Notes from a film festival viewer

Notes from a film festival viewer

Debra H. Yatim, Contributor, Jakarta

Loud Me Loud. Would you believe it if someone said Indonesia may
probably be saved by a product with such an incongruous title?

No, it is not a new-fangled sound machine. And no, it is not a
slogan for the neo-anti terrorist front. Loud Me Loud is a 30-
minute animation film created by Studio KasatMata, a group of
young architectural students from Yogyakarta.

In the 4th Indonesian Independent Film-Video Festival, held at
Hotel Indonesia from Oct. 17 to Oct. 20, under the aegis of the
year-long Festival of the Arts currently being held by the hotel,
Loud Me Loud not only won critical acclaim from award-winning
director Garin Nugroho's outfit, SET, and the film-maker group
calling itself Kuldesak, comprising producer Mira Lesmana and New
Indonesian cineasts par excellence Nan T. Achnas, Riri Riza and
Rizal Mantovani, it was also selected winning festival entry by
viewers in the five-day long indie film festival.

Now, all of last week, you couldn't get me by hook or by crook
to attend anything. I was busy chasing after 24 of the 180 or so
movies touted by the eleven-day long Jakarta International Film
Festival (or JiFFest) running Oct. 24 through Nov. 3 in nine
venues around Jakarta.

The wonderful thing about a film festival is that although
initially, you have to depend heavily on the blurb handed out by
the conveners, after the festival finally kicks in, at around Day
Three, an amazing thing starts to happen: A rapid information
grapevine comes into being, to which you then switch
dependencies. People viewing first screenings will ply friends
with thumbs-up or thumbs-down recommendations. How else to
explain the phenomenon of Swiss documentary film War Photographer
being screened to packed theaters? Current events around us are
depressing enough. Why would anybody in their right mind need
further depression-inducing images showing maimed Indonesians, as
if that is all this country has to offer sensation-seeking
photographers, right? Well, War Photographer was ordained
favorite movie by a solid number of JiFFest viewers.

And Indonesian animation? In the JiFFest screening, again Loud
Me Loud won the hearts of the audience. For those whose appetites
have been well and truly whetted by my writing the title four
times now in so many paragraphs, no, you probably won't get a
chance to see it. Things being as they are right now, I cannot
see the Studio 21 movie theater chain, who have lived off Bruce
Willis and Jackie Chan for so long, suddenly thinking of changing
gears and showing a Loud Me Loud-type Indonesian home-grown anime
filled with "violent" durian cannon-balling and would-be rockers
singing into hand-held red plastic mandi (toilet/shower) scoops.

So, to return to my original premise: Loud Me Loud, but also
its colleagues with no less incongruous-sounding titles (check
out Tahi Sapi atau Bukan? (Cow's Dung or Not); Ketok-ketok
(Knocks); Kelolodhen (Get Choked); or Dapupu Project, to name
just a few, may be playful in their subject matter. But what they
have done - and here we have to acknowledge the hard work of the
Konfiden (Komunitas Film Independen, get it?) people for enacting
such a wonderful film festival four years running now - is
provide Indonesia with ... dare I say it? Yes, with Hope, and
Hope with a capital "H" at that.

In four years of bombs since 1998 (the Bali bomb, lest we
forget, is only the latest in a series of blasts that ravaged
mosques and churches on Fridays and Christmases, and bible
schools, hotels, and private homes on ordinary days), violent
street demonstrations, military crackdowns, violence against
women, the list goes on almost forever; and again in the same
four years of perceived threats of disintegration, ethnic fall-
out, racial hatred, and religious misunderstandings, topped by a
luscious layer of economic crashes and government ineptitude, it
would seem that this country has not got much going for it.

Until one makes time to watch two film festivals which ran
almost back to back mid- and late October into this first week of
November. And hope suddenly reared its lovely head, long shot,
soft-focus, but with a strong message and based on a rousing,
wonderful script.

And this is what Hope said: We may not have found definite
political solutions, or smart economic maneuvers. But what we
have are at least 75 or so creative, home-grown, all-Indonesian
youngsters, wielding a new, dangerous weapon: cameras, probably
not even their own. These budding cineasts will observe their
environments. They will watch and take note, and they will record
it all on film and video. And then the stupendous thing will
begin. Creativity will step in. And it will turn the observation
into a feature, or a comedy, or a tragedy, Even a farce, or
hey ... animation.

And when that happens, Indonesia's left-for-dead film industry
will suddenly show joie de vivre once again. Small steps, small
steps. But think of the trickle-down effect. All sorts of long-
dormant fields will come to life: Film schools, studios,
screenwriter groups, film-set electricians, equipment rentals,
caterers, etc. Indonesians watching movies in (sigh!) Bahasa
Indonesia once again. And we don't even have to mention the
probable effect on rusty minds in Senayan and Bina Graha, who
suddenly will have to take into account a totally fresh world-
view: That of 17-, 18-, to 25 year-olds calling themselves
filmmakers, who thumb their noses at convention, and who have no
use at all for the creaky mores and attitudes of doddery oldsters
who cannot see that a new breed of Indonesian has finally come of
age to take on the country, and -- who knows? -- the world.