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Documentary filmmakers re(framing) local stories
(Courtesy of Yusron Fuadi)Reports of the decline of Indonesian documentary filmmaking have been greatly exaggerated
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(Courtesy of Yusron Fuadi) (Courtesy of Yusron Fuadi)
(Courtesy of Yusron Fuadi)
Reports of the decline of Indonesian documentary filmmaking have been greatly exaggerated.
Some might be distracted by the fact there were effectively no locally made independent documentaries until the fall of Soeharto in 1998.
However, following the start of the Reform era, creative and critical voices in non-fiction filmmaking have been making themselves heard.
Tino Saroengallo made the first feature-length documentary in the Reform era: Tragedi Mahasiswa 1998: Gerakan Mahasiswa di Indonesia (The Student Tragedy 1998: Student Movements in Indonesia).
The 43-minute film, made in 2002, documented the harsh oppression of student activists who rallied against Soeharto's dictatorship.
Today, more and more creative documentaries are being made in Indonesia. Yogyakarta-based documentary filmmaker Tonny Trimarsanto is one of those creative minds. His latest film, The Mangoes, for example, is brilliant in giving the illusion of 'distancelessness' between subject and audience.
'I don't care whether it is a good image or not. What I consider important is the intimacy of the events to me as I hope the audiences feel the same way,' Tonny said.
Another voice comes from Yogyakarta-based filmmaker Shalahuddin Siregar, better known as Udin, whose The Land Beneath the Fog is outstanding in observing the details of the mundane reality of the lives of people near Mount Merbabu in Central Java.
Amelia Hapsari, the program director of In-Docs, a documentary community in Jakarta, hailed Udin's creative patience in approaching his human subjects and the nature of the village, which almost becomes a character itself.
Seperately, Tonny hailed the film. 'Udin has what most Indonesian documentary filmmakers do not: endurance.'
'Endurance is the most important thing that we lack, that is, endurance in approaching and befriending subjects ' and endurance in securing production funding,' Tonny said.
Udin lived with the community and shot his film for almost two years before it was first released in 2011.
Most of the recent notable local documentaries were in production for years, as opposed to the 10 days or so alloted for a local drama.
Daniel Ziv's Jalanan (Streetside), for example, took seven years to complete. The film is notable for its portrayal of street musicians and street life not as an example of societal excess, but as a unique cultural context.
'Jalanan is succesful in blending the sound of street music and the visualization of street life. That is where it is engaging,' said Amelia.
Windu Jusuf, a film critic for Cinema Poetica, says Jalanan's strength is in its presentation of street busking as a form of work. 'In Jalanan, these buskers are not beggars. They are workers with their own working hours, commodities, productive forces and are presented within a complete relation to their surroundings.'
Local documentary filmmakers, however, are still searching to find the best way to tell stories. 'Indonesia is diverse in terms of subjects and issues, but this is not yet depicted through the various storytelling approaches in [local] documentaries,' film critic Hikmat Darmawan says.
Hikmat says Indonesia has been a lab for ethnographic documentary and research by Westerners, although few local filmmakers explore ethnography. 'Our documentaries are still dominated by the 'grand narrative', if not heroism, while in fact, the cultures around are very diverse and rich with details.'
The films cited above were rare cases where local filmmakers could diversify in the way they presented stories, Hikmat said. 'Although when we place these films amid the constellation of world documentary, they are not very new'.
'This is also probably because of the very limited access to references,' said Hikmat. While describing Robert Flaherty's early documentary classics Nanook of the North and Man of Aran as etnographic documentaries with exemplary storytelling, Hikmat says that 'Indonesians are very limited to access this sort of documentary.'
Hikmat says local documentary making is thus grounded in television-style documentary, full of talking heads and voice-overs to talk about basic facts and to present fun trivia.
Despite these problems, filmmakers from throughout the archipelago have been experimenting with storytelling styles.
Some blend documentary with animation, like Amelia's Jadi Jagoan Ala Ahok (A Hero Like Ahok), while Tadulako Mild studies student cigarette cultures in Palu and others experiment with 'selfies', such as young filmmaker Yusron Fuadin in his film Young Man and the Sea.
