. Gaining knowledge from the earthsensing technology, he declares that mitigation is the only way for humanity to survive from a colossal eruption of Merapi that he predicts. Not far from where volcanologist conducted his research in Merapi, the sand mining industry blooms. One miner contemplates the impact of sand mining and extraction economy for the community, the mountain, and his own psyche.
Monisme is an experimental non-fiction portrait of the ecosystem of human-nature relationship in Mount Merapi in Java—one of the most active stratovolcano on the earth. Formed between factual and fictional, future and past, material and incorporeal, scientific and magic, Monisme reflects the intermingled relationships between people in Mount Merapi: from a mystic who believes that Merapi is a God who gives him life and death, a volcanologist who sees Merapi as a threat to human existence, to a sand miner who treats Merapi as a source of livelihood because it provides him with resources to extract. Monisme trips to the place where actuality is intertwined with myth and legend.