Shanty promotes variety in Indonesian film

David Kennedy, Contributor, Jakarta
d_kenn@yahoo.com

Shanty Harmayn is very busy these days. She arrives to work clutching a coffee mug in one hand, a pile of files in the other and wearing a determined look.

Sitting back in her chair, just weeks before the launch of this year's edition of the Jakarta International Film Festival (JIFFest), the fifth she has managed since 1999, with files and papers covering her desk and part of her office floor, Shanty took a short break to speak with The Jakarta Post.

At the forefront of the movement to revitalize Indonesian cinema, Shanty divides her time between producing films and managing the Indonesian Independent Film Foundation.

The foundation, which she set up in 1999 to run Jakarta's premier film festival, provides support for local documentary productions and lobbies on behalf of filmmakers in Indonesia.

After the heyday of Indonesian film in the 1970s through the mid-1980s, censorship, bureaucratic obstacles and a monopoly on films that led to a stranglehold by Hollywood blockbusters, local production petered out to a few token vehicles.

Since 1999 the recovery has been continuous, but with an average of only five new films a year being produced until recently, there is still a long way to go in reviving the industry.

"Indonesian audiences and Indonesian films have been separated for some time. You could say they are like lovers who've not seen each other for a while," says the 36-year-old Jakarta-born film producer.

"Maybe they both have to say, 'Hey, I've not seen you around for a while'," she says with a playful look, "and then they can start to get reacquainted gradually".

As a child, Shanty watched films and cataloged old-fashioned video cassettes at home, all the time dreaming of working in the movies.

After completing film school in 1994 and working for a short spell in advertising in Jakarta, Shanty became involved in the emerging local independent film scene.

She joined a group of filmmakers who challenged government restrictions by ignoring laws and regulations and filming without permits, a practice that was later termed "guerrilla cinema".

Kuldesak, the first film produced in this "guerrilla" style, was shot between 1996 and 1998 and marked the beginning of a new independent Indonesian film movement.

It also launched Shanty into independent filmmaking.

Director Nan T. Achnas, from the Kuldesak team, joined her to work on Pasir Berbisik (Whispering Sands), which won international acclaim at film festivals around the world.

"I suppose it was my first major film though it still did not feel like I was entering the mainstream," she says.

With a background in documentary making, which she studied in the U.S. at Stanford University, and a degree in mass communications from the University of Indonesia, Shanty has a clear vision of how cinema can highlight social and political issues.

"It is a powerful medium and it can help people to see things differently," she says, though she warns against overestimating the capacity of films to bring about change.

More importantly viewers must have access to a variety of films from different genres, she says, or they will lose interest in cinema entirely.

"If you switch on the television and find the same thing on all the channels, what do you do? Of course you switch it off," she exclaims, adding there is a danger that too many films could be made in one genre if Indonesian filmmakers only follow commercially successful models.

This was the thinking behind JIFFest, which she cofounded in 1999 with Natacha Devillers, an American film distributor living in Indonesia.

At that time their proposal was met with incredulity by some officials, who said they were mad to attempt the event in an election year.

However they proved the critics wrong and in the first year of the festival 65 films were shown to 18,000 viewers. A year later, building on that successful debut, the number of films was doubled and over 32,000 people came to the festival.

Shanty says she wanted to showcase films which would otherwise not be screened in Indonesia, including large commercial productions, though the focus from the start has been on "edgy" films that get people thinking.

The variety of films on offer challenges Jakarta audiences to think, and she says the films also provide a rich body of material to inspire local filmmakers.

Despite the phenomenal past success of JIFFest, this year Shanty found herself losing sleep, worried that she would have to cancel everything.

Difficulties in securing funding from commercial sponsors and from overseas eventually forced Shanty to scale down the event to only 26 films.

Making JIFFest a permanent fixture on the Jakarta cultural calendar will depend to a great extent, says Shanty, on the availability of state funding to replace overseas donations.

"Every major city has an international film festival, and the government is always a stakeholder in them. It's just a case of the political will being there, of realizing the benefit of holding it," she says.

Currently working on a new film, which she describes as a road movie that will make you laugh out loud, Shanty weighs her words when speaking about filmmaking in Indonesia today and says that things are improving.

She is a firm believer in gradual change and chooses her battles carefully.

Relationships with the authorities are much improved since the "guerrilla cinema" days and her foundation works closely with the film censors in tackling out-dated regulations.

Shanty is a convincing advocate of Indonesian filmmaking. Talking to her you begin to realize that ensuring Indonesia has a viable film industry is more than a question of supporting the arts.

In a country of this size it is important that people can watch good Indonesian films when they go to the cinema -- it's almost a question of national pride.