The Northern Illinois University Center for Southeast Asian Studies and Asian American Resource Center, in collaboration with the Graduate Education & Training in Southeast Asian Studies (GETSEA) consortium and Justice in Southeast Asia Lab (JSEALab), is proud to present a screening of Dragon for Sale followed by a discussion with the film’s Director, Producers, and Research Team.  

Dragon for Sale documents the Indonesian government’s “10 New Balis” development project in Eastern Indonesia and attempts to turn Flores and the Komodo Islands into an international tourist destination. The documentary film highlights the darker side of the project’s history, including catastrophic environmental degradation and multiple human rights violations as local populations are forced out of their ancestral homes to make way for resorts and restaurants. The film showcases the resistance movements of local communities striving to create alternative tourism development and conservation plans through an indigenous framework of human-animal kinship and coexistence.  

This simulcast is an in-person event at six leading universities across the United States, and is the first international screening of this groundbreaking documentary since its mid-April release in Indonesia. Join us on May 1, 2023, at the Asian American Resource Center at 5:00pm.