JIffest 2009 opens with local film

The Jakarta International Film Festival (Jiffest) marked its second decade of existence with the screening of an Indonesian film as the festival’s opening premiere. Festival manager Navaul Yazid said it was the first time in Jiffest’s 11-year history that an Indonesian film had been selected for the opening night. “This shows the quality of our films is on a par with international films,” Navaul said.

Sang Pemimpi (The Dreamer) is an adaptation of the second novel in a series of four by Andrea Hirata, based on the author’s childhood in Bangka-Belitung, a province off the east coast of Sumatra. The movie version of the first novel in the series, Laskar Pelangi (The Rainbow Troops), was released last year to critical acclaim.

Jiffest 2009 screened 23 Indonesian films in total, including the world premier of Fugu, a movie by experimental filmmaker Faozan Rizal about a love triangle between Japanese newlyweds living in Jakarta and a local woman.

A talking point at Jiffest 2009 was the programming of two controversial films: The 10 Conditions of Love, an Australian-made documentary about the Uighur leader, Rebiya Kadeer, who China blamed for deadly ethnic riots, and Balibo, a dramatized account of the murder of five Australian-based journalists during the 1975 invasion of East Timor, which the Indonesian military raised objections to.

Balibo was withdrawn after the Film Censorship Agency (LSF) banned it. According to a law on film censorship, no film can be publicly screened without LSF approval.

Another Jiffest selection that rankled some viewers was Burma VJ: Reporting From a Closed Country, which recounts the efforts of a band of video journalists to capture footage of the Burmese under the military junta and smuggle it out of the country.

However, Nauval emphasized that Jiffest remained decidedly apolitical. “These movies are just as important as films like 500 Days of Summer and Departures, which are not about politics,” he said.

Departures, a Japanese film by Yojiro Takita, tells the story of a cellist who loses his job after his orchestra is disbanded and takes a job as a nokanshi, someone who prepares corpses for burial.

Jiffest also had a programme called the Madani (Civil) Film Festival, focusing on international films with an Islamic theme.

“Despite Indonesia being the country with the largest Muslim population, the general public has little knowledge of the lives of Muslims outside their own country,” Nauval said. “Jiffest tries to show the lives of Muslims from other parts of the world.”

Other noteworthy selections include Letters to the President, an observational documentary about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s regime, told through the millions of letters sent to him by the people, and Muallaf, a Malaysian film that chronicles the tales of three characters struggling to find religion.

The festival also featured documentaries about prominent figures from different walks of life. Love the Beast documents Australian actor Eric Bana’s 25-year romance with his first car, Around the World with Joseph Stiglitz tackles the issue of globalization from the Nobel prize winner’s perspective, and The Beaches of Agnes is a first-person documentary by French film director Agnes Varda.

The festival, which is supported by Yayasan Masyarakat Mandiri Film Indonesia (The Independent Film Society Foundation), also held the Indonesian Feature Film Competition, which saw a panel of judges selecting the best Indonesian film and film director.

Jiffest organizers also invited a number of speakers, including documentary maker Petr Lom, who directed Letters to the President, and graphic designer Christian Scheurer, who has worked on visually compelling movies like Final Fantasy and The Golden Compass.

Nauval said the aim of this was “to provide an alternative education for those who want to pursue a profession in the film world, or to the general public who are interested in those topics.”