Locals breathe life into old Brit-pop hits
M. Taufiqurrahman, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Joy Division's now-deceased frontman, Ian Curtis, was surely delighted from the other side knowing that a song he penned a year before committing suicide, Love Will Tear Us Apart, has inspired a bunch of young people from Bandung, West Java, to shoot videos based on the hit.
The song, the band's greatest hit before the advent of MTV and before video clips became the primary means of selling a single, came to life in scores of videos recently screened at a youth party.
One of the video clips, directed by Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) student Ale Kardinale, perfectly captured the morose atmosphere, as intended by Curtis for the song.
Taking its cue from one line in the song lyrics, when routine bites hard and ambitions are low but the emotions won't grow ... Then love will tear us apart, the video highlight the dullness of everyday lives.
Against the thrashing guitar and crashing drums that drive synthesizers in Love, the video opens with scenes of the hero's early morning activities, from turning off an alarm clock to brushing his teeth, all taken in rounded, close-up shots.
With its cutting-edge technique the video certainly deserves MTV airplay.
Joy Division, however was not the only inspiration for the young clipmakers.
Another ITB student, Erik Pauhrizi, shot his video based on London Calling, a 1980s song from punk legends the Clash.
Staying true to the Clash's politically charged lyrics, the video touches a theme for which the London-based band had a penchant: antiwar sentiment.
Building its drama from old and yellowing war footage and a collage of pictures and articles from local newspaper Pikiran Rakyat, the video was suitable as accompaniment for songs from any leftist-leaning punk outfit.
Eric, however, could not conceal his love for the Clash and he repeatedly inserted dozens of images of band members into the war imagery.
Every Clash fan would also have noticed that Eric mistook London Calling's lyric a nuclear error but I have no fear for "nuclear era".
The two video clips and multitudes of others, which drew their inspiration from other Brit-pop bands such as Pulp and Disco 2000 were the work of young and talented videomakers selected by the British Council to join its workshop on making innovative videos.
In collaboration with Video Babes, a local studio that promotes the development of homegrown music videos, the British Council invited local talent to participate in workshops in Jakarta and Bandung at the behest of two renowned directing teams, Cerahati and the Jadugar, before they were screened for the public.
The British Council said that the program was aimed at giving guidance to young videomakers on producing quality music videos with an edge.
The program was held in the midst of a thriving local indie music scene, which has undeniably been influenced by well-known Brit-pop bands such as Joy Division, New Order and Pulp.
Video Babes cofounder Ariani Darmawan said that the young videomakers were given only two days of in-class training before being let out on the street to shoot their videos for two weeks.
"Some of the directors had not produced music videos before but the quality was no let-down," she told The Jakarta Post.