Verloren Banden: Moluccan Footage, Articulating Perspectives in Postcolonial Netherlands
Ais Leuhery, Jeftha Pattikawa, Tony Markus Sacharias, Malou Sumah

Jeftha Pattikawa explores the importance of self-representation and community archives in retelling and complicating the power dynamics that inform the stories we tell about Moluccans in the Netherlands. Verloren Banden is an archive and audiovisual project by and for this community whose position is strongly impacted by colonialism. The footage is unique in two ways: the images show the resilience of the Moluccans in postcolonial Netherlands and the visual material was made by the community itself.
The project uncovers and visibilizes the everyday life and struggles of members of the community in the late 1970s in Vaassen, the Netherlands. Nationwide, the image of Moluccans was influenced by resistance, protest, radicalization and violence. The Moluccan youth back then unconsciously recorded this period of communal growth and resilience with their cameras. It is a small and local history, yet represents a larger Moluccan perspective.

Jeftha Pattikawa is a senior advisor at the National Archives of The Netherlands whose work is focused on inclusion, accessibility and decolonization. He’s the founder of Verloren Banden, an audiovisual community archive. Pattikawa is a photographer and documentary filmmaker, his films were screened at amongst others the Smithsonian Mother Tongue Film Festival and Garifuna Indigenous Film Festival. He’s a member of the NIOD/KNAW Science Committee and Europeana advisory board.

With: Malou Sumah (Archief Maluku), Ais Leuhery (Verloren Banden, Wijkraad Vaassen Berkenoord2) and Tony Markus Sacharias (Multidisciplinary Artist)