A good year at the movies for local culture vultures

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.