3. Trains across Space and Time

Lesbians, transgender women, murderers, and warriors intersect within the stories of two films. The first is Anak Anak Srikandi [Children of Srikandi], a collaboration between queer women in Yogyakarta and German filmmaker Laura Coppens. Srikandi is a character from the Mahabharata, and this transgender women warrior offers a framework to challenge normative gender roles and sexual identities. The movie is a collection of vignettes that engage with different styles and genres, including wayang kulit (or shadow puppetry- one of Indonesia’s oldest forms of performance), to explore how women resist boundaries of gender, sex, religion, and ethnicity. My inquiry is informed by interviews with women puppeteers and my own experience learning to perform the story of Srikandi. By breaking these boundaries, many of these women have lost their home and must travel around the street and countryside. Throughout, train travel is a motif of freedom.

In contrast, there are no actual trains in Marlina Si Pembunuh dalam Empat Babak [Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts] But Marlina's escape across Sumba during the dry season resembles the imagery of American Western films where trains often represented the arrival of something new and dangerous. In this case, Marlina is the dangerous newcomer. She left after murdering a gang of robbers who raped her. Unable to find help at the police, Marlina travels on, and meets the pregnant Nova. They kill another robber who was chasing Marlina and escape to trespass together with the infant. The stories and imagery within these films depend on travel for women to escape their oppression, but they never settle at a home. Both films also depended upon international collaborations and audiences adding another layer to how travel stories make worlds for women.