What influence do region, religion, family, education, fashion and politics have on historiography and how history is remembered? How is it passed on to future generations? What history is commemorated? After the independence of Indonesia, president Sukarno ordered colonial statues to be demolished and streets referring to the Dutch to be renamed. Looking forward, the past had to be quickly forgotten. In the Netherlands, colonial memorials were preserved and became controversial. Leitmotif in this first film HMC-JAVA are two Van Heutsz monuments - the existing one in Amsterdam, renamed as the Indië-Nederland monument and the one in Jakarta, demolished in 1953. What does the presence or absence of these monuments mean? How do people commemorate in the absence of memorials or in the presence of controversial statues?