First Sight: A Queer Indonesian Love Story at Connelly Theater

Based in 1994 Jakarta, Sari is an aspiring singer hoping to achieve her dreams of stardom through her karaoke performances at her best friend Fina’s parties. One of her song numbers leads to a chance encounter with Lisa, a determined journalist, and the two become a hot item in Jakarta’s lesbian party scene. But when Sari is forced to flee from the after effects of Suharto’s U.S-backed dictatorship, the two must adapt their love to conform to the pressures of survival and migration. Based on Indonesian lesbians who had to conform to cis-heteronormative nuclear family dynamics during the late 1990s and early 2000s migration to Queens, New York City, First Sight is a look at the long-censored Indonesian lesbian zine movement, generational differences on what it means to be out, and what it means to love when everything else gets in the way.