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Documentary films for Indonesian audiences
November will be a busy month for movie lovers with several film screenings are coming up in the capital city
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ovember will be a busy month for movie lovers with several film screenings are coming up in the capital city.
The Erasmus Huis in Kuningan, South Jakarta, will present a selection of documentary films at the International Documentary Film Festival 2011 scheduled for Nov. 15-17. The films were picked from the winners of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), which has been dubbed the world’s biggest and most prestigious documentary film festival .
Also to be screened are 20 films selected from the first SBM (School for Broadcast Media) International Golden Lens Documentary Festival.
A scene from Position Among the Stars. Courtesy of Erasmus Huis
“The festival is a treat to all documentary movie makers and lovers and we hope that the film selection will attract new audiences, too,” Erasmus Huis vice director Jeroen Gankema said in a statement.
A must-see film that won an award in IDFA is Position Among the Stars or Stand van de Sterren, a work by Dutch filmmaker Leonard Retel Helmrich. The internationally acclaimed film is the third installment in a trilogy of documentaries on the daily life of Shamsudin and his family, who represent the face of the urban poor in Jakarta. It highlights realistic themes such as corruption, religious conflict, gambling addictions, and the gap between the rich and the poor.
The film won in the Best Feature-length Documentary and Best Dutch Documentary category in IDFA 2010 and snatched the World Cinema Special Jury Award at the Sundance Film Festival 2011.
The film marks a milestone in Dutch filmmaking history as it becames the first Dutch film to a secure a 2012 Academy Award nomination in the foreign language film category.
Helmrich is scheduled to attend the screening of the film on Nov. 19 during the gala night of the Golden Lens Awards.
Another highlight of the festival is Last Train Home, directed by Lixin Fan. The film won the Best Feature-length documentary category at the IDFA 2009 and received praise at the Sundance Film Festival.
The film tells about the chaotic situation when 130 million migrant workers took a journey home for the New Year’s holiday. It centers on a Chinese couple who made the annual trip to their hometown after working hard in the city of Guangzhou.
Fan shot the heroic trip for two years, documenting the struggle of the couple when they had to queue for days to get tickets for a train that will bring them to meet their children. Their hope to go home would vanish if the snowstorm hit the area.
“While I was making this film, it was difficult to figure out where to point the finger. At the government? The factory owners and corporations? The West? I’m not in a righteous place to answer, but I hope to raise this question for my audience.” Fan said as quoted by The New York Times.
The selected films for the Golden Lens Award will be screened every day at 7 p.m. during the festival, followed by the screening of winning films from the IDFA at 8 p.m.
