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.