Documentaries at JIFFest provide glimpses of Indonesia

Documentaries at JIFFest provide glimpses of Indonesia

By Tam Notosusanto

JAKARTA (JP): It's called The Great Post Road. It's a 1,000
kilometer passage that cuts across the island of Java, from Anyer
to Panarukan. The road was built in early 19th century under the
instruction of Herman Willem Daendels, the governor general of
the Dutch East Indies, to allow smooth transportation of goods
during the colonial era. Connecting a number of Java's cities,
the road exists today as a reliable means of transportation and
communication.

Certainly it takes more than that to attract documentary
filmmaker Bernie Ijdis to use the road as the subject of his
film, Jalan Raya Pos/De Grote Postweg. Ijdis was obviously drawn
to the unsettling aspect of the road's construction: it claimed
the lives of hundreds of local workers forced into a long period
of labor by the colonial government, without proper food and
medication.

To present his thesis, Ijdis uses an unlikely star: Indonesian
novelist Pramoedya Ananta Toer, whose banned books during the New
Order era made him a cult figure in the literary and political
scene. But as the film progresses, the similarities between the
plight of the colonial era laborers and Toer's life as a
political prisoner and a repressed artist become all too clear.

Jalan Raya Pos is among the four documentaries to be screened
at the Jakarta International Film Festival (JIFFest) this week.
Along with Winds of Change, a documentary series depicting life
in several Asian countries, it is a Festival highlight which
offers a look at contemporary Indonesia.

Although the film's premise concerns something that has
happened in the past, Ijdis's material totally belongs in the
present day, as he treks the road from one end to another and
encounters all kinds of local people along the way. He intercuts
it with interviews with Toer and images of the author as he reads
an essay on the Post Road, an essay Ijdis specifically asked him
to write for this film.

This two and a half-hour documentary, however, seems a bit out
of focus. At the end we are left with a skimpy sense of the
multidimensional figure that Toer is, and barely have enough on
the common folk Ijdis interviewed to really root for them. Too
often, his interviewees are not identified, making us wonder
about one middle-aged subject who posits that "it is normal for
people to die during road constructions." And at one stage, the
camera barges into a morgue without any sound reason, leaving us
only with gruesome images that don't really belong.

But Ijdis' film hits the right note with a night shoot of
numerous road workers trying to remedy the impact of a landslide.
Accompanied by Toer's voice-over on the Post Road's doomed
laborers, it's like we are witnessing the actual construction a
century ago. Ijdis's soundbites from the common, often low-income
people are also priceless, especially when he interweaves them
with an interview with an unsuspecting young Surabayan hotel
owner as he dines at a posh restaurant, describing his good and
fortunate life.

Close-ups of the common folk are also the strength of Winds of
Change, a series produced by an Australian film company in
collaboration with filmmakers from Indonesia, Hong Kong and
Vietnam. It comprises nine half-hour films, some of which are
making their Indonesian debut at JIFFest next Friday.

The films were shot between 1998 and 1999 using Digital Video
equipment, and aim to reflect the changes that are sweeping the
region as seen in the lives of some families and individuals.

The Indonesian film directors who contributed to the project,
Srikaton, Mira Lesmana and Riri Riza, are all veterans in this
field, with their own documentary series Anak Seribu Pulau
(Children of a Thousand Islands). The five episodes they came up
with for Winds of Change are the results of their intensive
efforts, following each of their subjects closely and
consistently for several months.

Srikaton directed an episode on the family of Mariman, an
ethnic Chinese man, who is still recovering from the trauma of
the May 1998 riots and is fearfully anticipating the June 1999
election. Another he made is about Tino Saroengallo, a foreign
press "fixer," who benefits from the influx of international
journalists during Indonesia's riotous climate.

His strongest episode, though, has nothing to do with the
country's season of change. It's about Amir, an Ambonese
youngster who came to Jakarta to realize his dream of becoming a
boxing champion. It's a touching little Rocky in documentary
form.

Lesmana also tugs at the heartstrings with her piece on
Sarinem and Darsono, a Jakarta couple who have to make do with
Darsono's meager salary as a security guard. Things are not
looking up for them, especially when their young daughter is
stricken with thalassemia.

But the most powerful episode is clearly Riza's piece on Tuti,
the mother of missing activist Yani Afri. Riza is absolutely
blessed with such an enigmatic figure as his subject. We see how
Tuti, with parents of other missing activists, consistently visit
Military Headquarters to seek the truth about their children,
whom they believe have been kidnapped in covert military
operations.

The film shows Tuti brazenly confronting military personnel
who try to dissuade her efforts. But there are other moments
where we witness her breaking down in frustration at home. Even
the children's song My Balloons becomes a song of heartbreak for
Tuti as she sings it with a granddaughter: "My green balloon
bursts/leaving my heart in sorrow/I only have four balloons
now/I'll hold on to them tight."