Filmmaking. Documentary. Writing.
I grew up with fictions. Hitchcock's series The Three Investigators, Blyton's series Famous Five, and those Agatha Christie's were my bibles, along with some kung fu series written by an Indonesian Chinese named Kho Ping Hoo. Those books gave me a sense of heroism in finding and reveal the truth. The world was full of mysteries and I was convinced that I should be the one who supposed to reveal them.
In my college times, I felt that I need a method to do such mission. And I chose journalism. The tribe of campus journalists I joined, unfortunately, were not objective-both sided-non partisan news gatherers as those journalism handbooks suggested. They were a hybrid of social scientist wanna-be and educated pseudo-middle class who inherited the legacy of student's noble duty as the agent of change. So was our journalism. This was how I enter the world of literacy. The world of reading and writing.
Later on, I got bored with those rallies and protests against militarism, cronyism, and fascist attitude of Soeharto regime. During those busy times of students protest, amazingly, I became more and more involved into the world of fictions. I wrote poems, plays, short stories and tried to run the daily business of a film viewer's club. As those realities became more real and real around me with more and more violence shown by the regime, the boundaries between reality and fiction has blurred in my comprehension. I had a strong feeling that journalism has something to do with fiction. Somehow, fictions, tales and stories had to be involved in presenting the 'truth'. This was how I understand why those journalism handbook authors refer the word 'story' to 'news', which in Indonesian language sense meant more into 'tale', more fiction respectively.
I had to find a right medium to implement those ideas. Thanks to the creative world in the town I lived, Jogjakarta , the heart of Javanese culture, the factual world had crept silently into the world of fictions; short stories columns in the newspaper, the plays, the monologues, the paintings, the stature and happening and instalation arts, and so on and so on. Soon, the art scene was crowded by political issues. Everybody wanted the regime to be end. Everybody wanted a new president.
And again, I found myself fled from these scenes. I wanted my sanctuary. This was the time when I jotted down the ideas behind my first documentary, Orang-orang Merah Jambu (The House of the Pink People) Part 1, which I produced two years later. It was a personal documentary in which I tracked back my grandmother's stories with her lifetime servants. It was as story of love and adherence, actually. And a lost memory of the bound between servants and their master only Javanese can understand. It was also supposed to be an account of a tranquil neighborhood in a Javanese community destroyed by political turbulence that spanned between the rise of Nation in 1946 and the coupe in 1965. At the end of the film, I have my host -a friend of mine- phoned her mother back in the hometown in Meulaboh, Aceh, telling her finding of my neighborhood: "It's the same here, neighbors killed each other, one time Moslems killed Communists, and other time Communists killed Moslems.." It supposed to be a good documentary.
It supposed to be. But never be. This day, all the people of whom I have them telling the stories were already passed away. My grandmother was dead. My grandmother's servants was dead. The last member of the communist family have already died. So have the Moslems family member. So have the colonialists supporter family members. So was the friend of mine. And what remained was a huge void of forgetfulness. The void, I was afraid, I have to endure along my intention as a witness. What could I witness? Inviable, wasn't it?
But I have been in love with those dancing pixels of moving images. So I continued my career in the infantile industry of Indonesian film. I took the job of researcher, which gave me a chance to travel around the archipelago. My limited political awareness connected all those so naturally and culturally diverse and rich landscapes to the idea of this new emerging nation intended to be. And I felt that we were getting lost. Along with all the countries in where all those war winner and loser north countries have fought the 2nd world war. And since I believed in that we would be sinking pretty soon in the cause of melting poles, we were all getting lost in the way we lived our life. We were in the process of going vanished.
You could win the war some years ago, you could then squeezed the powerless, but at the end of the day, you would find that the real one you squeezed was the earth which hold the ground in where you conducted your life. I have this FYI message type some days ago, that earth was a globe, means knew no boundaries between the war winner and the war loser. It could only be us who would win or lose. Us. You and Me.
I believed it. And those dancing pixels should tell that. So I continued to write and sometimes produced and directed my own stories. I have been directed some public service commercials, promos, tutorials, profiles for this and that company or government offices. But I wanted those pixels should dance more.
This is the end of the page, and now you know why I suggested you to read this later!
In my college times, I felt that I need a method to do such mission. And I chose journalism. The tribe of campus journalists I joined, unfortunately, were not objective-both sided-non partisan news gatherers as those journalism handbooks suggested. They were a hybrid of social scientist wanna-be and educated pseudo-middle class who inherited the legacy of student's noble duty as the agent of change. So was our journalism. This was how I enter the world of literacy. The world of reading and writing.
Later on, I got bored with those rallies and protests against militarism, cronyism, and fascist attitude of Soeharto regime. During those busy times of students protest, amazingly, I became more and more involved into the world of fictions. I wrote poems, plays, short stories and tried to run the daily business of a film viewer's club. As those realities became more real and real around me with more and more violence shown by the regime, the boundaries between reality and fiction has blurred in my comprehension. I had a strong feeling that journalism has something to do with fiction. Somehow, fictions, tales and stories had to be involved in presenting the 'truth'. This was how I understand why those journalism handbook authors refer the word 'story' to 'news', which in Indonesian language sense meant more into 'tale', more fiction respectively.
I had to find a right medium to implement those ideas. Thanks to the creative world in the town I lived, Jogjakarta , the heart of Javanese culture, the factual world had crept silently into the world of fictions; short stories columns in the newspaper, the plays, the monologues, the paintings, the stature and happening and instalation arts, and so on and so on. Soon, the art scene was crowded by political issues. Everybody wanted the regime to be end. Everybody wanted a new president.
And again, I found myself fled from these scenes. I wanted my sanctuary. This was the time when I jotted down the ideas behind my first documentary, Orang-orang Merah Jambu (The House of the Pink People) Part 1, which I produced two years later. It was a personal documentary in which I tracked back my grandmother's stories with her lifetime servants. It was as story of love and adherence, actually. And a lost memory of the bound between servants and their master only Javanese can understand. It was also supposed to be an account of a tranquil neighborhood in a Javanese community destroyed by political turbulence that spanned between the rise of Nation in 1946 and the coupe in 1965. At the end of the film, I have my host -a friend of mine- phoned her mother back in the hometown in Meulaboh, Aceh, telling her finding of my neighborhood: "It's the same here, neighbors killed each other, one time Moslems killed Communists, and other time Communists killed Moslems.." It supposed to be a good documentary.
It supposed to be. But never be. This day, all the people of whom I have them telling the stories were already passed away. My grandmother was dead. My grandmother's servants was dead. The last member of the communist family have already died. So have the Moslems family member. So have the colonialists supporter family members. So was the friend of mine. And what remained was a huge void of forgetfulness. The void, I was afraid, I have to endure along my intention as a witness. What could I witness? Inviable, wasn't it?
But I have been in love with those dancing pixels of moving images. So I continued my career in the infantile industry of Indonesian film. I took the job of researcher, which gave me a chance to travel around the archipelago. My limited political awareness connected all those so naturally and culturally diverse and rich landscapes to the idea of this new emerging nation intended to be. And I felt that we were getting lost. Along with all the countries in where all those war winner and loser north countries have fought the 2nd world war. And since I believed in that we would be sinking pretty soon in the cause of melting poles, we were all getting lost in the way we lived our life. We were in the process of going vanished.
You could win the war some years ago, you could then squeezed the powerless, but at the end of the day, you would find that the real one you squeezed was the earth which hold the ground in where you conducted your life. I have this FYI message type some days ago, that earth was a globe, means knew no boundaries between the war winner and the war loser. It could only be us who would win or lose. Us. You and Me.
I believed it. And those dancing pixels should tell that. So I continued to write and sometimes produced and directed my own stories. I have been directed some public service commercials, promos, tutorials, profiles for this and that company or government offices. But I wanted those pixels should dance more.
This is the end of the page, and now you know why I suggested you to read this later!
