Arnold Ap, curator of the Loka Budaya Museum and a Papuan cultural practitioner, and his friends formed Mambesak Group in 1978. A cross-arts group that serves as a forum for Papuan artists. They research and curate Papuan cultural objects and knowledge ranging from music, visual arts, choreography, objects and oral literature. This knowledge is then distributed through art shows, museum collections and radio broadcasts. As a result, Papuans, who have just integrated with Indonesia in 1969, had their collective identity awaken.

Unfortunately, it died out when Arnold Ap was killed by the military in 1984.

People from all over Papua introduced music and dance from their tribe to Arnold to be performed by Mambesak, for us this is a form of awareness of shared identity, collaboration and participation in Arnold’s production methods. Currently, cultural strategy pioneered by Arnold has developed into an implicit ideology in Papua called Mambesakologi. Mambesakologi was born from the cumulative of various Papuan cultural, social and political variables and a method to survive and out from modernism’s dead end. This ideology is a method of finding a way to return to ancestral lands that have been invisible, covered by oppressions. The alienation of Papuans from their identity makes them think that modernism, which mystifies ancestral heritage, has failed because it gave birth to various crises- identity, economic until recently, health. History, in the sense of periodization is outdated and irrelevant, so we consider it is necessary to look at pre-historic eras: what was passed down by the ancestors, as a method to envision a better future for the world. Arnold, together with Mambesak have found that ancestral path. This path has now been taken by many young people in Papua – and we, as filmmakers feel compelled to present this path to the world.