A good year at the movies for local culture vultures

By Jane Freebury

From Dec. 28, The Jakarta Post will present retrospective articles on film, the performing arts, fashion and other cultural events held in 1996.

JAKARTA (JP): Peering at the small print, you would have known about it. A glance away from the advertisements and towards the Post's listings of cultural events was all that was necessary.

They were here in 1996. These were quality foreign films with a track record. It was good cinema, even classic cinema, that was shown throughout the year on 16mm screens in Jakarta, and even on one exceptional occasion on the 35mm screens at Century 21 in Senayan. Not the norm, but a hoped-for precedent.

The cultural centers of Jakarta provide alternative venues for films outside the commercial cinema market. Lots of films with critical credentials were screened here this year, by the British and French cultural centers (the British Council and Center Culturel Francais (CCF), at the German cultural venue (the Goethe Institute) and also at the Japan Foundation, as regular screening programs or special events.

Early in the year, under the auspices of UNESCO and with sponsorship from local businesses, the first international festival of women's films was held in Jakarta. Featured were films bringing to the fore things that matter to women from around the world: Sweden, Australia, India, Japan, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Germany and Indonesia. It was highly successful, with audiences occasionally spilling over the seating at Erasmus Huis.

Enthusiasm for this event continues to prevail, and planning is underway for a second festival in 1997.

Seasons at the British Council kept quickly changing during the year. From wicked Alfred Hitchcock to grandiloquent David Lean, from social observer Mike Leigh to brilliant stylist Terry Gilliam, in the council's director series. It was year-long cinema at the Widjojo Center auditorium, with no letup and the chance to attend a really good movie at least once a week.

There was a wide range of choices, from Ealing's The Lavender Hill Mob, to Kenneth Branagh's Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, from Richard Attenborough's Gandhi and Shadowlands to Terry Gilliam's Brazil, from Hitchcock's Secret Agent to Mike Leigh's Four Days in May. The first-class program concludes this month, with Four Weddings and a Funeral (Mike Newell). Yes, why not? Go and see it one more time!

The CCF made another strong commitment to cinema in 1996, with its regular round of classics, including Belle du Jour (Luis Bunuel), Zero de Conduite (Jean Vigo), Le Genou de Claire (Eric Rohmer), Traffic (Jacques Tati), Le Lieu du Crime (Andre Techine) and Celine et Julie Vont en Bateau (Jacques Rivette).

In April, a program of Indonesian films were shown back-to- back: Oeroeg (Edi Baker), Langitku Rumahku (Slamet Rahardjo), Amok (Joel Farge) and Cemeng 2005 (N. Riantiarno). Among these was a prize-winning film from Alain Corneau Tous les Matins du Monde (1991). With Gerard Depardieu in two roles and his son Guillaume in one, this highly unusual film about a 17th century master musician and his protegee, with original compositions by both artists woven into the fabric of the film, was exceptional and eccentric filmmaking.

The Goethe Institute offered a busy program of special events throughout the year, in addition to one or two German films on its program every month. You can always count on the German films to be challenging, in terms of content. They often broach the political, and invite viewers to consider problems in German society while reflecting on those in their own. The preoccupations of these films ring with a universality that is inescapable and throw up a challenge to make a fearless comparison.

In 1996, the Goethe Institute screened a season of films entitled "The Familiar and the Foreign" with a collection, short and feature length, that harks back to events of recent German history. The films included the 1994 Academy Award winning short Black Rider, or the Fare Dodger, by Pepe Danquart. Mid-year, the institute screened a season of distinctly political films by Reinhard Hauff about the Baader-Meinhoff terrorist trials, the clash of the two Germanys, and questions of social and individual responsibility. Other events of the year included a documentary season and a television workshop, and an innovative collection outside prime time from the German public television networks.

A major four-day festival was held in November at Plaza Senayan, with French films made during the last three years. Prepared especially for Indonesia, the festival was aimed at the local audience, with all films in the general category subtitled in Indonesian. However, the "young cinema", subtitled in English, was accessible to this viewer.

Marion Vernoux's Personne ne m'Aime! (Nobody Loves Me!) would have been a good candidate for the Women's Film Festival last March. It was about sisters, united only in their need for revenge against their husbands, who take to the road in a van. There was nothing so sexy as the Thunderbird convertible of Thelma and Louise. Nor was there a Ridley Scott camera to "love" these older women. Instead, they were observed through the sharp eye of a "sister", director Vernoux.

In Personne ne m'Aime characters address the camera directly, in an invitation to join the rag-tag crew of fellow travelers that the sisters gather around them. It is, though it struggles against itself, a comedy. One of the best moments is when the sister who lives in pink, never indulging herself with more than dry toast, or drinks (save herbal tea), is found to have a pistol hidden in her bag.

Jacques Audiard"s Regarde les Hommes Tomber was another idiosyncratic film in the "young" category. This film, tipping the scales in the other direction, had something to say about male bonding and the male condition. A sad-sack salesman, funny despite himself, is tailing a pair of assassins: a young man emotionally amortized by video games, but able to do the killing and the stubbly old Jean-Louis Trintignant character to whom he is devoted.

This would have been an odd one for audiences here, with its moment of absolute silence (no, not an error in projection), with its editing idiosyncrasies in slow fades and humorous jump cuts. Bleak, black and mordantly funny.

Comedy features at a festival of the latest (nothing older than 1994) in Japanese films in mid-December. Six socially relevant comedies set in the 1990s, include Furumaya Tomoyuki's This Window is Yours (a tale of platonic love that was an award winner at the Vancouver Film Festival), Watanabe Takayoshi's Ghost Pub, reputedly one of the best among local comedies in 1994, and Uneasy Encounters (Scared People) in Japanese by Wada Makoto.

Once again, another year came and went without a festival of Indonesian films. But there were some signs of life. Films are being made: producer Johan Tjasmadi's Fatahillah: The Battle of Jayakarta, an Indonesian-French coproduction due to begin in 1997; and filming for Tropic of Emerald (in a sense also a coproduction, but essentially Dutch, with Indonesian input) completed on location in October 1996.

In television productions, Christine Hakim has agreed to work in a television serial, Bukan Perempuan Biasa, directed by Jajang Noer. Garin Nugroho produced important work in vastly different observations on Indonesian children, Anak Seribu Pulau and (for Japan) Dongeng, Kancil Tentang Kemerdekaan. Next year, he will be documenting tourism in Bali for German television. There is more in the pipeline.