Cambodia holds SE Asian Biennial Film Festival
By Marselli Sumarno
JAKARTA (JP): The Cambodian film industry may have reached its nadir as a result of the protracted civil war. And the kingdom of 10 million inhabitants may be "less advanced" than Indonesia, but it is plucky enough to organize an international festival, the Southeast Asian Biennial Film Festival.
The newest of the 200 film festivals worldwide focuses on the works of Southeast Asian moviemakers and will be held every other year. The first festival is in Phnom Penh from March 29 to April 5, 1997.
The festival is competitive. The organizers are the Cambodian Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts, Southeast Asian Embassies, and the French Embassy and Cultural Center in Cambodia. Norodom Sihanouk, the King of Cambodia, is its patron.
The organizing committee says the objective is to gather and compare Southeast Asian cultures through works of fiction, and to facilitate an exchange of views among film professionals in the region. It is also to promote contact between film professionals in Southeast Asia and their counterparts in Europe, mainly France.
Audiences are seeing 12 films from seven Southeast Asian countries including Laos, Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia. Ironically, the host country has not entered a film. Instead it is showing films in the non-competitive Fringe Festival section.
In the competition section, each country can enter a maximum of two films. These have been selected by artistic commissioner, Alain Jalladeau, the director of the Three Continents Film Festival in Nantes, France.
Malaysia has entered Amok (Adman Salleh) and Kaki Bakar (U-Wei Bin Haji Saari). Indonesia is represented by Cemeng 2005, the Last Primadonna (Nano Riantiarno) and Bulan Tertusuk Ilalang (And the Moon Dances, Garin Nugroho).
Indonesia had no other choice than entering the two films produced by the National Film Evaluation Board. Most of its other films are commercial and exploit sex and violence. The one new film with artistic ambitions and which has been promoted on a grand scale, Fatahillah, will finish shooting early this month.
The jury consists of eight members. Chairing the jury has been entrusted to Indonesian actress Christine Hakim. She has experience on the juries of international film festivals such as the Shanghai Film Festival and the 1995 Asia Pacific Film Festival in Jakarta.
Two awards will be presented by the international jury, the Golden Apsara and the Silver Apsara. According to Christine Hakim, as reported by Republika daily, the jury has decided to increase the planned two best section to the five best.
The retrospective section is showing five films with handsome French actor Alain Delon, including For the Skin of a Cop.
Unlike other film festivals, the Biennial also has an exhibition of photographs. Photographs of Rama Surya from Indonesia are on show.
It is said that nearly all the filmmakers in Cambodia have been killed or fled during the Khmer Rouge rule and the 20-year civil war. That is the main cause of the decline of the Cambodian film industry. So, apart from the international objectives the Biennial Festival apparently hopes to resurrect the Cambodian film industry and promote local films.
The problem is that proclaiming a film festival is far easier than maintaining the event, especially if it is international. So far Indonesia has only been able to organize an international film festival with a rotating schedule for its locale, like the Asia Pacific Film Festival and the ASEAN Film Festival. This year Indonesia will be host to the ASEAN Film Festival which will be in Yogyakarta from April 5 to 9, 1997.
Will Cambodia maintain the festival? Let us hope so.