Rayya uneasy with instant success

Rayya uneasy with instant success

By Mehru Jaffer

JAKARTA (JP): Rayya Makarim's life so far sounds like the
stuff films are made of.

Even before her 24th birthday she won a national award for her
first script in 1998 that was made into a television film called
Mencari Pelangi (Searching for the Rainbow). Soon after, she was
given another script to tidy up titled Pasir Berbisik (Whispering
Sands), a feature film still to be released but already the talk
of town.

As curator of Theater Utan Kayu (TUK), for the past two years
Rayya has been responsible for choosing six films that are
screened regularly every month for a growing crowd of people
starved of alternative cinema.

She is also one of the brains behind the seminar that is to
accompany the second Jakarta International Film Festival
(JiFFest). After JiFFest is over Rayya will happily return to the
three exciting projects she has on hand, one of them involving
versatile actress Christine Hakim herself. She is also busy
updating the script for a remake of a musical from the 1950s and
trying to give shape to a story about a motley group of
characters in Jakarta who happen to be at the same bar and who
find themselves drowned in existential experiences as the evening
ticks away to yet another dawn.

Just 26 years old, Rayya ought to be feeling on top of the
world, instead she is ridden with angst wondering whether it has
all come too soon and too easy to her.

Born and educated in the U.S.A., on graduating in 1997, Rayya
was almost forced to return to Jakarta by her parents who felt
that she had been away from Indonesia for too long. Now it is her
parents who want her to go back to school to specialize further
in script-writing or to work with professional film production
personalities and companies in the West before bagging more
awards here. The goal is to be able to make films for a global
audience and not just for a local jury.

"My family is probably worried that I just might become too
smug about being a big fish in a small pond," says Rayya. And the
family's concerns make perfect sense to her. She is afraid too,
of becoming too comfortable in Jakarta where there is no real
competition. The success that she is experiencing in Jakarta is
too unreal.

"It is bizarre. I write one film script and I win a national
award! I become a well-known scriptwriter? It is too good to be
true," she says trying to laugh as she waits to be interviewed
and photographed at the eclectic cafe Utan Kayu by three
different publications.

Her father Nono Makarim, well-known lawyer and founder of
Aksara, a foundation engaged in research, analysis and the
disseminating of civil and legal ideas is astonished, and even
disappointed at Rayya's maiden performance. For he is of the
opinion that youngsters should be allowed to first make their
mistakes, fall down, get up, fall, and rise again until they have
learnt a little about life, and before they are chosen for Oscars
and awards.

Despite being aware of all this Rayya is also resisting the
thought of leaving Jakarta. "So much is happening here. Things
are looking up. I have so many projects in hand. I am frequently
told that my country needs me. I don't want to go," says Rayya
who ought to watch out before she reaches the highest peak too
quickly and then spends the rest of her life wondering, now what?

It is from her mother that Rayya inherits her love for cinema.
It all started when her mother was unable to watch as many movies
as she would have liked to after the birth of Rayya. So when her
first born was just three years old she took Rayya to a theater
screening the horror film, Jaws. Rayya was fast asleep until the
gigantic shark was shown feasting on a human body splattering the
screen with blood and gore. Rayya woke up just at that minute and
very loudly pointed to the screen, "Look mom, fish!" The audience
burst into laughter and were thankful to Rayya that day for the
added entertainment she had provided in the midst of a tense
scene on screen.

Her mother, she says is so crazy about movies that she is
known to have seen four to six movies in a day - her grandfather
having owned a cinema hall in Pasuruan, East Java. But she
remains just a lover of films and is in no way involved in film
making. The eldest of three children, Rayya studied liberal arts
at a university in up state New York and majored in a general
course on films. Eventually, however it is script-writing that
has come to really thrill Rayya.

She notes that in the past films were just a continuation of
theater. What filmmakers concentrated on was creating pretty
pictures, framing good looking faces and breathtaking landscape.
She would like to concentrate more on narration, of telling a
good story on screen. She is fascinated with characters and likes
to explore each person in a story in depth. What the actors look
like is of least importance to her. As long as they have a good
story to tell, she is hooked.

However directors and producers here have been almost tricking
the audience into thinking that a beautiful face and glamorous
locations are enough to keep them glued to the screen. The only
reason why the audience continues to sit before mediocre
productions today put on both television and the big screen is
because there is no alternative cinema available to them. Her
greatest frustration as a scriptwriter is to see her original
story butchered on screen by not so talented directors and even
less imaginative producers.

She dreams of the day when it is the scriptwriter who will go
with a story to a producer and say put this on the screen for me.
Today it is the producer who orders a writer to string together
his ideas into a script. This breaks her heart and makes her want
to direct and produce her own movies some day. She feels that the
audience too will mature and become more demanding as it is
exposed to different kinds of experiences on screen.

And this is where activities like JiFFest and TUK become
extremely relevant as it is one way of exposing Indonesian
audiences to alternative cinema that is not available here
commercially.

She is involved with the seminar section of JiFFest, which
covers the topics of: Issues in Contemporary Islamic Culture
(Nov. 12, 2 p.m.) Human Rights Films (Nov. 5, 4 p.m.), A Tribute
to Klaus Kinski & Warner Herzog (Nov. 11, 10 a.m. and 1 p.m.),
Errol Morris Films (Nov. 4), and Music in Films (Nov. 11). All
seminars will take place at the Haji Usmar Ismail Film Center.

The collective mind of the Islamic world is reputed to be
against cultural activities like film making but some of the best
films are made in Iran today, and countries like Turkey and
Lebanon. These films it is hoped will open the eyes of audiences
here who will see how other Muslim societies are able to produce
wonderful films and also criticize their respective societies
without causing obvious offense or resorting to extreme anger and
violence.

The Indonesian film industry enjoyed its heyday in the 1970s
and 1980s. The past decade, however, was a gloomy period with
only a few films produced, mostly loaded with sex and violence.

But Rayya predicts exciting times in filmmaking in Indonesia
in the next few years as so many people seem so passionate about
movies. If this young, enthusiastic scriptwriter is to be
believed, the best is yet to hit the silver screen here. That is
of course if Rayya does not decide to defect to Hollywood
instead.