Abstract
In the past few years, interest in South East Asian cinema has been growing (Lim and Yamamoto, 2012). A number of publications have focused specifically on new directions in Indonesian cinema, and this edited book is a welcome addition to the field. An increase of women’s participation is one of the many changes in the country’s social and political landscape since the end of President Suharto’s New Order Regime in 1998 but, as Michalik notes, women’s film culture is barely recognised within Indonesia or international film discourse (p. 7). This book should do something to address this problem, and also provides a guide to who’s who in the spheres of film practice and film scholarship in Indonesia.
The new era of cinema in post-Suharto Indonesia was initiated by the release of the multi-story film Kuldesak in 1999 (some say 1998), directed by Nan T Achnas, Mira Lesmana, Rizal Montovani and Riri Riza. The significance of this film for Indonesian cinema has already been discussed in Michalik and Coppens’ edited book, Asian Hotshots (2009). Michalik’s new book serves as both sequel and complement to this, and differs from it in three respects. Firstly, it focuses on women filmmakers. Secondly, its contributors discuss feminist ideologies, and ask consider how or whether regime change has altered the position of women in society or cinematic representations of women. And thirdly, most of its contributors are Indonesian filmmakers, festival organisers and/or scholars of film. This is evidence of a burgeoning increase in national interest, reflected in conference participation and panels being dedicated to Indonesian cinema as well as to women filmmakers across Asia (for instance at the joint conference of the Association for Asian Scholars and International Convention of Asian Scholars at Honolulu in 2011).
Anyone encountering Indonesian cinema for the first time will benefit from reading Michalik’s overview which summarises women’s contributions to Indonesian cinema, from actresses-turned-directors/producers Ratna Asmara and Sofia WD, up to the latest generation of women filmmakers, three of whom are interviewed in the book. Michalik also interviews two of the directors of Kuldesak, Nan T Achnas and Mira Lesmana, who have since been inspiring other Indonesian women working as directors, producers and writers. This overview emphasises fiction filmmaking and underplays documentary – as well as omitting the important documentary feature Pertaruhan (At Stake, 2008) from its selective filmography – which is unfortunate, given that one of the strengths of the book is the attention it gives to women filmmakers who work in documentary. Indeed, of the five interviews included in the volume, two are with documentary filmmakers interviewed as part of PhD research into post-Suharto women filmmakers. Sofia Setyorini interviews Ucu Agustin, who has become one of the best known Indonesian documentary filmmakers in the past five years, in Jakarta. A courageous and socially committed filmmaker, her film Pramoedya Ananta Toer documented the death of this celebrated yet formerly censored and exiled author, a project that would have been unthinkable during the New Order. The interview focuses on Di Balik Frequensi (Behind the Frequency, 2013), a two-story film about how media stories are shaped by different interests, rather than a commitment to objectivity, with one case arising from the Lapino mudflow disaster in East Java. Novi Kurnia interviews Yuli Andari in Yogyakarta, director of the splendid ethnographic documentary Bulan Sabit di Tengah Laut (Crescent Moon over the Sea, 2007), shot in her native Sumbawa, and Satu Harapan (One Hope, 2009), a film about a woman’s struggle for survival in Lombok that was selected for screening at the South to South Festival and the Asian Women’s Film Festival in Delhi in 2010. Novi Kurnia also interviews Ariani Darmawan in Bandung. Described as ‘one of the most-distinguished video artists and filmmakers in Indonesia’ (p. 191), Darmawan is known for her documentary films such as Anak Naga Beranak Naga (Dragons Beget Dragons) about Chinese Indonesians, but she resists being labelled according to anything other than her current sphere of creative activity. These interviews provide very lively and informative perspectives on Indonesian cinema and what it is like to be a woman trying to make films in Indonesia.
The book overall provides a useful survey of views on what feminism is and whether women filmmakers are feminist or not. Michalik’s premise is that the filmmakers and their films make visible the changes in Indonesia, and mirror social and cultural development (p.11, pp. 23–4). Kurnia’s discussion of subjectivity draws on her PhD research. Her chapter sets the tone for the way in which most contributors discuss how women filmmakers position themselves in relation to feminism. The section entitled ‘I am feminist, but ….’ (pp. 42–53) argues that New Order ideas of gender inequality continue to shape post-Suharto subjectivities. She concludes with Nan T. Achnas’ warning that without consciousness of gender, women filmmakers run the risk of reproducing ‘old, stereotyped and patriarchal representations’ (p. 54). The ensuing chapters by Olin Monteiro, Intan Paramaditha, and Ekky Imanjaya and Diani Citra work within these parameters in relation to specific examples, including two discussions of Achnas’ own Pasir Berbisik (Whispering Sands, 2001), a controversial film set against the background of the political mayhem and mass murder of the mid-1960s. More could be made of Kurnia’s acknowledgement (p. 34) of the importance of Krishna Sen’s (1994) analysis of gendered representations in New Order Indonesia, which is used effectively in Imanjaya and Citra’s chapter (pp. 99–101). These discussions tend to raise questions rather than answer them. A sense of what feminism means to these filmmakers comes across most interestingly in the interview data, in relation to practical contingencies and experience, rather than at a theoretical level. In general, the discussions of gender are mostly founded on heteronormativity and, apart from a couple of allusions, do not explore LBG cinema and ‘queer theory’ (most recently, Murtagh (2014)).
In contrast to the chapters which concentrate on particular 21st century films or filmmakers, Jan Budweg takes the long view in a detailed appraisal of Christine Hakim’s contribution to the Indonesian film industry from the 1970s to 2012. Hakim was known internationally as an actress during the Suharto era but has also played important roles in film production and mentoring. As part of her encouragement of a new generation of filmmakers, she was the first to hire the Welsh filmmaker Gareth Evans, who went on to make the internationally successful action film Serbuan Maut (The Raid: Redemption) and its sequel, Berandal (‘Thug’, The Raid 2, 2014), starring Iko Uwais as Rama, a police officer battling with Jakarta’s extensive underworld. This surprising aspect of Hakim’s influence, as Budweg observes (p. 162), reverses the usual direction of the flow of Indonesians overseas to seek education and professional credentials – a flow which is illustrated by three of the Indonesian contributors to this book who have been pursuing PhDs in the Netherlands, America and Australia.
Although many of the chapters by this diaspora of scholars concern films and filmmakers that come out of the tightly-knit women’s film network in Jakarta and the Jakarta Arts Institute (IKJ) where Nan T Achnas has taught, Indonesia’s cinematic regional diversity is growing as university film and media courses open in other cities. The interviews in Bandung with Ariani Darmawan and Yuli Andari in Yogyakarta provide perspectives on activities in other provinces in Java. Two chapters analyse films made outside Java: Ekky Imanjaya and Diani Citra show how Sammaria Simanjuntak’s film, Demi Ucok (For Ucok’s Sake, 2013), draws on her ethnic background to explore gender values in a Batak community in North Sumatra; Wiwik Sushartami discusses a documentary film about violence against women in three conflict zones (see below). This recognition of Indonesia’s regional variation is welcome – although a reader who wants to learn more about diversification and the role of film festivals and cultural brokers such as Lulu Ratna who co-founded the Boemboe Foundation, which ran the ‘Three Cities Festival’ tour of smaller towns in Java and beyond to Kalimantan, East Indonesia and Sulawesi, will need to go back to Asian Hotshots. Ratna now co-organises the documentary film festival ChopShorts (see http://www.goethe.de/ins/id/en/lp/kul/mag/flm/12679290.html, accessed 21 April 2016) for the DocNet Southeast Asia, a project of the Goethe Institute, which also helped publish this book, so the Institute’s role in bringing Indonesian (and South East Asian) films of different kinds to a wider public, both inside and outside the region, is yet another strand in the complex story of Indonesian filmmaking.
The individual chapters provide an intriguing range of engagements with classical feminist texts in arguments which try to define what an emergent Indonesian feminism (for want of a better word) might be. They also provide evidence that the ‘film-as-social-mirror’ model requires elaboration. Many chapters talk about feminism being an individual choice, but the process of making and distributing films is refracted by social factors; the evidence for this is presented most eloquently in Ariani Darmawan’s interview, where she explains the impact of Cinema 21 on Indonesia filmmaking (pp. 194–197). Independent, or what Gotot Prakosa termed ‘side-stream’, filmmakers (van Heeren, 2009: 71) have been battling with Cinema 21’s monopoly, as well as the lack of infrastructure for funding and distribution. Side-stream film itself encompasses a heterogeneous range of practices, including grass-roots activism and community-based film. This area of practice is elaborated in Wiwik Sushartami’s chapter about the film Perempuan di Wilayah Konflik (Women in Conflict Areas), about rape in three Indonesian conflict zones – Aceh, West Papua and Poso in Central Sulawesi. The filmed was made by the NGO YPJ (Yayasan Jurnal Perempuan), and Sushartami provides a useful discussion of the development of women’s NGOs in Indonesia before her detailed and sensitive analysis of the film. This chapter is one of the strongest cases against film being a mirror of society, as she shows how the individual needs to join a collectivity to change and transform social formations. This, coupled with a dynamic perspective on creativity referred to by Darmawan, is what is needed to provide an adequate account of the complex system that structures author intention, film representation, audience reception and social formations. Films are part of social process, not simply its mirror. And changes in women’s position and representation require collective enterprise, not simply the acts of individual choice mentioned by a number of the contributors.
This extremely interesting and useful book recognises the different roles women play as filmmakers. It also provides a range of voices and positions about gender and filmmaking by emerging Indonesian scholars. And it recognises that there is more to Indonesian filmmaking than what goes on in Jakarta. A small quibble is the absence of an index and some editorial footnotes to help to navigate the key themes, films and filmmakers. Overall, this publication is most welcome, and anyone with an interest in film, women’s studies and Indonesian culture and society will benefit from reading it.