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'A Copy Of My Mind' A fun project selected to compete at prestigious festivals
Guidance: Director Joko Anwar (second right) briefs Chicco Jerikho (right) and Tara Basro for a scene in a traditional market
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Guidance: Director Joko Anwar (second right) briefs Chicco Jerikho (right) and Tara Basro for a scene in a traditional market.
A Copy Of My Mind, the latest work from director Joko Anwar, proves that a unique and solid story can be far more important for a film's success in gaining artistic recognition than major support from big studios and production companies.
The film, as described by Joko in a recent press conference, started as a 'just for fun' project among him and his friends.
'I had this idea that I shared with my friends in early 2014, about making a film that tells a story about regular Indonesians and how they become so closely entangled with politics surrounding them,' Joko said.
The film is a romantic drama about a saloon worker (Tara Basro) and a pirated DVD caption writer (Chicco Jerikho) in Jakarta. The characters meet and fall in love with each other. Their ordinary lives, however, get turned upside down after they find a DVD recording of a corruption case involving a presidential candidate.
'I wanted A Copy Of My Mind to become a time capsule for Jakarta and Indonesia. So, when someone decides to watch this film decades from now, they will see the real situation and conditions of Jakarta and Indonesia in our era,' Joko said.
To realize Joko's idea, he needed to take a different approach and style from those of his previous films. Apart from Joko's directional debut film romantic comedy Janji Joni in 2005, his films usually tell stories set in a fictional backdrop in an unclear time period. A Copy Of My Mind, however, is clearly set in Jakarta and the events take place in present time.
Joko and his colleagues from production house Lo-Fi Flicks submitted their new film project proposal to the Asian Project Market during the 2014 Busan International Film Festival. The proposal for A Copy Of My Mind was named among of the best film projects. With this, Joko and his colleagues received US$10,000 in funding from South Korea-based entertainment company CJ Entertainment to begin filming.
After three months of preparations, Joko began filming A Copy Of My Mind in November 2014. The shooting of the film took only eight days and with the limited funds, Joko had to use all the available resources as effectively and efficiently as possible.
'We had just a tiny amount of money to spend,' Joko said.
'For extras, we invited locals at the shooting locations to join us and the main cast also took on dual roles as crew members. In total, we only had about 25 film crew members help make the film and that included the main cast,' he added.
Meanwhile, Tara said despite of the limited budget, she and the rest of the crew had fun filming the project.
'When Joko approached me to be in the film, he said 'this is going to be a just for fun project'. I have a lot of respect for him and his past works so I did not hesitate to say yes. The production felt more like a picnic than a film shoot,' Tara said.
Despite the limited budget and fun atmosphere on set, the artistic quality of A Copy Of My Mind seems promising. Not long after filming was completed, Joko and his colleagues submitted the film to various film festivals.
A Copy Of My Mind then received formal acceptance from the prestigious Venice Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) to compete against other high-quality selected films from other countries.
The Venice Film Festival is the oldest film festival in the world and this year's festival will take place on Sept. 2-22 in Venice, Italy. Meanwhile, TIFF has been considered as one of the most prestigious film festivals in the world with an attendance rate of 400,000 people each year and around 4,000 of them are film industry stakeholders.
Joko said he hoped for the best for his new film during the festival and he described it as his love letter for Indonesia.
Joko added that there would be more love letters coming from him for Indonesia as A Copy Of My Mind was only the first part of a trilogy.
The other parts of the trilogy would be called A Copy Of My Soul and A Copy Of My Heart.
'Each of the films in this trilogy will stand alone and offer unique stories. The production of the remaining parts will begin next year,' Joko said.
'In A Copy Of My Soul, I will tell a story about how the older generation struggles to cope with current conditions and in A Copy Of My Heart, the film will revolve around the inner battles of young adults against their own youthful idealism.'
' Photos courtesy of Lo-Fi Flicks
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A Copy Of My Mind is set to be released in Indonesian theaters in February 2016.
