Looking to the future to tell the story of the past

Looking to the future to tell the story of the past

By Jane Freebury

JAKARTA (JP): A look at Indonesia's celebrated mix of cultures
is available on all television stations simultaneously every
Sunday morning through the program Anak Seribu Pulau. The
producers Garin Nugroho and Mira Lesmana (Miles Productions)
hatched the idea in response to being commissioned to produce a
documentary to celebrate 50 years of independence in Indonesia
last year.

A joint committee of all the television stations, each of
which took responsibility for handling particular aspects --
marketing was to be handled by Indosiar, sales by SCTV, and
production was in the hands of RCTI. But the idea to "say" it
with children came from Mira and Garin. Children from around the
archipelago tell their stories in Anak Seribu Pulau, a handsome
14-episode Indonesian television series.

Mira and Garin felt that they could best take a retrospective
view of the nation by looking to the future; the next generation.
Children represent the future, and so it was felt that they would
bring the series into focus.

Intriguing locations around Indonesia were considered first.
The filmmakers then sought out the children who would carry the
narrative.

Mira puts it like this: "We said 'let's pick Aceh', 'let's try
Lampung', and that's how it started. There was bound to be an
appropriate kid who was living in that environment -- maybe a
member of a family attached to a mosque, maybe a child learning
to be an elephant trainer. Our writers developed synopses, which
were basically fictive, and then our research team went out to
find a family with a kid between seven and 14 years of age, to
match it." The children then told their story, "like a dairy
entry".

It's hard to imagine opposition in any kampong to such a
project.

"It all went very well. The kids were open, relaxed, the
families and kampongs were supportive," Mira Lesmana said.

The filmmaker does not know whether they were lucky or whether
there were so many things to tell that "wanted to be told". With
so much still untold, why stop at 13, why stop at a thousand?

Far and wide

The "diary entries" in Anak Seribu Pulau come from far and
wide, the length and breadth of Indonesia. They come to the
screen from Aceh, Solo, Central Kalimantan, Indramayu, Maluku,
East Timor, Bali, Padang, Lombok, Jakarta and Toraja. The series
opens and closes with the two works under the direction of Garin
Nugroho. The first episode is located in Merauke and the 13th,
the penultimate, is located in Lampung and tells the story of a
young boy who is learning to be an elephant trainer. The final
episode, No. 14 on July 21, will screen as an omnibus compilation
from the series.

If you have been watching Anak Seribu Pulau since the
beginning, you will already have been introduced to Hendrik B.
Laongso at his home in Merauke, to Si Calus of Indramayu, and to
Kabri Wali of Aceh. And you will meet many others as the series
makes its way in crisscross fashion back and forth across the
archipelago. Each episode is a discrete entity -- and a world
apart.

Far from the urban realities of video games, television and
traffic that shape the imagination of the three young children
whose story is set in Jakarta, Hendrik B. of Irian Jaya and his
friends spend long hours acquiring hunting skills in the tracts
of swamp land beyond their home. They have a particularly
engrossing problem that relates directly to survival -- how to
catch a kangaroo.

Crouched on all fours, with bow and arrow at the ready, the
apprentice hunter moves in on the intended prey, while simulating
the rhythms of the sounds produced by one long heavy tail and two
very long feet. "Thump -- thump, thump" he goes with his hands on
the ground. The camera of Garin Nugroho is right down there at
ground level with him. Then a high-angle shot suggests the
kangaroo's perspective with a glance down at the wiry brown body
in bright red shorts, crawling towards it. A few more twitches of
the ears, it turns tail and pounds off. For the boys, another
quarry will have to do and they close in on a chubby kuskus.

This and other hunting sequences set in the wilderness of
Indonesia are arresting viewing.

There is a deer hunt in this week's episode on Maluku. At
first it seems the quarry is a wild pig, but that animal gets
away. A hand-held camera follows fleet-footed hunters, including
young Hatu Leipari, as they scramble through the undergrowth.
Memories of the hunt are retold later in Hatu's story in
monochrome flashback. With location sequences against a
soundscape of heightened ambient sound, the still power of the
mountain wilderness of Maluku is allowed to develop a presence of
its own. This willingness on the part of the filmmakers to let
the environment "speak", rather than having it gagged with an
overlay of light music, is much more compelling.

The filmmakers learned about the initiation ceremony of
Maluku, but it hadn't been performed for five years. It was
staged again for the film. A rare event, the ceremony was
recorded with the many children who had not yet been initiated
actually undergoing the ceremony in episode six of the series.

This illustrates the point that of the thousand and one
stories out there, some are already slipping from sight. The
moving image can record and document this slippage of passing
custom and tradition. While Anak Seribu Pulau is not an
ethnographic film it performs a significant function by bringing
Indonesia's still living cultural traditions to the foreground.

Another remarkable story in the series is that of Kabri Wali,
a young boy of Aceh with an amazing singing voice (episode two).
Against the vital staccato rhythms of Aceh music and dance
patterns, the clear voice of Kabri Wali rises like a prayer.

Nan T. Achnas directed this episode, which allowed more for
the intrusion of certain social facts reflected in the images of
houses with satellite dishes, of children using a public
telephone, and the use of an automobile in a rural community.
Technology and social change seemed to intrude rarely in other
episodes which lean instead towards the exotic -- not unlike
travelogues. Episode two balanced a wistful nostalgia for
childhood with images of modernization. It wasn't grim, it was
just oblique, with the freshness of a child's perspective
retained.

The interwoven stories of three children represent Jakarta in
episode 11. Putri Dwima Saroyo, Danarto, and Sumi Bokir portray
the very different aspects of life in Jakarta, with its
juxtaposition of the old beside the new. Building construction
and traffic jams, facts of daily life in the city, are highly
visible.

The three-in-one rule presents the opportunity for a child
from a car-owning family to meet with a child from a family that
has no car. An opportunity for a child who is learning life
skills in front of the computer screen to meet with a child who
is learning life skills on the street. Friendship follows and,
with the help of new friends, Putri adds Betawi traditional dance
to her other accomplishments -- classical piano, classical
ballet, and roller-blading. And, she graduates from simulation to
real experience, from a roller-coaster ride on the video game
screen at the beginning of her story to a real-life roller
coaster ride with her new friend.

Putri is one of only three female subjects in Anak Seribu
Pulau. The other two are Eny Yusopa from Desa Pilang, near Solo,
and Ida Ayu Diah, from Desa Bongkasa, in Bali. Eny is learning
batik tulis, and Ida is learning traditional dance. "We
originally wanted to show six girls and six boys. But the
research teams always came up with boys and we didn't want to
push it," Mira explains.

For the producers of such a sweeping series, the potential for
headaches was considerable, with so many stories from which to
select and so many ways in which to tell them. The choice of a
child's point-of-view for each episode of Anak Seribu Pulau is,
quite simply, inspired -- and it's canny too.

Children in the preteen or early teen years make wonderful
film subjects. They are endearing. Indonesia seen through the
eyes of a child offers the filmmaker safe passage through the
minefield of challenges to representational authenticity and
accuracy. The authoritative narrative voice-over gives way to the
voices of children. It is non-contentious.

Fact and fiction

The producers say frankly they set out to portray an
optimistic vision and that they were not looking to touch on
social problems. They wanted a program that said "Hey, look at
these people. They are not rich but they are happy." It was their
stated intention to portray an optimistic vision of a people
living a harmonious existence, with dignity.

Anak Seribu Pulau is a mix of fact and fiction. "We call it
docudrama." In Anak Seribu Pulau scenes of authenticity are
represented within the framework of a narrative, which is by
definition selectively organized, with the good bits left in and
the boring bits left out. Of course this is basic to filmmaking
-- who is going to watch two hours of unmediated footage of a
traffic jam? It has to be turned into a story. Like Jacques
Tati's classic 1972 film Traffic.

Documentaries have long struggled for an audience and now some
commentators are crying out for even more biased and exuberant
documentaries. They are telling documentary makers to forget
balance and authenticity in order to save the genre.

There is a pretty potent argument that all successful
documentary film borrows from the strategies of fiction film,
using its grammar: the single character with whom to identify,
the big close-ups which intensify the emotional climate and bring
about greater audience identification with a character, the
reverse angle shots and the camera movements that create a mood
of anticipation in the audience. Not to mention the use of music
and sound to evoke feeling and to intensify mood. Anak Seribu
Pulau definitely belongs to the genre of docudrama, it is not
pure documentary.

This being said, the scope of the Anak Seribu Pulau series,
with its patchwork of lifestyles around the archipelago, is an
important document of social history. It was clearly conceived as
such, and was made on celluloid, rather than tape, a rare event
in television production here. Mira Lesmana sees the series as
breaking ground in several ways, including its handsome
production values. High resolution images make it a better
quality product for sales abroad. Also it can be touched up years
later, and it lasts longer than videotape.

The series has used the skills of some among the best of
Indonesia's young contemporary directors: Garin Nugroho, Arturo
GP, Nan T Achnas, Moh Rivai Riza, Enison Sinaro, Srikaton M, and
Noto Bagaskoro. Award-winning documentary maker Nan T. Achnas is
the only female director.

All film crews were entirely Indonesian, with the exception of
those who shot the episodes in Bali and Maluku. Here two American
filmmakers, Gary Hayes and Robert Chappell of Katena Films, were
each involved. They were in charge of both cinematography and the
direction of each of their respective episodes. The producers
considered it important to involve some foreigners as the program
was intended for export. They were brought in to contribute their
particular vision of Indonesia, which Mira thinks turns out to
be, "surprisingly enough, the same thing".

Maybe it is and maybe it isn't, but that's not important
anyway. What matters is that Anak Seribu Pulau is good
television.