Asia still under-represented in Paris documentary festivals

Asia still under-represented in Paris documentary festivals

By Kunang Helmi-Picard [10 pts ML]

PARIS, France (JP): At the recent Academy Awards in the United
States, the Oscar for the best feature documentary was awarded to
I am a Promise by Susan and Alan Raymond.

Despite their preference for the annual Cinema du Reel
documentary film festival in Paris, which also ended last month,
the couple conquered the limelight in Hollywood with their
riveting story about a devoted school principal determined to
bring equality in education to the impoverished, inner-city
children of North Philadelphia.

The American documentarists' comment about the Cinema du Reel
was, "Here documentaries are treated as ...priorities, unlike the
Academy Awards in America where huge fiction film productions
dominate the screens."

Apart from the 16th Cinema du Reel documentary festival from
March 11 to 20, Paris also played host to the 13th ethnographic
film festival, the Bilan du Film Ethnographique from March 21 to
25, which always follows the first.

Suzette Glenadel, the energetic red-haired director of the
Cinema du Reel, received 550 film applications for the festival
this year, 150 more than last year.

A total of 45 films were selected for the International
Competition and the Panorama of French Production.

Of the selection, Glenadel said, "Woven from memories, time,
anticipation or promise in a quest for meaning and truth, our
images of the `real' are all singular stories intended to reveal
what is universal, to enrich our knowledge and to fight against
amnesia."

This selection was completed by a retrospective of Italian
documentaries of over 100 films by such directors as Fellini,
Visconti, Bertolucci, and De Seta shown together for the first
time in Europe.

Thus Parisian film enthusiasts had an amazing choice of high-
quality documentaries on large-size screens during the festivals
- apart from their daily choice of 400 films in the city.

Among the overwhelmingly serious themes, three films at the
Cinema du Reel stood out due to the underlying humor.

One of them, Metal en Melancholie, which, despite its somber
title, treated the theme of eccentric Peruvian taxi drivers and
their battered old cars in Lima in a poetic manner provoking much
gaiety among audiences.

Its Dutch film-maker Heddy Honigmann went on to win the main
festival award, the French Heritage prize.

The most amusing one was The Lapirovs move to the West, by
Jean-Luc Leon, showing how a Moscow family emigrated to the U.S.
via Vienna, despite bureaucratic tangles and how they came back
to visit their friends in Russia.

Asia

Yet again Asia was under-represented at this festival with
only three films, all by non-Asian film-makers: one by Frederic
Labourasse on an Indonesian school boy; another by Gianfranco
Bosi about Indian boatmen of Benares, and Peter Brosens' film on
Mongolia which won the Joris Ivens prize for a first film.

Mario Simondi, director of the Italian documentary film
festival in Florence, who had just admired Indonesian Gavin
Nugroho's Surat untuk Bidadari, asked The Jakarta Post why
Indonesian documentary and fiction film directors do not send
more contributions abroad, since film enthusiasts in Europe are
waiting to see more works from Asia.

Brazilian jury member Caesar Paes stressed the importance of
this festival for those film-makers from Asia, Africa and Latin
America.

"Since winning an award myself four years ago, I have
considerably less trouble finding financial backing and
distributing my films world-wide."

The 52-minute film on an Indonesian boy, Uria, Child of the
River, was twice shown to appreciative audiences at the Georges
Pompidou Culture Center in Paris.

The director, Labourasse, is no stranger to Indonesia as he
served as cameraman across the archipelago for a series of
television films by the famed marine expert, Jacques Cousteau.

When Labourasse visited Siberut Island in West Sumatra, he
decided to film a Mentawai schoolboy who came from a remote
village on the island and who attended a Catholic school in the
principal village. Uria reaches his school by a strenuous three-
day canoe journey.

Thirteen-year-old Uria is poised between the world of his
parents who recently settled down in a newly founded village
after leading a nomadic life through the rain forest, and the
modern world where money for exchanging goods is a new
experience.

We see an affectionate Uria teaching his father to count
correctly when he returns home for holidays. Although Uria is
Catholic, he still participates in ancient rites because his
father is a dukun (medicine-man).

He wants to return later to help his family and others after
completing his high school education on the main island of
Sumatra like his elder brother.

School scenes contrast with scenes of daily life at home while
the long journey home on the river and through the rain forest is
fully depicted separating the two sections of the film.

After the festival, film-makers, ethnologists and enthusiasts
from all over the world then stayed another week to enjoy the
Bilan du Film Ethnographique, initiated since 1981 by renowned
French ethnologist Jean Rouch.

As in the Cinema du Reel, not only spectators and film-makers
attended, but also television program directors, distributors and
other film professionals eager to discover new talents.

Flores

Films by students as well as by visual anthropologists from
many countries on a variety of subjects such as music, rituals
and artisans are shown in different theme groups before
discussions take place.

From the nostalgic tunes of Parisian accordion music to the
frenzied chants and dances of the Wai Brama tribe in Flores,
Indonesia, from the canoes of Senegal to the story of the last
Yahi Indian of California, tales of the changes in daily or
ritual lives filled the screen.

Timothy Asch's A Celebration of Origins about the rituals of
the Wai Brama tribe celebrating their mythic origins was greeted
with much interest.

Here we are introduced to the problems of upholding
traditional social order in Flores, where the Wai Bramas have to
reconcile tradition, Catholicism and modernization.

The domain of Wai Brama is the largest, and, according to
their myths of origin, the oldest, of the seven ceremonial
domains among the people of the Tana 'Ai region of Flores.

On a final note, both Glenadel, director of the Cinema du Reel
and Rouch, director of the Bilan du Film Ethnographique,
expressed their regrets about the increased use of videotape in
filming.

The process destroys the reflective quality and beauty of 16
millimeter or 35 mm film. Archives have grave storage problems as
video films shot for television purposes only a decade ago are
already fading and have to be restored at great cost.

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