Major film festival draws attention to quality cinema
Major film festival draws attention to quality cinema
By Jane Freebury
JAKARTA (JP): Jakarta played host to film culture and its practitioners with events in 1995 that ranged from visits by filmmakers from Germany, eminent guest film critic Tadao Sato from Japan, to festival screenings of environmental videos and films, festivals of recent films from Mexico, Australia and Korea -- to this year's high point, the advent of the 40th Asia Pacific Film Festival. Delegates from around the region descended on the city's hospitality infrastructure to view, evaluate and compare some 40 entries from participating countries. And to do deals.
In this year of the centenary of world cinema and in this city of "business", film culture still managed to slip in, sometimes unnoticed, but it was there nonetheless. It was happening somewhere. From the established venues of certain cultural centers -- the French in particular, and, on a more occasional basis, the Goethe Institute, the Australian Embassy auditorium, Erasmus Huis -- to Teater Tertutup at Taman Ismail Marzuki Arts Center (TIM), even to viewings in restaurants and private homes, cultural events showcasing film were at least a modest occasional option for Jakartans.
The French Cultural Center probably contributed the most to film culture in Jakarta by maintaining its solid year-round program of quality French cinema. September was a typical month at the Center Culturel Francais with screenings including the late Louis Malle's (He gave us Atlantic City and Lacombe Lucien) Zazie Dans le Metro from early in his career, Eric Rohmer's Ma Nuit Chez Maud and Melo from Alain Resnais ('Auteur' of modernist journeys into memory in Last Year at Marienbad and Hiroshima, Mon Amour). October brought Les Quatre Cents Coups directed by Francois Truffaut with whom audiences at a TIM retrospective became acquainted last year. Also on the program were Claude Chabrol's Madame Bovary and from the remarkable Luis Bunuel, (Un Chien Andalou -- with Salvador Dali) to The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie) his 1974 classic Le Fantome de la Liberte.
Korea made its presence felt with a festival of films in May that offered us aspects of South Korean culture from the epic flourish of historical dramas by top director Im Kwok-taek, Fly High Run Far Kae Byok and The Diary of King Yonsan, to the social comedy of marital muddles in Lee Myung-se's My Love, My Bride. Korean cinema enjoys a deserved reputation which was enhanced this year in Jakarta by the program of this festival, and by the films submitted for competition in July in the Asia Pacific Film Festival -- The Two Flags, Out of the World and Bitter and Sweet.
Earlier this year Erasmus Huis screened Mother Dao the Turtlelike, that documented life in the Dutch East Indies between 1912 and 1933, in a compilation of silent images originally recorded on 260,000 meters of nitrate film. Who was she, "mother dao the turtlelike?" A no one and an everyone. The title is a mythical namesake for one of the countless, nameless indigenous workers who toiled for the colonialists during that period.
Like the remarkable American 1980s documentary Atomic Cafe, Mother Dao the Turtlelike turns the table on what was originally intended. Atomic Cafe is a contemporary reworking of the positive propaganda disseminated by the U.S. nuclear industry during the 1940s and 1950s. Same images, (and in this case) same voices but an entirely different approach to editing -- making the images work against each other.
Some audiences believe that documentary should be just so. To exactly replicate a perceived reality. Some negative response to the film pointed out that the filmmaker, Vincent van Monnikendam, had not been to Indonesia, had only visited it while splicing away in the editing suite. Others pointed to the incompatibilities of images and soundtrack, whereby, for instance, Javanese tones were laid down over images of Nias.
Creative license is something audience don't often allow in a documentary, but I found entirely apt (if not appropriate) the soundscape mix of Kalimantan forest sounds, noise from Toraja ceremonies of the dead, mournful poetic lyrics overlain. The high-contrast images of armies of Indonesian workers, with the dignified activities of Dutch colonialists, sights of diseased bodies, cock fighting and of Idul Adha were enhanced by the soundtrack. And what of those women -- were they mothers? -- popping lit cigarettes into the mouths of small children! Was it real or just for the cameraman?
This December, Erasmus Huis screened Oeroeg that Century 21 mid-city experimented with for an abbreviated season in June shoulder-to-shoulder with Legends of the Fall and Outbreak. No doubt it was difficult to market, was screened without English sub-titles (Dutch and Bahasa Indonesia only) but was probably of most interest to the expatriate community, being in the main from the European point-of-view. One can only hope that the brief exhibition history of this European-Indonesia co-production won't be used to drive another nail in the coffin of local film production.
Throughout most of the year, the British Council maintained a program of films, offering enticements to visit the Wijoyo Center building in Jl. Sudirman, South Jakarta, such as the James Ivory productions Howards End and The Remains of the Day and in a comic update of My Fair Lady of yore, an amorous Michael Caine and an effervescent Julie Waters in Educating Rita. All good solid wholesome stuff, but why not try more Bhaji on the Beach on us?
Most adventurous
Most adventurous of the cultural centers was the Goethe Institute. It challenged us with its film program, arranging for an exposition of very recently assembled German video, 1992 - 1994, and for visits by practicing young German filmmakers like Christian Wagner (Transatlantis) and Christoph Hubner, who was present at a screening and seminar weekend of his work.
Cheerfully called "cornerstones", each of Hubner's films looked very different, widely contrasting approaches to the material. In one, the interviewee, a Ruhr Valley miner, reminisced while looking straight to camera for the duration, interrupted occasionally with a relevant illustration. More "creative treatment of actuality" (in the words of 1930s British documentarist, John Grierson) unfolded in Anna's Quest, a fictionalized "documentary" of a woman collecting sights and sounds in Germany during the time of reunification.
The Japan Cultural Center had a busy year that included a significant film festival retrospective on the national cinema, post-World War II, that brought eminent critic Tadao Sato to town. He introduced his festival selections, discussing how they reflected moments of social change on the road to democratization in Japan. The occasion was also marked by other rarities -- screenings of Indonesian films of note, Ucik Supra's Badut Badut Kota and Arifin C. Noer's Matahari Matahari.
For the third year running there was no Indonesian Film Festival in Jakarta and the strongly-worded debate about the state of the local film industry continued -- while noting that major production efforts had migrated to the made-for-television drama of sinetron, bringing the number of local films produced for theatrical release to a struggling few.
Commercial television may seem to have dealt Indonesian cinema a body blow but time and other factors may reverse this and the future may see interdependence and cross-fertilization among the audio-visual media, as in other countries.
There was no festival, nor was there any retrospective of Indonesian cinema during 1995. Film archaeology was confined to visits to the Sinematek, which keeps this country's film archive under pretty dismal conditions.
An Australian film festival tour followed on just before the door closed on the movie feast of the Asia Pacific Film Festival program. While audiences were still primed, this set of titles went on the road: A Saucer for the Birds, Mr. Electric, Bedevil, Rabbit on the Moon and, finally, with a title to confirm the stereotype No Worries. The latter was no stranger to Indonesia. It was seen on SCTV last year.
Opening night feature Bedevil was directed by Tracey Moffatt, talented Aboriginal woman director with a background in still photography and film credits in two highly original shorts Night Cries and Nice Coloured Girls. Structurally a triptych of short stories, Bedevil suggests that Moffatt has yet to tackle the feature-length narrative. In other respects her filmmaking is passionate (as a cri de coeur for the Aboriginal people) and striking, with stage sets representing indoors and out with a highly formal approach to mise en scene.
Coming from a very different direction was David Elfick's outback-to-city saga No Worries, previewed on these pages last year. As a long-established producer (Newfront, Star Struck) Elphick represents the mainstream of Australian feature filmmaking, yet his film and Moffatt's, from the alternative film scene, have a shared sense of life at one with the land -- a motif constantly asserted in Australian film.
A Saucer of Water for the Birds directed by Anne Shenfield and Monica Pellizzari's classic short Rabbit on the Moon considered the problems of making a new home in Australia -- the multi- cultural contradictions faced by migrant parents and their children and grandchildren, who are first generation Australian.
The Asia Pacific Film Festival held July 23 to 27 eclipsed all the other festivals in Jakarta this year with Indonesia hosting the 40th event which attracted fiction feature and documentary entries from participating countries. Sylvia Chang's Hsiao Yu, the story of an illegal Chinese immigrant in the United States, won the Best Film Award through its dignity, restraint and social relevance. Other films of note were those that won awards -- including Turning Point, 47 Ronin, The Lovers, et al -- and those that didn't -- namely Vive l'Amour, Bulan Tertusuk Ilalang and Once Were Warriors.
This major international film festival, the Asia Pacific, drew attention to the quality of best cinema in the region to -- but also to the ground Indonesian cinema has lost lately.