Five shorts join film festival in Singapore

By Gotot Prakosa

JAKARTA (JP): Five shorts from young Indonesian directors will be screened at the Singapore International Film Festival (SIFF). These films are Novi by Asep Kusdinar, Jakarta 468 by Ari Ibnuhajar, Sebuah Lagu (A Song) by Eric Gunawan, Revolusi Harapan (The Revolution of Hope) by Nanang Istiabudi and Bawa Aku Terbang (Up Where You Fly) by Lono Abdul Hamid.

Novi, 16 minutes in duration, tells the story of a homosexual who lives with his father on a lakeside. The film also was screened at the 1998 Henri Langlois Film Festival in France.

Jakarta 468, which is 13-minutes long, portrays the lives of urban migrants trying to make a living in Jakarta. The film earned citations at the Philadelphia Film Festival and the 1998 Festival of Indonesian TV Films, where it was named best nonfeature television movie.

Revolusi Harapan, which tells the story of an abduction and murder, won citations at the Brno Film Festival in the Czech Republic and the Bruxel Film Festival in Belgium.

Sebuah Lagu, a 15-minute film about a young man who studies under a traditional musician, is Eric's latest work, which he made as an assignment at the School of Film and Television at the Jakarta Arts Institute.

Bawa Aku Terbang, 13-minutes long, tells the story of a child who wishes to set himself free from his broken family in a slum area in Jakarta. This film was made in late 1998.

Indonesia's participation in the Singapore festival, which is quite prestigious in Southeast Asia, is complete with the inclusion of these five shorts. Indonesia also is represented by two feature films, Daun Di Atas Bantal (Leaf on a Pillow) by Garin Nugroho and Kuldesak (Cul-de-sac), an omnibus jointly made by Nan T Achnas, Riri Reza, Mira Lesmana and Rizal Mantovani.

The festival also will present a retrospective of the works of the late Arifin C. Noer. The retrospective will include his earliest work, 1977's Suci Sang Primadona (Suci the Prima Donna) and 1992's Bibir Mer (Mer's Lips).

The 12th Singapore International Film Festival also has on its agenda a program called Special Focus on Indonesia, in which Arifin will be given an equal position with German filmmaker Werner Herzog, whose legendary works also will be screened in a retrospective.

This festival, which will run from April 16 to May 1, will screen over 250 films from Asia and the rest of the world. Films will vie for the Silver Screen Award for Best Asian Feature and Best Singapore Short. Founded by a group of young film fans, this festival is now quite prestigious and attracts filmmakers from across the world.

"Ideally, we hope to establish a community of cinema fans with a process of continuous appreciation," said Phillip Cheah, director of SIFF, which, in its 12th year, has laid the groundwork for creating a love of the cinema by screening alternative works outside the mainstream.

It has begun the long process of striving toward the creation of a strong and lasting love for films among Singaporeans. It is obvious these young people have done a lot to bolster film appreciation and they even have daringly entered political and economic circles.

When organizing the film festival each year, Phillip is assisted by a handful of young people who, despite their informal appearance, work persistently and diligently.

In 1987, the year of SIFF's inception, many problems were encountered by the organizing committee. One of them was tight censorship. One of the requirements for an international film festival truly to be prestigious is that it must be able to allow the participation of various kinds of films, some of them showing nudity and violence or dealing with sensitive political subjects. Such content does not conform to the policy adopted by the Singapore government.

"We would like to make SIFF something like the festival in Berlin or Cannes with an Asian identity," said Gerrey Malone, who has worked with Phillip on the festival from the beginning.

Interestingly, the panel of international judges at SIFF, elected because of their experience in film, must judge both features made by Asian filmmakers and shorts made by young filmmakers from Singapore, a country with a population of some 2.8 million, a great percentage of which are young people who appreciate the cinema.

This festival will spur these young people not only to a love of film, but also to show their creativity by creating their own films. In the long term, the organizers of SIFF would like to see Singapore once again have a film industry, as it did before World War II. "With this festival, we are gradually rebuilding our film industry," Phillip affirmed.

The filmmaker who wins the award for best local short at the festival will be given everything needed for the production of a feature film. Included in this prize is the equipment needed to shoot a movie (on loan), 35mm film donated by Kodak plus funding to cover the expenses of producing a film, including postproduction. Extraordinary indeed.

Thanks to this festival, every year in Singapore there will at least one feature film and scores of shorts being produced.

As a result, we now can see the emergence of a number of promising filmmakers in Singapore, including Eric Khoo, Sandi Tan and Lim Suat Yet. Eric Khoo, who made a feature-length film titled Me Pok Man, has been compared to Indonesia's Garin Nugroho and Malaysia's Uwee Haji Saari.

Last year Time magazine mentioned these three names as Southeast Asia's most promising young filmmakers. Their films have been shown at the Cannes Film Festival, the Berlin Festival and a number of other film festivals across the world, winning citations at a number of the festivals.