Indonesian film feted at Rotterdam FilmFest

Indonesian film feted at Rotterdam FilmFest

Paolo Bertolin, Contributor, Rotterdam

The resurgence in Indonesian filmmaking was feted recently at yet
another key international film event.

After a special program last fall titled Garin and the Next
Generation: New Possibilities in Indonesian Cinema at the Pusan
International Film Festival, the leading film festival in Asia,
Indonesian films were heavily featured at the 34th International
Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), which was held on Jan. 26 through
Feb. 6.

One of the largest film festivals in the world, with its 24
screening venues fully operating for 12 days, 800 films screened,
dozens of performances, exhibitions, talk shows and lectures, and
an estimated audience of more than 350,000, IFFR is by no means
the most important cultural event of the Netherlands.

Always attentive to new trends in worldwide filmmaking, the
adventurous programming committee, led by festival director
Sandra den Hamer, has chosen this year to devote a wide-ranging
special program to Southeast Asian cinema, called SEA Eyes.

Curator Gertjan Zuilhof thoughtfully sought films from
Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines and
Indonesia, inviting the cream of the crop to Rotterdam from those
countries.

Eventually, no less than three feature films and 14 short
films were selected from Indonesia. These included the
international premiere of Rindu Kami Padamu (Of Love and Eggs),
the latest from Indonesia most prominent author, Garin Nugroho, a
regular to Rotterdam, where his Daun di atas Bantal (Leaf on a
Pillow) played as curtain-raiser in 1999.

Nugroho's new film, whose original title comes from a popular
song based on a poem by Taufiq Ismail, recreates the cinematic
world of Indonesian studio-made films to tell a feel-good
children's story set in a Muslim neighborhood.

Nugroho sees his film as a "religious film", with the
qualification, "making a religious film does not mean making
propaganda, preaching to people what to think and what to do;
religiosity is not propaganda but practice in everyday life".

Thus, Nugroho hopes that Of Love and Eggs will play "a part in
the dialog between religions and the discussion inside Muslim
religion in Indonesia", pointing out how "recently, a black and
white perspective on Islam has reduced it to a bipolar view of
radicalism and liberalism; meanwhile, there are so many facets to
Muslim religion".

Focusing on how "religious propaganda heavily relies on
discourse on love and faith, but only inside mosques, churches
and temples, while in reality it only spreads violence outside",
Nugroho modestly adds, "My film is an attempt to show that
religion must have love in everyday life, not only in the mosque,
the church or the temple."

As a coherent effort to his laudable commitment, Nugroho was
in Rotterdam also to attend the CinemArt, the prestigious market
of art-film coproduction, in order to raise funding for a
collective project he is now involved in Five Worlds, a five-
segment omnibus film to be directed by five filmmakers from
different Muslim countries.

The project, which will comprise contributions from U-Wei bin
Hajisaari (Malaysia), Sobhi al-Zobaidi (Palestine), Kamal Tabrizi
(Iran) and Homayoun Paiz (Afghanistan), is intended to let "every
director interpret the social and political reality of his
country".

It aims "to give different perspectives on Islam", in response
to the fact that Islam is "recently often reduced by
international media to just a one-dimensional perspective, while
Muslim religion provides wide, multicultural perspectives in
different sociopolitical contexts", Nugroho stated.

The other two features included in the program were Rudi
Soedjarwo's Mengejar Matahari (Chasing the Sun) and Ravi L.
Bharwani's Impian Kemarau (The Rainmaker).

Soedjarwo's film, a mainstream production relating the
misadventures of four friends in a contemporary Jakarta housing
complex, met with warm applause from the audience, while
Bharwani's suggestive art-film seduced most European critics with
its slow, deliberate tempo, its stylish and sensuous visual
conception and its intriguing use of a Javanese cultural
backdrop.

The wide-ranging choice of short films mainly aligned in two
distinctive, yet very often overlapping streams: on one side,
those envisaging or commenting on politically or socially
relevant issues, such as Hardline by Andibachtiar Yusuf, Fear
Factor Election 2004 (Star Galaxy) by Dosy Omar, Ronin and Andy
Asks by Forum Lenteng, Error Terror Public Horror by Rizki
Lazuardi or Nugroho's Trilogi Politik.

On the other side, those sensitively experimenting the film
medium, such as Please Come to My Dream, I Want to Hurt You by
Dimas Jayasrana, Everything's OK by Tintin Wulia, A Mail by Aryo
Danusiri and Dajang Soembi, The Woman Who Is Married to a Dog by
Edwin, Broken by Salman Aristo, Silenced by Ariani Darmawan, or
Crooswijk and My Right Wing by Lulu Ratna.

Freelance film event organizer Ratna also sat on the jury of
the Amnesty International-DOEN Award, a prize distinguishing
films highlighting human rights and human dignity presented to
Iran Hassan Yektapanah's Story Undone.

Moreover, Indonesia was not only the subject of filmmaking in
Rotterdam, but the object as well, as displayed in some
international documentaries.

The most prominent was The Year of Living Vicariously by
Malaysian Amir Muhammad, which combines the making of Riri Riza's
new ambitious film and a political report on last year's
elections.