France's reel deal at second Jakarta French Film Festival
France's reel deal at second Jakarta French Film Festival
By Nicolas Colombant
JAKARTA (JP): The poster for the second Jakarta French Film
Festival on Dec. 10 - Dec. 14 has a bajaj pedicab veering onto
the Carre Richelieu in Paris with the pyramids of the Louvre in
the background.
The scene to be played out at the festival is actually the
other way around, as French cinema arrives on a turf dominated by
the fists of action-packed Hollywood movies and by Tinseltown's
big names in bright lights.
Two categories of movies will be showcased at two different
venues. Nine creme de la creme French features, subtitled in
Indonesian, will be shown at the Taman Ismail Marzuki's Graha
Bhakti Budaya theater. "Youth cinema" is also represented, with
four feature-length films by young French directors at the French
Cultural Center's video room on Jl. Salemba Raya.
The festival travels to Surabaya on Dec. 13, with an evening
screening of three movies at Plaza Surabaya, intertwined with
cocktail breaks of French cuisine. The fare will be a diverse mix
of recent movies, most of them released this year, covering many
of the genres -- love stories, psychological thrillers,
historical panoramas and social sketches -- which make up the
strength of the French moviemaking style.
"By defending our national cinema, we defend all national
cinemas," commented the former cultural counselor of the French
Embassy, Philippe Garnier, before leaving his post after more
than three years in the country. "We have to combat the idea that
globalization means monoculturism.
"Aren't we bored with always the same type of movies? Do not
just sit and watch what the Americans are doing, stand up and
produce your own movies," was Garnier's battle cry when he met
the leading professionals of Indonesia's struggling movie
industry at a seminar on coproductions last year.
Indeed, the underground competing against the forces of the
American Film Exporters Association is not a crowded one. There
are great filmmakers in every country, but rarely do their works
make it outside of repertoire festivals or artsy film houses,
even within their own countries.
India has its musicals with gangsters and forbidden love. Hong
Kong has its martial arts productions and cutting edge black
comedies. Britain has its down-and-out independent movies which
attract cult followings. But only France has truly put in place a
moneymaking industry which regularly churns out quality movies
and familiar faces with international star appeal: Gerard
Depardieu, Juliette Binoche or Catherine Deneuve come to mind.
Truth be told, the industry is largely subsidized. Out of
every movie ticket sold in France, 11 percent goes into the
coffers of a national producer's association. And French movies
have met little success when crossing borders.
Despite the many obstacles, French film entrepreneurs such as
Michel Houdayer, the audiovisual attache at the French Embassy,
continue in their efforts to break the monopoly of U.S.-made
movies.
"Clearly our goal is to create an economic environment which
will be favorable to the distribution of French film," Houdayer
said from his Menteng office, besieged by an array of film reels,
promotional posters and heaps of subtitles in the days leading up
to the festival.
"And the second emphasis is to put on display a festival which
is appealing to the Indonesian public."
The festival is a joint effort of the French Embassy, the
Cultural Center of France and Unifrance Film, the state-supported
body which coordinates the export of the French movie industry
abroad. Similar festivals are organized yearly in Yokohama,
Mexico, Prague, Munich and Hong Kong.
This year's festival will be public-oriented and very much
alive outside of screenings, unlike last year's debut.
"The presentation of the French movies are very important but
they are only the tip of the iceberg in what we are trying to
do," Houdayer explained.
Film directors, actors and producers are being flown over to
meet their Indonesian counterparts. Included among the visiting
dignitaries are actor Jean-Hugues Anglade, whose first movie,
Tonka, which will open the event, and its producer Jean-Francois
Lepetit, who made Three Men and a Baby, which was a remake of his
own French movie, and who visited here last year.
A meeting is being organized between Laurent Allary, the
regional Unifrance delegate based in Tokyo, and Harris Lasmana of
the Subentra Group. Lasmana, the operational director of the
Studio 21 chain, now prevalent in Jakarta's state-of-the-art
malls, will be accompanied by his team of regional distributors.
They are curious to find out if something other than the habitual
fare of blockbusters can please Indonesian moviegoers
Following afternoon shows, informal sessions will take place
between a representative of each movie and the public to check
this pulse. Spectators will vote on each movie and during the
closing ceremony a "public's prize" will be awarded.
To attract viewers, the French Cultural Center has called on
the expertise of two artists from the South of France who coin
themselves as "a graphic commando unit". Cecile Gras and Pascal
Humbert are working with dozens of students from the Jakarta Arts
Institute's School of Fine Arts to "poetically invade the
physical space of the festival". The result will be a surprise to
the festival's organizers and attendants alike, and maybe to the
artists themselves.
Not coincidentally, when all the art is torn down, and the
French film community packs up its reels and heads out of town
the day after the festival ends, a team of Indonesian filmmakers
and French producers will start shooting the movie Telegram in
Cirebon, West Java. Putu Wijaya's script is adaptation of his own
novel of the same title.
The movie is funded by a French government grant, coproduced
by Art Cam International, a French production company, and
directed by Indonesian Slamet Rahardjo. The movie is scheduled to
be released in both Indonesia and France next year. Maybe that is
when the bajaj will really get to rev up and down the
cobblestoned streets of Paris.