Shanty promotes variety in Indonesian film

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.