JP/Cynthia Webb

It’s never wrong for a movie director to shoot an autobiographical film. Cameron Crowe directed Almost Famous to let his fans know about his stint as the youngest music journalist for the Rolling Stone magazine in the early 1970s.

In most of his films Woody Allen practically talks about himself, promoting his bleak views on humanity and his failure to have a proper romantic relationship with the opposite sex.

Director Nurman Hakim is never afraid to tell stories about his past and his latest film 3 Doa, 3 Cinta (3 wishes, 3 loves) — which also marks his director’s debut—in many ways reflected his teen years while he was living in a traditional Islamic boarding school in Mranggen, Demak, Central Java.

Some parts of the story have certainly been padded out to make it more dramatic — probably including the romance between the lead character with a gorgeous dangdut singer obsessed about making it big in Jakarta — but the friendship of the film’s three characters and their aspirations would not be out of place among young kids who lived in any Javanese backwater town.

In a way, the film is also the fruit of Nurman’s love affair with cinema which started early in his teens.
While living in the conservative community of the boarding school, he had to sneak out to watch outdoor movies without his teacher’s knowledge — a scene reproduced in 3 Doa, 3 Cinta.  At weekends Nurman went to the neighboring city of Semarang to watch movies in the cinema.

 “We were not supposed to listen to the radio, watch television or films and we were punished with doing chores if we were caught doing them,” said Hakim.

But seeing some of films produced during the golden age of the Indonesian movie industry certainly left an indelible mark on him.

The first movie he saw was Badai Pasti Berlalu (the Storm will Pass) directed by legendary director Teguh Karya and starred screen legend Christine Hakim. The first Hollywood film that he saw was the Arthur Hiller-directed Love Story on TV but his father turned the television off before the film reached its conclusion.

The only thing that he remembered of the film was: “It had a very romantic and sad feeling about it.”
Another thing that nurtures his artistic sensibility is literature. From a very young age, Nurman loved reading weighty novels including This Earth of Mankind by Pramoedya Ananta Toer, which he read in 1993, although it was still banned by the New Order regime.

That completely changed him. Once again even for reading this book, his Victorian father had to stand in his way. A friend of his father owned the book and Nurman asked to borrow the book. His father rejected the idea fearing that his son could be arrested for reading the banned book.

“Without telling him, I read the book in two days and then returned it. My father’s friend — a college professor — was not angry and he told me that I could keep the book, as he had another copy. I still have that old edition.”

But even when it was obvious that his passion was towards cinema, Nurman once again had to make compromise with his father.

After graduating from the Islamic boarding school, Nurman had to study economy at a private university for about a year before enrolling in the Jakarta Arts Institute (IKJ) where he would spend six years studying film.

He went on to pursue graduate study for two years at the Indonesian Arts Institute in Surakarta, Central Java. He went on to have a teaching job at the IKJ.

It was during the study that he could devote much of his time studying cinema and he devoted himself to the world of cinema.

Hakim usually watches one or two films every day. He likes the black and white classic films, Italian Neo-Realist films, French New Wave films as well as current movies – anything of quality.

And he loves reading books on films and movie directors.  His favorite directors include Lars Von Trier (founder of the Dogma movement), the Mexican directors Alfonso Cuaron and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, American director Martin Scorsese and his colleague at IKJ Nan T. Achnas.

Some of his favorite films are Babel directed by Inarritu, Taxi Driver directed by Scorsese, for its depiction of human alienation and Pasir Berbisik (Whispering Sands) directed by Nan Achnas.
He frequently travels abroad visiting film festivals and now he has traveled to foreign lands promoting 3 Doa, 3 Cinta which has been screened in 12 international film festivals.

He recently resigned from his teaching job so that he could focus on filmmaking. Nurman plans to study more about film in 2013 when he will leave for the UK to get his PhD in cinema. He said that the UK has a very good academic tradition regarding world cinema. “These people are very cinema-literate,” he said.

Learning more about film making and world cinema had certainly motivated him to go to the UK, but we can be forgiven for thinking that he was simply jaded with the current movie scene in the country, with a myriad of problems afflicting filmmakers.

He said that it is very difficult for directors to stand their ground these days. Nurman said that more than 95 percent of directors in the industry are hired guns, who were paid for shooting films for the market.

He said that there are probably ten directors who could maintain their independence vis-a-vis big money. These directors include Garin Nugroho, Riri Riza, Nan Achnas and himself. “I would never want to be a director-for-hire, telling someone else’s stories,” he said.

Now he grows concerned that none of the Indonesian films are decent enough to be able to compete in international festivals.

 “I don’t have a film that can compete at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards (APSA) for 2010, and I am actually worried about my country, because to the best of my knowledge all movies made in Indonesia are part of the mainstream industry that have problems competing for APSA awards.”

Things have also gotten worse lately with the passage of the Film Law by the House of Representatives.

“It has stipulation aimed at limiting the creativity of filmmakers. There’s just so much that you cannot show on screen. One of articles in the law says that you must send your script to the Culture and Tourism Ministry and they will end up cutting some scenes. Their reasoning is that they just want to keep track on how many films are made in Indonesia. Why don’t they just leave it to the film censorship board,” he said.

Nurman said that all the curbs on directors’ artistic freedom harken back to the New Order regime. “Yet, at that time we managed to produce good films. So the lesson is that we should continue making quality films although our hands are tied,” he said.

Nurman experienced first hand a curb on his artistic freedom when recently a private television station cut 20 minutes of 3 Doa, 3 Cinta for no obvious reasons. “People who saw it on TV asked me why my movie didn’t make any sense. As I had sold it to them there was nothing I could do about it,” he said.

This is not the first time Nurman’s movie had to face censorship. The theatrical release of 3 Doa, 3 Cinta was cut by several minutes by the Film Censorship Board.  

Recently, the film in its entirety could be viewed at the Cine Sparks Film Festival in Southeast Queensland – where films from many parts of the world were shown for young people for 10 days.

Anne Demy-Geroe, a long time director of the Brisbane International Film Festival said that the film is a perfect flick for the festival.

Late last year at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards the film was nominated as best feature film. Having achieved this, it seems that Nurman had realized some of his goals in filmmaking, telling the reality of life in his country to the outside world. “Cinema does not only represent reality. It can and should change reality.

“The big goal is to have an influence, and the smaller goal is that the audience can share in another perspective of reality,” he said.

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