Movie on RI sulfur miners featured at Venice Filmfest

Paolo Bertolin, Contributor, Venice

The 62nd Venice International Film Festival, already past its second week, will certainly be best remembered for the unprecedented security climate, which proved to be its most distinctive trait.

Even though no Indonesian film was featured at the festival, Indonesia was present on screen as a subject of one of the best- received films of the equally competitive sidebar Orizzonti (Horizons), Austrian documaker Michael Glawogger's Workingman's Death.

Through his astounding work, Glawogger tracks down the idea of work and the identity of workers at the beginning of the 21st century.

In order to do so, he takes off to Ukraine, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan and China to document the hardship of those who, mostly in developing countries, still rely on manual work to earn a living.

The film powerfully depicts how manual work can still mean constant fatigue, sweat, and life-threatening danger. Divided into five evocatively titled segments (Ghosts for Indonesia, Lions for Nigeria, Future for China, and so on), the film ends in an epilogue set in Duisburg-North, Germany, where a former iron ore plant has been turned into a park and glowing art installation.

The Indonesian segment deals with sulfur miners in Kawah Ijen, East Java, where director Glawogger lived for about two months in order to painstakingly absorb the reality of their work and environment. Glawogger was interviewed after the much-applauded screening of his film:

What was the starting point of the film? What prompted you to deal with the concept of work?

The concept of work and the role of workers has been an important subject in cinema for a long time. In the history of film it has been often used for ideological purposes, for propaganda either during communism or fascism.

But it has also been the focus of documentaries in the 1960s with the rise of new documentary, when work was a pivotal theme.

How did the project develop?

I knew about the beginning and the end of the film from the start. I wanted to go back to the roots of the iconic representation of workers, by beginning in the city where Stakhanov set his record, an event which is of huge historic proportion, since it launched a sort of mythology of work and the "popstarrization" of the worker.

As for the end, I wanted to show the illuminated park in Duisberg to show the remnants of a civilization of work and his future. As for the other segments all came through research and sometimes chance.

I had already heard of the places in Indonesia and China, and as for the segment on ship breaking we originally planned to shoot in India, or Bangladesh as similar plants are there too.

We eventually ended up in Pakistan because the necessary authorizations took very long to obtain, and because I got to know that in Gaddani they were about to demolish one of the biggest ships they had ever worked on.

The whole film took five years to complete. It took a long time to have all funding in place, while the actual filming took about two years.

I went to every place three to five weeks before starting the shooting to get accustomed with the place and people, and in all places I tried to find a local assistant to help me with translation and communication with the locals. Shooting usually lasted 10 to 15 days.

How did you get to know about the sulfur mine in Kawah Ijen?

As for Indonesia, I actually knew the place beforehand through old documentaries. I was suspicious about the archaic and exotic idea these films were delivering, but when I went on spot I discovered a somewhat different reality.

Of course, it's a very archaic place, and it attracts tourists. Yet, archaic things coexist side by side with traces of Westernization: The workers wear Vieri T-shirts, talk about Bon Jovi and going to a brothel.

Other films have only put a stress on the archaic aspect, thus I have purposely tried to deconstruct these images by underlying the presence of "modern world" infiltration into the lives of these miners.

A sort of path leads through the episode, starting from the image of the volcano and the sacrifice of a goat to appease the mountain spirit, and leading toward the coexisting aspects of modernity.

What can you tell us about your experience in Kawah Ijen?

It is a very strange place where you might actually start to believe in ghosts. I don't, but on the first night I was shooting under the full moon, the blue vapors of burning sulfur, and then, the atmosphere were so unreal, so spectral, that I thought I could believe in ghosts.

That was also the exact time I thought I should call the episode Ghosts. The title could be interpreted in various ways: On the one hand it obviously refers to the spirits of the mountain that the workers fear and worship, but on the other, I think one might even see the tourists visiting the place as ghosts, as they quickly appear at the spot to then suddenly vanish for good.

What is the message you want to deliver with your film? The answer lies in its many details. I don't think that viewers have little to learn from my film, that is why I don't like using voiceover commentaries.

I think they should read through the complexity I expose just by showing things. And what I show is situations, people and political context, things usually neglected by the overflow of representation.

Also, I tried not to use the images and the workers for any ideological purpose, as Stakhanov did, for instance, but to fashion a sensual film, one that reaches out, not through words or ideology but through the senses.