Mayday! May day! Mayday!

In early 2017, the mining corporation Freeport Indonesia laid off several thousand workers from its Grasberg copper mine in Mimika Regency, Indonesia. The miners demonstrated on May Day, inaugurating what would become one of the longest strikes of the 21st century, continuing for over five years now. Despite being nationalised in 2018, the company has refused to recognise the strike, denying workers access to public healthcare and thus causing the death of 97 people.

Yonri Revolt’s politically committed documentary Mayday! May day! Mayday! is a sincere record of the strike told from the point of view of its participants. Combining reportage, talking-head interviews and archival footage, the filmmaker crafts a lyrical portrait of lives in suspension. We see the workers – mostly ethnic Papuans – take up alternate employment to make ends meet, even as they keep up the strike in the face of corporate indifference and police clampdown.

But we also witness quieter moments between the demonstrations: workers brewing coffee, singing karaoke, going to church or just engaging in casual conversation. There is no voiceover giving us the larger picture, no on-screen texts; everything is seen at the workers’ eye level. Mayday! May day! Mayday! is an unassuming work of Imperfect Cinema that bears witness to a movement whose existence has been long denied.

– Srikanth Srinivasan

Trailer

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