Voyage

India’s spices and plants have been an attraction to  countries across the globe for centuries.  There was a succession of Europeans who traveled to India in the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in search of Indian spices and medicinal plants.
One such troupe in the 17^th century was led by Dutchman Hendrik Van Rheede who was the Dutch governor of the Cochin state of India at that time. Van Rheede conceived the  Hortus Malabaricus, meaning Garden of Malabar. It is a comprehensive treatise that deals with the medicinal properties of the flora in Malabar state of Kerala in India. The work was compiled and edited over 30 years by a team of nearly a hundred Dutch physicians and scientists including some  Indian scholars. Originally written in Latin, it was published from Amsterdam during 1678-1693.

The film voyage revisits this centuries old connection between India and the Netherlands.

Voyage is the story of Dutchman Alex Monicker.  He has dreams of strange images since childhood.  When arrested for dealing in drugs, he begins to concentrate on the sun in the morning, the only bright point of his dark prison life. He begins to see clear images of his dreams on the sun. He draws these on canvas. The picture he draws at each stage of his life is similar but not the same. After his release from prison, he begins his search to find connections to his dreams and the geometrical designs he draws. That leads him to Linda, a dancer and the woman he falls in love with. The tattoo on the hip of Linda is similar to Alex’s designs. One thing leads to another and he discovers that he is the grandson of Marcus Monicker, the only one who survived the troupe of Van Rheede on their discovery of Indian medical science.  

Join the mystical journey of a Dutchman who unravels his connections to India and unknowingly follows the Indian philosophy of awakening the different forms of energy within us.