Japanese and Indonesian films reflect social changes

By Jane Freebury

JAKARTA (JP): A two-day symposium and Japanese-Indonesian film show at the Japan Cultural Center this week brought together a very eminent Japanese film critic, prominent figures in the Indonesian film world and a rare screening program.

Mr. Tadao Sato, author of over 100 specialist books on film, was in attendance with Dr. Salim Said from the National Film Council, J.B. Kristanto, film actors, directors, and film and television students at the Jakarta Arts Institute.

The screening program brought together four films, two from Japan and two from Indonesia. All four in their different ways reflected concern with society and the impact of social change. The purpose of the event was to herald a week-long festival of Japanese cinema, which will be held on Nov. 3-10.

Sixteen films will be screened. Curated by Mr. Tadao Sato, there will be films from the masters - Ozu, Kurosawa - and others which reflect on Japanese society in the 50 years since World War II, which, in the festival, actually begins in 1947 with Yasujiro Ozu's Nagaya Shinshiroku (The Record of a Tenement Gentleman) and ends in 1993 with Yoji Yamada's Gakko (A Class to Remember).

Tadao Sato's work includes books on directors Akira Kurosawa, Kenji Mizoguchi, Nagisa Oshima and Yasujiro Ozu and writings on the history of Japanese film theory and documentary film in Japan. He has also written books on third world cinema, Chinese cinema and Korean film. Recently, he brought Mongolian films to the attention of cineastes. "Two hundred a year are made and these films are very good," he said.

Japanese cinema has also been remarkably prolific. Before sound technology put words into actors' mouths, Japan was producing 700 films annually. That was in 1927. In 1946, despite its fractured state from defeat and occupation, Japan was nevertheless able to produce 67 films, many by filmmakers who had been working in the industry prior to the war. Director Yasujiro Ozu was once voted by the British Film Institute as "one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century in any medium and in any country".

Ozu is remembered as a stylist and in particular for his long static takes and close-to-the-floor framings. You are offered a seat, or rather a place on the floor matting, and perhaps with a cup of tea in hand you watch. With minimal cutting, the camera gaze is unblinking, as the details of ordinary life assume a quiet dignity. The characters in Nagaya Shinshiroku are dyers, grocers, metalworkers - people typical of the world of Ozu.

An apparently homeless child is cared for by an older woman, grudgingly, until she realizes her loss when he is reunited with his father. The final frames at the close of the film make an appeal on behalf of the truly homeless -- the hordes of destitute orphans in postwar Japan.

Gakko is the contemporary story of a shambly, avuncular teacher at night school who so enjoys his classes that he doesn't want to accept a promotion, which would take him away from his problematic part-time students. They are his problems and the problems of society in the early 1990s.

For an occasion such as this, Ucik Supra's Badut Badut Kota (City Clowns) would be strictly archival. It won a prize at the Asia-Pacific Film Festival in Sydney last year, but had a short and unsuccessful season locally. Even some kind words from Tanao Sato couldn't have stoked the fires and rescued it from public apathy. Badut Badut Kota was in sharp contrast with Matahari Matahari (The Sun) a 1985 film directed by the late Arifin C.Noer. Both films center on families struggling to survive in this evil metropolis.

But while Matahari Matahari is the tragedy of a rural family which splits its timbers on the rocks of barely-submerged avarice and treachery, Badut Badut Kota is an upbeat and energetic comedy, which begins and ends with what can only be called a celebration of Jakarta. Facing eviction at the hands of Mrs. Captain, the young married couple, Deddy and Menul, take the city's materialistic values to heart and make them work for them.

In this cheerful rags-to-riches fairy tale dreams can come true if you are lucky. But Matahari Matahari is a cautionary tale exhorting the rural poor to stay away from winking city lights. It is the more honest. There is no sense in Badut Badut Kota that accepts the notion that skills and educational levels are usually prerequisites for success; but never mind, this film is playful and not to be taken seriously.

More interesting in Badut is a discourse on the local film industry. Deddy, employed as a sometime clown at Ancol, has a next door neighbor, a former movie director, who spies on his young neighbors' lovemaking through holes in their adjoining walls. He is also glimpsed shopping and ironing and acting as a pembantu for his wife. During the film he progresses to 'direct' extras at the new warung that Deddy and Menul fill with their friends to attract real customers. At one point one of the characters in Badut Badut Kota says that something "doesn't make sense" and that it's "just like (the decline of) our movie industry".

The success of the Japanese film industry is in sharp contrast, although Mr. Sato spoke of a drop in the viewing audiences for the locally-made film. Dr. Salim Said spoke of the need to see film as cultural expression, not as a commercial commodity. The fact that films selected for a major festival of Japanese films have been selected for their reflections on Japanese society makes the point that film, at its best, is both cultural expression and social document.