And as the rain mercilessly lashed Jakarta’s overburdened streets last Friday, masses of high-school students found refuge at the Goethe-Institut — where educational short-films and documentaries played to a full house.

At a screening of The Island of Raja Ampat, students audibly marvelled at the sight of aquamarine life scurrying between iridescent coral reefs, before chuckling at the sight of a fat white guy clawing futilely at the zipper of his too-tight wetsuit.

It is, perhaps, an apt illustration of the ethos of this year’s inaugural Science Film Festival, where there is a strong emphasis on education and engagement.

From Nov. 16 to 30, the Science Film Festival — an initiative of the Goethe-Institut Jakarta in partnership with Paramadina University, PPIPTEK-TMII and Blitzmegaplex Pacific Place — will be showing 28 films from Australia, Austria, France, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Poland, Thailand, the Philippines and the UK.

In addition to the festivities held in Jakarta, the festival will take place simultaneously in Cambodia, Thailand and the Philippines.

A major focus of the festival is science literacy, provoking children to interrogate their surroundings and understand the role science plays in everyday life.

The promotion of science literacy is also a strategic maneuver, aiming to counter a trend of decreasing
interest in science-related studies and professions.  

“We introduced the format of the film festival as a fun way for children to learn about science,” Festival coordinator Katrin Sohns says, “as well as helping to reverse significant downward trend in the region that indicates less and less children are interested in scientific studies.

“We hope that by 2012, the Science Film Festival will have a presence in all Asian countries.”  

Ready for action: A room full of students from all around Indonesia wait for the show to start. The Science Film festival will be showing 28 films from Australia, Austria, France, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Poland, Thailand, the Philippines and the UK until Nov. 30. Courtesy of Goethe-Institut And perhaps it is of particular importance for Indonesia — a country that is highly susceptible to the unrelenting hand of Mother Nature — that this interest be revived.

But Sohns also hopes the festival will inspire greater local production of edutainment programs for
children.

“There is a great tradition in Western countries of developing and investing in edutainment productions for children, but a substantial proportion of programming in Indonesia tends to be imported,” she says.

She adds that there is a project in development  — a regional-based children’s channel called I Got It! — that is aimed at generating more edutainment content for Indonesia.

On an encouraging note, she reveals that local interest and funding of educational programming has surged in recent years, and that it is only a matter of time before we see a wave of locally made edutainment gracing Indonesia’s television screens.

The theme of the Science Film Festival is linked to the UN’s annual scientific focus. This year it is biodiversity, which is reflected across the festival’s four film categories: family edutainment; ecology and environment; natural science, life science and technology; and culture and history.

The films traverse a diverse array of topics, including the vitality of water conservation, how to calculate your carbon footprint, and the fragility of our natural environment.

“We have three-minute animated comics and 10-minute short films for younger children, and feature-length documentaries for secondary-school students,” Sohns says. “We believe it is very important to cater to children of all ages.”

To complement the screenings, the Goethe-Institut has scheduled science experiments and quizzes to consolidate the material learned from the films.

These experiments and activities were constructed at minimal cost in order to enable their transportation to other regions of Indonesia.

For example, a model of a small volcano has been constructed to illustrate how Mt. Merapi’s eruptions have affected Indonesia, while there have also been simple exercises designed to teach children about gravity.

“We hope this encourages children to think about what they’ve just seen, to become active rather than passive,” Sohns explains.

Not just for Jakartans: Children from different schools around Indonesia walk around the premises where the Science Film Festival is shown in Jakarta. Courtesy of Goethe-Institut Young minds are fertile ground for inspiration, and perhaps the festival organizers hope the films will stimulate critical and creative thinking among Indonesia’s future scientific movers and shakers.

Certainly, public reception of the festival has been overwhelmingly positive. The most surprising thing for Sohns was the reactions of the schools and the children. The film festival has received “more than 12,000 bookings”, which highlights the strong passion Jakarta’s youth have for science.

But as the festival grows, Sohns is keen to ensure schoolchildren in even the most remote corners of the archipelago can also benefit from same quality of children’s edutainment programming.

“It is extremely important that we don’t just limit ourselves to the major cities”, she says.  She cites the example of Thailand, where the festival was established in Bangkok and has now been set-up in numerous rural locations across the country, attracting more than 110,000 visitors last year.

“I would love to do this for the rest of Indonesia, too,” she says. “Jakarta kids get exposed to many cultural events and I think it would be just as valuable for children in the countryside.”