Programme

PROGRAMME

Address:

Program Pasca Sarjana
ISI YOGYAKARTA
Jl. Suryodiningratan No. 8 Yogyakarta
DIY 55143
Indonesia

23 JULY 2018 (MONDAY)
09:00 – 09:30	Registration
09.30 – 09:50	Welcome Address
10:00 – 11:30	Panel 1 – Representation of Gender Chair: Gaik-Cheng Khoo (University of Nottingham, Malaysia Campus)
10:00 – 10:20	Evi Eliyanah (The Australian National University / Universitas Negeri Malang)			Fahri to Chudhori: Reel Muslim New Man in Contemporary Indonesian Cinema
10:20 – 10:40	Alicia Izharuddin (University of Malaya)			Cinema of Misrecognition: Islam, Gender, and the Terrorist in Contemporary Indonesian Film
10:40 – 11:00	IGAK Satrya Wibawa (Universitas Airlangga / Curtin University)			Seen the Unseen Balinese: Female Gaze in Children Space in Kamila Andini’s The Seen and the Unseen
11:00 – 11:20	Adrian Alarilla (University of Washington, Seattle)			The Spectacular Body of the Father in Agony and Ecstasy
11:20 – 11:50	Discussion
11:50 – 13:00	Lunch
13:00 – 14:50	Panel 2 – Region and Place Chair: Adam Knee (LaSalle College of the Arts, Singapore)
13:00 – 13:20	Bayu Kristianto (Universitas Indonesia)		Romantic Nationhood: A Critique of the Film 5cmthrough the Lens of Yi-Fu Tuan
13:20 – 13:40	Latifah and Ary Budiyanto (Kertarajasa Buddhist College and Brawijaya University)		Narrating Islam and Adat in Contemporary Makassar Cinema
13:40 – 14:00	Tito R. Quiling Jr. (University of Santo Tomas)		Distress in the Marshlands: Mapping Landscapes of Fear and Faith in Francis Xavier Pasion’s Bwaya (2014)
14:00 – 14:20	Katrina Ross Tan (University of the Philippines Los Baños)		Religion in Philippine Contemporary Life: Analysis of Selected Regional Short Films
14:20 – 14:50	Discussion
15:00 – 15:30	Tea break
15:30 – 17:30	Film Screening: Sunya (The Talisman, Hari Suharyadi, 2017)
17:30 –	‘Field Trip’ to Parangkusumo (See description at bottom)
24 JULY 2018 (TUESDAY)
09:45 – 10:30	Plenary Speaker Associate Professor Antonio D. Sison Chair, Historical and Doctrinal Studies Department Catholic Theological Union, Chicago (USA)
10:30 – 12:10	Panel 3 – Poetics and Politics Chair: Budi Irawanto (Universitas Gadjah Mada)
10:30 – 10:50	Chris Woodrich (Universitas Gadjah Mada)	(De)Politicizing Religion: Islam and Politics in Asrul Sani’s Para Perintis Kemerdekaan (1977)
10:50 – 11:10	Rosalia Namsai Engchuan (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology)	An Ethnography of the Dynamic Social Process of Film Censorship in Contemporary Indonesia
11:10 – 11:30	Chris Lundry (El Colegio de México.)	Revisiting Passabe: Lisan, Government and Restorative Justice
11:30 – 11:50	Roland B. Tolentino (University of the Philippines Film Institute)	Lead Us Not Into Temptation: Cultural Politics of Representation of Religiosity in Philippine Cinema
11:50 – 12:10	Discussion
12:10 – 13:10	Lunch
13:10 – 15:00	Panel 4 – Folk and Horror Chair: Mariam Lam (University of California, Riverside)
13:10 – 13:30	Nguyen Thi Dieu Linh (Hanoi National University of Education)	Representation of Spiritual and Traditional Elements as a Contemporary Phenomena in Vietnamese Movie Me Thao / The Legendary Age
13:30 – 13:50	Anton Sutandio (Maranatha Christian University)	The Politics of Occultism and Religion in Sisworo Gautama Putra’s and Joko Anwar’s Pengabdi Setan
13: 50 – 14:10	Veluree Metaveevinij (Thammasat University / University of London)	Spirits Across Borders: Case Studies in Transnational Horror Cinema
14:10 – 14:40	Discussion
14:40 – 15:15	Afternoon Tea
15:15 – 16:45	Panel 5 – Mapping the Trans/national Chair: Popi Primadewi (Institut Seni Indonesia, Surakarta)
15:15 – 15:35	Thomas Barker (University of Nottingham Malaysia)	Travelling Muslims: Cosmopolitans, Romance, and Newfound Independence
15:35 – 15:55	Meghan Downes (National University of Singapore, Asia Research Institute)	Religion and Development in Indonesian Cinema
15:55 – 16:15	Adam Knee (Lasalle College of the Arts)	Thailand in US Faith-Based Films
16:15 – 16:45	Discussion
16:45 – 17:00	Tea break
17:00 – 18:30	Screening: The Right to Kill (Arbi Barbarona, 2017)
25 JULY 2018 (WEDNESDAY)
09:00 – 10:50	Panel 6 – Aesthetics / Reception Chair: Ratna Erika Suwarno (Universitas Padjadjaran)
09:00 – 9:20	Azrain Arifin (Sunway University)	The Five Stations of Artistry in Film: A Sufistic Perspective
09:20 – 9:40	Ekky Imanjaya (Bina Nusantara University)	Astaghfirullah Film Indonesia!: Lady Terminator, Politics of Taste, and “The Other Kind of Public”
09:40 – 10:00	Muhammad Bahruddin (University of Indonesia)	The Identity of Inclusive Islam in Films by Nurman Hakim
10:00 – 10:20	Ly Quyet Tien (HCMC Open University, Vietnam)	Engaged Buddhism in Saigon Mobile Force
10:20 – 10: 50	Discussion
10:50 – 11:00	Tea Break
11:00 – 12:00	Plenary Speaker: Hikmat Darmawan (30 min/30 min discussion)	The Aesthetics of Melodrama in the Indonesian Film Dakwah Industry
12:00 – 13:00	Lunch
13:00 – 14:40	Panel 7 – Auteurs Chair: Novi Kurnia (Universitas Gadjah Mada)
13:00 – 13:20	Jonathan Driskell (Monash University Malaysia)	Islam and Fame in the Malay Stardom Film: From P. Ramlee to Salam Cinta
13:20 – 13:40	Gareth Stanton (Goldsmiths, University of London)	P. Ramlee and the Crisis of Faith: Extending Joel Kahn’s Analysis of the Ramlee Oeuvre
13:40 – 14:00	Adrian D. Mendizabal (University of the Philippines – Diliman)	Metaphysics of Long Duration in the Cinema of Lav Diaz
14:00 – 14:20	Miguel Penabella (University of California, Santa Barbara)	A Theology of Cinematic Salvation: The Political Necessity of Digital in the Contexts of Lav Diaz’s Slow Cinema
14:20 – 14:40	Discussion
14:40 – 16:10	Panel 8 – Practitioner Panel:  Arbi Barbarona (Philippines), Anucha Boonyawatana (Thailand), Hari Suharyadi (Indonesia), Makbul Mubarak (Universitas Multimedia Nusantara, Indonesia) Chair: Roland B. Tolentino
15: 40 – 16:10	Discussion
16:10 – 16:40	Tea Break
16:40 – 18:30	Film Screening: Malila: The Farewell Flower (Anucha Boonyawatana, 2017)
18:30 -	Dinner
26 JULY 2018 (THURSDAY)
09:00 – 10:30	Panel 9 – Producing Spiritual / Religious / Mystical Films Chairs: Gaston Soehadi (Petra Christian University, Surabaya)
09:00 – 9:20	Immanuel P. Gintings (Universitas HKBP Nommensen)	Linguistic Study on Shaman Mantra Book as Research for Producing Film Guru Sibaso
09:20 – 9:40	Tito Imanda (Goldsmiths, University of London)	Fairies, Jinns, Spirits and Maintaining their Mood for Good Acting: Film, Filming and Ritual
09:40 – 10:00	Dag Yngvesson (University of Nottingham, Malaysia Campus) and Koes Yuliadi (Institut Seni Indonesia, Yogyakarta)	Many Chickens, Lots of Luck: Filming Islam, Capitalism and Media in Post Reformasi Yogyakarta
10:00 – 10:30	Discussion
10:30 – 12:00	Screening Short films	Lagi Senang jaga Sekandang Lembu (It’s Easier to Raise Cattle, Amanda Nell Eu, 2017); Ruah (The Malediction, Makbul Mubarak, 2016). Tetangga(Neighbors, Tito Imanda, 2018), More TBA.
12:00 – 12:30	Discussion Moderator: Tito Imanda (BPI / Goldsmiths, Univ. of London)
12:30 – 13:30	Lunch Break
13:30 – 14:00	Closing Remarks
14:00 – 15:00	ASEACC Steering Committee Meeting

FIELD TRIP (Monday, 23 July, 17:30-)

Syncretic Religious Politics in Practice: Ritual field trip to Parangkusumo, gateway to the Queen of the South Sea

In line with conference themes, following the proceedings on Monday, we will take a short bus ride to Parangkusumo beach. Parangkusumo is known as the gateway to the underwater palace of the Queen of the South Sea, a legendary spiritual-political figure who also has appeared popular mystical/horror films from the 1970s until the present, as well as in numerous paintings and novels. Monday night is a special ritual date on the Javanese calendar, and the ritual area at Parangkusumo, built and maintained by the Yogyakarta palace, will be filled with people seeking the blessings of the Queen, and also usually looking for a rousing night out. The site is open to anyone, there is no entrance fee, and plenty of cheap food and drinks are available in the many cafes and stands.

A brief historical background: According to the Babad Tanah Jawi(the official history of the Mataram dynasty, the descendants of which is still hold political office in Yogyakarta), Parangkusumo is the location where Senapati, the first Sultan of Mataram encountered Kanjeng Ratu Kidul (aka Nyai Roro Kidul), the mythical Queen of the South Sea in the late 16^thcentury. Finding Senapati meditating there, she escorted him to her underwater palace where they consorted physically, and she also instructed him in the principles of statecraft. At the time, Senapati was a rebellious vassal of Pajang; according to the Babad, his subsequent alliance with Ratu Kidul, and the knowledge she imparted, are what enabled him to defeat the reigning local powers and establish a new regime shortly thereafter. He also pledged that he and all successive Sultans of Mataram would be spiritually "married" to Ratu Kidul, and send offerings to Parangkusumo at least once a year. At her insistence, however, the bond she shared with each Sultan was not consecrated by the laws of mortal men, which she explained do not apply to her. The rituals that occur in Parangkusumo now are loosely based on this narrative pattern in which empowerment may occur through engagement with a powerful feminine outsider to patriarchal rule. Preceding the arrival of Dutch colonizers, the popularity and influence of the Queen have continued throughout the colonial era until the present. Her image, which adorned famous paintings beginning in the 1950s, has been called a “national icon” (Strassler 2014), and in 1998, Islamic leader Abdurrahman Wahid famously made a pilgrimage to Parangkusumo prior to his election as the first president of the post-Suharto Reformasi era. The numerous films and novels in which the Queen appears as a central have further cemented her legend, and in many cases reinforced the longstanding idea of politics grounded in both masculine and feminine aspects of power.

Site and ritual activities: The site contains a ritual area and two pendopo pavilions, as well as a mosque that directly intersects the ritual area on the West side. On ritual nights (which occur every few weeks) there are hundreds, sometimes thousands of attendees from all walks of life, including families with children despite the area's somewhat infamous aura. Usually there is a shadow play performance; people praying in the ritual area, combining Islamic and Hindu/Javanese discourses; a lively night market surrounding the ritual area; and rows of women who come to "work" the rituals, whose presence may reflect the spiritual Hostess’ socio-legal outsider status. One can sit and watch the shadow play and ritual prayers conducted in the center of the site, eat in one of the many surrounding cafes, or follow the ritual pilgrims out to the beach about 200 meters to the south, where they pray and place offerings into the water. There are usually also highly performative hawkers of medicines and charms with crowds of people gathered to watch them.

PANEL 1

Representation of Gender

Chair: Novi Kurnia (Universitas Gadjah Mada)

Presenters: Evi Eliyanah (The Australian National University / Universitas Negeri Malang); Alicia Izharuddin (University of Malaya); IGAK Satrya Wibawa (Universitas Airlangga / Curtin University); Adrian Alarilla (University of Washington, Seattle)

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Evi Eliyanah (The Australian National University / Universitas Negeri Malang)

Fahri to Chudhori: Reel Muslim New Man in Contemporary Indonesian Cinema

Email: evi.eliyanah@anu.edu.au

Abstract: The presentation discusses the emergence of Muslim New Man as an alternative ideal representation of masculinity in contemporary Indonesian cinema. New Man masculinity is characterised by emotionally sensitivity, nurturance, and involvement in domestic works. Through examining the production politics, socio-political contexts, and the texts of three Islamic-themed blockbusters (Ayat-Ayat Cinta, Perempuan Berkalung Sorban, and Ketika Cinta Bertasbih), I will show that New Man in Indonesian contemporary Islamic-themed films signals reinvigorated struggle for hegemonic masculinity in the first decade of twenty- first century, a period marked by gender order crisis. The flourishing Muslims New Man indicates a generational challenge against the older form of ideal masculinity espoused by the Indonesian previous authoritarian regime. Secondly it signals frustration against the stereotypical images of Muslim men in the post authoritarian Indonesia and in the post 9/11. Eventually, Muslim New Man of Indonesian cinema is an inward-looking critique launched by the emerging urban Muslim middle classes with cosmopolitan worldview, who believe that gender equality is not only modern but also inherently Islamic.

Evi Eliyanah is a faculty member at the Department of English, Faculty of Letters, Universitas Negeri Malang. She is an off-shore PhD candidate at Australian National University. She is currently based in Malang. Her doctoral research topic is representations of masculinities in contemporary Indonesian cinema. Researching representations of gender in cinema has been her passion in the past eight years. Previously, she was more into literature and development. Her recent publications on Islam and Indonesian cinema can be found in Online Supplement XIV of Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures (Brill 2016) and in Social Sciences Vol 6(3) (2017).

Alicia Izharuddin (University of Malaya)

Cinema of Misrecognition: Islam, Gender, and the Terrorist in Contemporary Indonesian Film

Email: alicia@um.edu.my

Abstract: Likely to be a response to Western representations of Muslims as terrorists, filmmakers in majority Muslim societies outside the Middle East and South Asia have been producing filmic narratives to counter, subvert, and come to terms with the rise of terrorism within their own national boundaries. In the films discussed in my paper, the reconfigured Indonesian nation is engaged, and at times forced to confront, with a post-9/11 world and those beyond, where Muslims in Indonesia are mapped onto a bigger picture of global Islam. This paper seeks to unravel the gendered and classed underpinnings of misrecognizing ‘good’ Islam and Muslims particularly in its attention to the misrecognition of the Indonesian man as terrorist and the anxiety with the niqab. In the illustration of ‘good’ Islam, its dark half, ‘bad’ Islam is expressed as a religious and cultural ideology and embodiment that is foreign and Other to the self of the Indonesian nation. It is possible that the misrecognition of Indonesian Muslims as terrorists is attributed to Indonesia’s peripheral place in the Muslim world, leading to the lack of understanding and indeed misunderstanding. As I will explain in more detail, the contemporary Islamic film in Indonesia is a genre that is both ethnographic and autobiographical in its attention to presenting a narrative of Indonesian Islam in contradistinction to the threat of extremism to the wider world. It is a genre that behaves unambiguously in its treatment of difference, notions of the national Muslim self as its ‘determinant frame’ and its Other.

Alicia Izharuddin is a Senior Lecturer in Gender Studies at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Malaya having graduated with a PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, in 2015. She is interested in gendered practices in Islam and feminist theory in predominantly Muslim societies. She has published in Asian Cinema, Indonesia and the Malay World, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies and Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in the Asia Pacific. Her first monograph on Gender and Islam in Indonesian Cinema is to be published by Palgrave Macmillan in December 2016.

IGAK Satrya Wibawa (Universitas Airlangga / Curtin University)

Seen the Unseen Balinese: Female Gaze in Children Space in Kamila Andini’s The Seen and the Unseen

Email: igaksatrya@fisip.unair.ac.id or igusti.wibawa@postgrad.curtin.edu.au

Abstract: In this paper, I argue that the recent film of Kamila Andini, the Seen and Unseen, has provided a locus for a discourse of female gaze within children space in the context of the Balinese tradition. The Seen and Unseen is a film about a Balinese girl, Tantri, who is devastated of losing her twin brother, Tantra because of a mysterious disease. The film focuses the narrative on Tantri’s effort to bring her brother back through spiritual connection between twins. However, in the end she has to accept Tantra’s destiny. While drawing upon Mulvey’s thought of female as an active role against male (Smelik, 2007), this paper will not attempt to define Andini’s narrative on this film within a particular cinematic movement. I tend to explore how Andini elaborates her thought of Balinese tradition through children’s characters and contestation between male-female roles in which female cinematic expression can be emphasised.

Satrya Wibawa is a lecturer at Communications Department, Universitas Airlangga, Indonesia. He is currently a PhD student at the School of Media Creative Arts & Social Inquiry, Curtin University, Western Australia. His fields of research includes children in Indonesian cinema, also new media and its intersection with cinema and journalism

Adrian Alarilla (University of Washington, Seattle)

The Spectacular Body of the Father in Agony and Ecstasy 

Email: alarilla@uw.edu

Abstract: Fatherhood is almost universally associated with virility and bounty, but there is also a representation of the Father as self-sacrificial offering whose ritualized pain guarantees the continuity of the family, a depiction that pervades contemporary Southeast Asian Cinema. Using Elaine Scarry’s argument that in order to express inexpressible pain, that which is expressible—the physicality of the body, indeed its corporeality/corpo-reality—must be denied and unmade, “converting the vision of suffering into the wholly illusory but wholly convincing spectacle of power” (Scarry, 1985, p. 27), we can posit that in rituals of self-harm, the subject denies his own corpo-reality in order to assert his own spiritual power, heightened by the transformation of private torture into public spectacle. In the Singaporean film “My Magic” (2008) by Eric Khoo, the father re-enacts elements of the Saivite festival of Thaipusam and willingly offers his body to a sadomasochistic show in an underground night club to provide for his only son. In the Filipino film “Kristo” (2017) by HF Yambao, the father retraces Jesus’ footsteps to Calvary both physically through the Passion play of the Senakulo, and figuratively through his everyday routine of being a ‘Kristo’ in a cockfighting arena in the city, in the end providing the ultimate sacrifice for the prosperity of his aspirational family. In the Indonesian film “The Raid: Redemption” (2011) by Gareth Evans, the father is a policeman with seemingly superhuman endurance, undergoing escalating stages of corporeal violence so he can defeat the drug lord, rescue his brother, and keep his wife and unborn child safe. In all three films, an ethos of the bodily sacrifice of the Father is exulted, but only if said sacrifice is performed as ritualistic spectacle, thereby circulating the spiritual power of the Father and reproducing a sublime form of patriarchy.

Adrian Alarilla is a filmmaker, community organizer, and film scholar interested in film history and Southeast Asian Cinema. He was a Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellow and Thomas W. & Mary C. Gething Fellow while studying at the University of Washington, where he obtained his MA in Southeast Asian Studies in 2018. He helps run various community film festivals in Seattle, and his video essays have been shown at various festivals in the Philippines, Mexico, and the United States.

PANEL 2

Region and Place

Chair: Adam Knee (LaSalle College of the Arts, Singapore)

Presenters: Bayu Kristianto (Universitas Indonesia); Latifah and Ary Budiyanto (Kertarajasa Buddhist College and Brawijaya University); Tito R. Quiling Jr. (University of Santo Tomas); Katrina Ross Tan (University of the Philippines Los Baños).

Bayu Kristianto (Universitas Indonesia)

Romantic Nationhood: A Critique of the Film 5cmthrough the Lens of Yi-Fu Tuan

Email: baladewabayu@gmail.com

Abstract: Directed by Rizal Mantovani, the film 5cm (2012) tells the story of a group of five young Jakartans united in an intimate, long-lasting friendship. In order to test the strength of their friendship, one member of the group, Genta, suggests that they refrain from seeing each other for three months. At the end of this absolutely-no-contact period, they end up climbing Mount Mahameru, the highest mountain in Java, and prove again the resilience of their bonding. Sponsored by two leading companies in Indonesia, i.e. Pertamina (whose flagship product, Pertamax, is featured in the film), and Djarum Super, one of the giant tobacco companies in Indonesia, it is a motivational movie targeted for nature lovers and young Indonesian in general. It is aimed to tell the Indonesian youth of the need to love their country and its beautiful landscape, shown through the journey of climbing Mount Mahameru taken by these five young people. Contrary to Yi-Fu Tuan’s contention that space transforms into place due to human experience that shapes it, the film shows that the natural landscape of Mount Mahameru is a place replete with meanings in itself. Indeed, it is through the journey to and on the mountain and engaging closely with its natural features that the significance of their friendship is reinstated. Despite serving as a critique of Tuan’s anthropomorphic conception of place as meaningful solely through human experience, the film itself is disputable from Tuan’s perspective for subsuming the natural environment into the power of the state displayed through each member’s testimony of their love and devotion to the state after witnessing first-hand the beautiful landscape. These marvelous lands are believed to be under the sovereignty of the state. This analysis is aimed at showing that while the film is inspiring through its critique of Yi-Fu Tuan’s anthropocentrism, it is also problematic for calling to the sovereignty of the state in order to define the place of the natural landscape, which in Tuan’s view should never be confined by the arbitrary power of the state pertaining to how humans engage with place.

Bayu Kristianto is an instructor and faculty member at English Department, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia. He is currently the head of American Studies Program (a Masters program), the School of Strategic and Global Studies, Universitas Indonesia, where he is also an instructor. He earned his Bachelors degree in literature from English Department at Universitas Indonesia, his Masters degree in American Studies from American Studies Department at State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo, and his Ph.D. degree in Native American Studies from Native American Studies Department at University of California, Davis. His areas of interests are Native American Studies, American Studies, English and American literature, Cultural Studies, and film studies. He has published a number of articles in the form of literary and film criticism in several academic journals both in Indonesia and abroad, as well as given presentations grappling with various issues in literature and film studies.

Latifah and Ary Budiyanto (Kertarajasa Buddhist College and Brawijaya University)

Narrating Islam and Adat in Contemporary Makassar Cinema

Email: efi_latifah@yahoo.com and Ary91budhi@gmail.com

Abstract: The cultural expressions of the Makassar community, especially the Bugis, as described by Christian Pelras (2006), are more on archaeological remains, literary and artistic works.  In its current development the cinema, as the community’s artistic works, became a new significant medium of strong religious and cultural expressions. These cinema are narrating and representing the tension and negotiation of the strength of moral values ​​which is considered as a main cause of conflicts in society such as in “silariang” and “uang panai” genre. In this respect, it is interesting to examine whether the role of religious values, especially Islam, neutralized or confirmed the existence of indigenous custom or tradition. Thus, the study of the Makassar cinemas can answer the criticism of Heddy Shri Ahimsa-Putra (2011) to study the elements of Bugis Makassar culture which are more glued to the past and see less change in the present with various complexities such as strengthening of religious identity. The relationship between religion and adat (tradition) in the contemporary of Makassar cinema is examined through naratology analysis (Mieke Bal, 1985) to see its respective positions in power-function-receiver and actant-helper or actant opponent relationships.

Latifah graduated from her undergraduate at Faculty of Cultural Sciences - Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta, and an M.A. in Asian Studies from the from University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. In addition, she studied a year at the Center for Cultural and Religious Studies (CRCS) at Gadjah Mada University. Since 2001, she has worked as an editor and a journalist contributor. Since 2012, she teaches Bahasa at Kertarajasa Buddhist College, Malang, East Java, Indonesia.  She is a also a researcher at the Center for Culture and Frontiers Studies (CCFS) of Brawijaya University. Her research interests include gender, culture, and religion. She can be contacted atefi_latifah@yahoo.com

Ary Budiyanto is lecturer at Antropology - Fakultas Ilmu Budaya, Brawijaya University, Malang, Indonesia. He received his Master degree in Religion and Cultural Studies at the Center for Religious and Cultural Studies, Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta. He is a co-founder, secretary, and researcher at the Center for Culture and Frontiers Studies (CCFS) at Brawijaya University. He is interested in the issues of religions and cross-cultural studies, especially as related to Indonesia, Chinese-Javanese relations,Islam, Buddhism, Javanism, and modernity in the field of visual,material, and food studies. He has published his first book on Buka Luwur of Sunan Kudus ritual (Bahasa) and now he finished his second draft book on ethnoSOTOgrafi. And now he is doing his third draft book on Javanese Culture of Drinking Coffee. He can be reached through arybudhi@ub.ac.id;ary91budhi@gmail.com

Tito R. Quiling Jr. (University of Santo Tomas)

Distress in the Marshlands: Mapping Landscapes of Fear and Faith in Francis Xavier Pasion’s Bwaya (2014)

Email: titoquiling.jr@gmail.com

Abstract: Landscapes affect inhabitants: urban spaces often cause varying levels of apprehension with simultaneous events happening, while rural areas bear an enigmatic quality because of the unexplored terrains that may incite anxiety. The atmosphere of dread is a central layer in the film Bwaya [“Crocodile”] by Francis Xavier Pasion (2014) which uses dramatization, news footage, and interview cutaways in narrating the experiences of a community troubled by a crocodile attack in 2009. Focusing on the formations of anxiety and alarm, this paper first explores how fear is projected by the landscape in the docudrama piece. Anchoring on the visual components of the filmic environment, the study intends to delve into the main characters’ responses towards the landscape, where beliefs alongside fears are primary sentiments. In this reading, the conceptions of fears as outlined by Yi-Fu Tuan (1979) supplement the paper, which additionally looks at pre-colonial roots in Southern Philippines, correlating with local traditions and man’s alleged inherent “fear of nature.” The marshes of Agusan del Sur Province is home to the Manobo—one of the indigenous groups that have adapted to different environmental settings, ranging from the coastline to the highlands of Mindanao. The marshlands serve as a sanctuary for freshwater crocodiles, which are revered figures in the Manobo folklore, particularly, their creation myth chronicling the rise and fall of the mythical couple, Dinagye-an, the warrior and his wife, Dehunajen. Following the media frenzy caused by the attack, the film critiques the local government’s involvement in such events, ebbing and flowing according to media coverage—a similar response by the national government. Anchoring on the main characters’ state of affairs, the film echoes one of the realities that ethnic groups (collectively termed as “Lumad”) continue to confront: cultural distortion, exploitation, disturbances and expulsion from their homelands.

Tito R. Quiling, Jr. has a BA in Literature from the University of Santo Tomas and an MA in Media Studies (Film) from the University of the Philippines Diliman. He has received fellowships for national workshops in creative writing and arts criticism, and his works have been published in Unitas, Tómas, Humanities Diliman, Plaridel Journal of Communication,Media, and Society, among others. His research and writing interests include film and literary criticism, cultural and urban studies, architectural studies and heritage conservation. At present, he is with the Department of Literature of the Faculty of Arts and Letters at the University of Santo Tomas in Manila.

Katrina Ross Tan (University of the Philippines Los Baños)

Religion in Philippine Contemporary Life: Analysis of Selected Regional Short Films

Email: katrina.tan@monash.edu

Abstract: The arrival of Roman Catholicism in the Philippines via Cebu in 1521 is celebrated annually through the Sinulog Festival, a religious and cultural festival that honors the Sto. Niño, or the Holy Child. Aside from the fluvial parade and street dancing that characterize Sinulog, a film festival has also been added in the last decade as part of the festivities. One can argue that the film festival is a religious one because of the festival rule of integrating the Sto. Nino in the narrative. This paper analyses selected short films from the Sinulog film festival in Cebu City on how they represent the role of religion in contemporary lives of the local. It also looks into the short film format as further democratizing and, more important, decentralizing, filmmaking in the country. Because the festival has now become national in scope, the short films provide case studies on how Filipinos in general regard religion in contemporary time. Whether the filmmaker integrates the religious element as central to the narrative or not, the films represent the extent to which religion still permeates the lives of Filipinos for better or for worse. While these films suggest that religious faith brings salvation from various crises, they also suggest that it is only through personal and/or collective action that such hardships will be thoroughly resolved. This idea is encapsulated in the Filipino proverb, “Nasa Diyos ang awa, nasa tao ang gawa” (God gives mercy to those who help themselves), but, when played up in contemporary time, it critiques religious institutions and followers as they remain passive in the practice of their faith. As these films show, religious passivity is incongruous with the conditions of massive poverty, deadly natural disasters, and increasing criminal acts in contemporary time. In this instance, people themselves initiate how to make religion remain relevant to their present lives.

Katrina Ross Tan is a PhD candidate at Monash University and a faculty member at the Department of Humanities in University of the Philippines Los Banos. Her current research examines the emergence of regional cinemas in the Philippines. In 2013, she served as festival director in Cinema Rehiyon, a state-funded film festival of regional films. She is the founding festival director of Pelikultura: The Calabarzon Film Festival that showcases works by filmmakers in Southern Tagalog region.

PLENARY SPEAKER

Associate Professor Antonio D. Sison

Chair, Historical and Doctrinal Studies Department

Catholic Theological Union, Chicago (USA)

Plenary Title: Surrexit… She Has Arisen: “The Rites of May” and the Folk Catholic Imaginary 

Email: asison@ctu.edu

Given the ubiquity of Folk Catholicism in Filipino social reality, grassroots piety has enjoyed great currency in Philippine cinema. My project is to explore the matter-affect dialectic apparent in the representation of the Filipino devotion to religious statues and images within the interpretive framework of what I term as the “Folk Catholic Imaginary,” the way by which devout Filipino Catholics imagine and image their relationship with their immediate and extended community, with their religious institution, and with their God. Following a hermeneutic of suspicion, I propose that a precolonial, Filipino “primal religion,” as expressed in an inculturated folk Catholicism, is the shadow referent that innervates such a devotion, infusing it with a fervor flowing from indigenous roots that run much deeper than the 16th Century ingress of Spanish-colonial Catholicism. In view of this, I propose the folk Catholic imaginary as a lens to refract the homologies between cinematic representation and actual religious practice. In Philippine cinema, Folk Catholic iconography has been vividly portrayed as at once being definitively material and audaciously metaphysical, holding both in creative tension so that it is never a question of an either/or but a both/and. This holds true in representations across film genres, e.g., the intrepid hybrid The Eyes of Angelita (1978), the socially resonant masterpiece Himala (1982), and my primary case study, The Rites of May (“Itim,” 1976), the first feature-length work of Filipino film auteur Mike de Leon. In The Rites of May (Itim or “Black” in its original Filipino title, religious statues of Catholic saints appear in dreamscape to a journalistic photographer to alert him to a heinous crime committed sub-rosa by his own father against a mysterious young woman. From the optic of the folk Catholic imaginary, the statues have rent the curtain between spirit world and material world, trespassing the divine-human boundary and disrupting the quotidian in order to exercise their divine guardianship.

Antonio D. Sison Antonio D. Sison is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at Catholic Theological Union, Chicago, with a research focus on the inter-discipline of religion, cinema, visual culture, and the postcolonial. His authored books include The Sacred Foodways of Film (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2016), and World Cinema, Theology, and the Human (New York/London: Routledge, 2012); among his published chapters are contributions to The Routledge Companion to Religion and Film (2009), and Representing Religion in World Cinema (New York/London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). He has written and lensed his own independent films, and is currently a film critic for the US newspaper National Catholic Reporter.

PANEL 3

Poetics and Politics

Chair: Budi Irawanto (Universitas Gadjah Mada)

Presenters: Chris Woodrich (Universitas Gadjah Mada); Rosalia Namsai Engchuan (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology); Chris Lundry (El Colegio de México.); Roland B. Tolentino (University of the Philippines Film Institute)

Chris Woodrich (Universitas Gadjah Mada)

(De)Politicizing Religion: Islam and Politics in Asrul Sani’s Para Perintis Kemerdekaan (1977)

Email: chris_woodrich@hotmail.com

Abstract: The film Para Perintis Kemerdekaan, produced beginning in 1977 and released four years later, was adapted by its screenwriter and director Asrul Sani from Hajji Abdul Malik Karim Amrullah's novel Di Bawah Lindungan Ka'bah(1938). During the adaptation process, Sani introduced various additions, subtractions, and deletions, including multiple original characters and events. This article argues that Sani's modifications to the narrative, made in the context of the Suharto regime, shifted the narrative's message from criticism of classism to promotion of Indonesian independence while at the same time maintaining the narrative's Islamic tone. By depicting the pro-independence struggle as based in Islam, the film simultaneously politicized and depoliticized Islam. Islam was politicized through its use in addressing both the historical political issue of Indonesian independence as well as the contemporary political issues of women's roles, communism, and pluralism, At the same time, it was depoliticized by framing its influence on political issues as stemming solely from a requirement to seek the truth. In exploring the implications of these textual modifications for the filmic narrative, this article highlights how socio-political contexts influence the adaptation process, as well as the how fictional narratives are shaped to promote specific political interests.

Christopher A. Woodrich is a doctoral student at Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta, with an interest in Indonesian cinema, Indonesian literature, and the intersection between them. His publications include "Between the Village and the City: Representing Colonial Indonesia in the Films of Saeroen" (_Social Transformations_, 2015), "Sexual Bodies, Sensual Bodies: Depictions of Women in Suharto-Era Indonesian Film Flyers (1966–1998)" (_International Feminist Journal_, 2016), and "Inside Gazes, Outside Gazes: The Influence of Ethnicity on the Filmmakers of the Dutch East Indies (1926–1936)" (_Plaridel_, 2015), as well as the book _Ekranisasi Awal: Adapting Novels to the Silver Screen in the Dutch East Indies_ (Gadjah Mada University Press, 2017). He is conducting his doctoral research on the history of the practice of adapting films from novels in the Indonesian archipelago. Email: chris_woodrich@hotmail.com

Rosalia Namsai Engchuan (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology)

An Ethnography of the Dynamic Social Process of Film Censorship in Contemporary Indonesia

Email: engchuan@eth.mpg.de

Abstract: The presentation will give an insight into my ethnographic study of film censorship in contemporary Indonesia. Film censorship is often ridiculed because of its perceived ineffectiveness. Nevertheless, censorship bodies exist and remain the gatekeepers of official screenings and censorship laws and policies determine what is officially “appropriate” content. Furthermore, filmmakers are challenged by authorities and unofficial censors who all have a particular urge to control what is represented on screens. Against the background of Islamic

revivalism, voices outside official censorship channels calling for cuts become increasingly loud. Often, calls for cuts are linked to religiously framed discourses on morality and the nation which are gendered and especially discriminatory against women and queer subjects. I conceptualize film censorship as a dynamic social process at the interface between the state, its bureaucracies, filmmakers and society at large. In contemporary Indonesia, this process cannot be thought of without considering the role of religiously framed discourses on morality. Bearing in mind that state power is not one-directional but co-produced and contested in society in uncertain and unpredictable ways my research asks: how do filmmakers and censors experience and navigate the dynamic social process of film censorship? Filmmakers have engaged in various strategies, from confronting and subverting official censorship to actively reproducing official “appropriateness”. At the same time, as both a response to the changing context (socio-cultural and technological changes) as well as a pro-active move towards a desired future, the censorship board has re-oriented its strategy towards a culture of self censorship (budaya sensor mandiri) and the support of Indonesian film. My research looks at film censorship not only as negative and oppressive but as a discourse on the aesthetics of morality that defines the playground for film practitioners. A playground that they can and do actively co-produce.

Rosalia Namsai Engchuan is a PhD Candidate at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany. She is currently doing fieldwork in Indonesia to research the conditions under which films are being made with a focus on independently produced short films outside of commercial cinemas. On a broader level, Rosalia wants to contribute to the overall field of Southeast Asian Cinema Studies by ethnographically looking at cinematic practices and the cinematic depictions of gender and sexuality that are grounded in these practices. She is particularly interested in the boundaries of “appropriateness” that are constantly being negotiated among various actors and reflect state/religion/society relations in censorship discourses. Rosalia's earlier research focused on representations of femininity and teenage sexuality in Thai television. Her video essay on the same topic - “On Thai Women // They are weak that’s why they dream of weak women” was screened as part of the Asian Film Festival Berlin in 2017.

Chris Lundry (El Colegio de México.)

Revisiting Passabe: Lisan, Government and Restorative Justice

Email: lundry@asu.edu

Abstract: Following the militia violence before, during and after the 1999 referendum in Timor-Leste, the reintegration of former militia members who wanted to return to their home villages presented a problem for the United Nations Transitional Authority for East Timor and later the independent Timor-Leste government. With its emphasis on restoration, lisan (roughly analogous to adat in Indonesia) presented an indigenous mechanism to reintegrate militia members, but left out western (retributive) elements, and so was initially rejected by the UN. An eventual compromise was found with the creation of the serious crimes unit, which would allow prosecution of crimes deemed more significant such as rape or murder. The film Passabe (2006) explored the process of reintegration through lisan, including elements that appeared unsatisfactory to the victims (such as the perpetrator’s incomplete confessions). This paper examines the processes of lisan explored in the film and returns to Passabe ten years later to examine the effectiveness of the restoration process. It also examines the role of lisan as an extragovernmental process steeped in “animist” tradition in the context of a predominantly (nominally) Catholic country in a democratic setting. The film is an excellent representation of indigenous justice, but was indigenous justice ultimately successful in Passabe?

Chris Lundry is a profesor-investigador in el Centro de Estudios de Asia y África at El Colegio de México in Mexico City.He studies Southeast Asia, predominantly Indonesia and Timor-Leste, and his work focuses on separatism, rebellion, terrorism, and democratization. He has published work in American Behavioral Scientist,Contemporary Islam, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, Asian Politics and Policy,Estudios de Asia y África, and Small Wars Journal, among others. With his co-authors, he received the 2012 International Communication Association Best Co-Authored Book award for Narrative Landmines: Rumors, Islamist Extremism, and the Struggle for Strategic Influence. He is a Fulbright and a Blakemore fellow. In 1999 he was a United Nations-accredited observer to the referendum in Timor-Leste, and has worked with the Carter Center and various human rights and justice oriented NGOs. He teaches Southeast Asian politics and history, including courses that focus on film.

Roland B. Tolentino (University of the Philippines Film Institute)

Lead Us Not Into Temptation: Cultural Politics of Representation of Religiosity in Philippine Cinema

Email: roland.tolentino@gmail.com

Abstract: Lino Brocka’s Maynila sa Kuko ng Liwanag (Manila in the Claws of Neon, 1975), offers two scenes from which to infer the relationship of religious piety and popular film. Julio’s search for Ligaya in Manila ends with his surveillance of Ligaya coming out of a church in Chinatown. In order to maintain anonymity, Julio and Ligaya catch up with their sagas inside a movie house, ignoring the film about the passion of Christ. Catholic devotion by Ligaya is a convenient excuse to escape the prison house of her Chinese husband. And through movie going, the star-crossed lovers are able to catch up and make sense of their predicament. In Tirador (Slingshot, 2007), the final scene takes the lumpen group into an outdoor service of a megachurch primarily catering to the city’s poor. This is not an ordinary service as the film takes actual footage of an event where the megachurch’s leaders endorse candidates for the Philippine senate race. Against this real backdrop, the lumpen group does what is expected of their kind, they pickpocket and rob from their fellow poor. What is being interrogated in the scene is the hypocrisy of the church engaged in national politicking that manufactures docile bodies among its mass of followers. Philippine cinema has an arduous trajectory of engaging with and critiquing of religion and popular religiosity. This paper examines the modalities of engagement and critique of films that represent religiosity in the country. Philippine cinema, while not wholly tacking the matter of religion in film which will emplace such film in the unnecessary ire of the church, is still able to provide a critical discourse of religiosity through scenes that implicate the church and religiosity in the hegemony of the state. “Lead us not into temptation” is a phrase borrowed from a popular Catholic prayer that provides the impetus for what, why and how Philippine cinema represents religiosity in film. By providing a critical fulcrum to the culpability of the church in the historical social injustice of the people, Philippine cinema interrogates the cultural and political apparatuses that have interpellated the people to the ideology of state hegemony. In such scenes in select films, the ideological underpinnings are laid bare for audiences to recognize and identify as their own collective predicament. In this sense, Philippine cinema leads audience not into the temptations of state hegemony.

Roland B. Tolentino is faculty of University of the Philippines Film Institute and former dean of the UP College of Mass Communication.  He is Director of the UP Institute of Creative Writing where he also serves as fellow.  He has taught at the Osaka University, National University of Singapore, and University of California, Berkeley.  His research interests include Philippine literature, popular culture, cinema and media, interfacing national and transnational issues. He writes and has published books on fiction and creative non-fiction.  He is a member of the Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino (Filipino Film Critics Group), Altermidya (People’s Alternative Media Network), and Congress of Teachers and Educators for Nationalism and Democracy (CONTEND-UP).

PANEL 4

Folk and Horror

Chair: Mariam Lam (University of California, Riverside)

Presenters: Nguyen Thi Dieu Linh (Hanoi National University of Education); Anton Sutandio (Maranatha Christian University); Veluree Metaveevinij (Thammasat University / University of London)

Nguyen Thi Dieu Linh (Hanoi National University of Education)

Representation of Spiritual and Traditional Elements as a Contemporary Phenomena in Vietnamese Movie Me Thao / The Legendary Age

Email: linhqrt2004@yahoo.com

Abstract: Me Thao – The Legendary Age (Me Thao – Thoi vang bong) is a 2002 Vietnamese movie directed by Viet Linh, based on the Nguyen Tuan’s short novel “Dan Pagoda” (Chua Dan) which was published in 1946. The movie belongs to a trend in Vietnamese movies after the 2000s in which directors attempt to explore and represent the power of traditional elements in modern life. The movie plot shows us two heartbreaking love stories: one is between Nguyen, a Westernized Vietnamese landlord, and his fiancée who is an young urban girl; and the other is between Tam, a “dan day” (three stringed, long neck lute, Vietnamese musical instrument) player, and To, a “ca tru” (a Northern Vietnamese traditional chamber genre) singer. There are multiple themes in this movie: the conflicts between tradition and modernity from different perspectives , the complexity and ambiguity of the local people’s feeling to the colonizers, the decisive role of traditional religious belief in ordinary life as well as in art creativities. By exploring these themes, our paper argues the representation of spiritual and traditional elements as contemporary phenomena in the movie Me Thao – The Legendary Age, which could be seen as part of a trend in Vietnamese literature, movies, and art in the period from 2000 till present.

Nguyen Thi Dieu Linh is known for her layered, personal, and poetic approach to contentious histories and current events through experiments with the moving image. Her practice has consistently investigated the role of memory in the necessary unveiling of hidden, displaced, or misinterpreted histories, often making use of original documentary footage or undertaking extensive investigative field work. Inspired by her heritage, her pieces are powerful and haunting, and focus on social and cultural issues — especially the complex, traumatic history of her home country Vietnam and its after-effects in the present. Her materials are diverse – from video and photographs shot by herself to those appropriated from various sources including press photos, corporate videos, and classic films; her practice traverses boundaries between film and video art, installation and performanc

Anton Sutandio (Maranatha Christian University)

The Politics of Occultism and Religion in Sisworo Gautama Putra’s and Joko Anwar’s Pengabdi Setan

Email: anton.sutandio@gmail.com

Abstract: This research compares two films, the original Pengabdi Setan and its remake, in the context of politics of occultism and religion. I view the display of occultism and religion in the two films as an allegorical representation as well as critical responses to the socio-political situation of the two eras. Separated by almost four decades, I argue that Joko Anwar’s nostalgic remake and the original film subtly converse with each other, share distinctive similarities yet also polarized differences that underlie their endeavor to allegorically bring back and relive public memory of certain national trauma such as marginalization and repression. By focusing on the films’ cinematography and mise-en-scene, this research attempts to locate those allegorical moments within the depiction of occultist and religious practice that challenge or accentuate the dominant ideology of their respective eras.

Anton Sutandio is a full-time lecturer at the Faculty of Letters, Maranatha Christian University, Bandung.  He specializes in teaching drama, film, philosophy and cultural studies. He got his master degree from University of Indonesia majoring in Literature and Cultural Studies.  In 2014 he received his doctoral degree from the School of Interdisciplinary Arts, Ohio University, USA majoring in film and theatre.  His dissertation is on contemporary Indonesian horror films.  At present he is the Dean of the Faculty of Letters, Maranatha Christian University, Bandung.

Veluree Metaveevinij (Thammasat University / University of London)

Spirits Across Borders: Case Studies in Transnational Horror Cinema

Email: veluree.m@gmail.com

Abstract: This paper centres on representation of spirits in the films that portray Thai and other ASEAN characters. The paper examines a notion of horror that the transnational cinema provides. Ghosts in the films are ASEAN migrant workers living in Thailand and are abused before their death. But they return as ghosts to get revenge on those who harm them. Appadurai’s five dimensional ‘-scapes’ of global cultural flows, including ethnoscapes, technoscapes, finanscapes, mediascapes, and ideoscapes, are being used to analyse the films. Particularly, ethnoscapes and the ethnic spaces appearing in the films can represent insecurity of Thai people whose national economy heavily relies on migrant workers, prejudice and discrimination against migrant workers who are considered as the others in Thai society.

Veluree Metaveevinij is a lecturer at College of Innovation, Thammasat University, Thailand. I received Ph.D. in film studies, SOAS, University of London in 2015. My area of interest is media and cultural studies, Southeast Asian cinema in particular.

PANEL 5

Mapping the Trans/national

Chair: Popi Primadewi (Institut Seni Indonesia, Surakarta)

Presenters: Thomas Barker (University of Nottingham Malaysia); Meghan Downes (National University of Singapore, Asia Research Institute); Adam Knee (Lasalle College of the Arts)

Thomas Barker (University of Nottingham Malaysia)

Travelling Muslims: Cosmopolitans, Romance, and Newfound Independence

Email: thomas.barker@nottingham.edu.my

Abstract: As Indonesia’s Muslim’s have undergone an embourgeoisement over the past two decades and as a marketplace of Islamic products has emerged, a distinct middle-class Muslim identity has become discernable in Indonesia. Religious piety and symbols of the good life are consumed and expressed through a new marketplace of ‘Islamic’ products that include fashion and a variety of pop culture products. Alongside television, literature, magazines and online media feature films following in the wake ofAyat-Ayat Cinta (Verses of Love, Hanung Bramantyo, 2008) also provide representations of new middle-class values and lifestyle preferences. Within this new matrix of piety and consumption, this paper looks at the associated phenomena of overseas travel as a new vector for representing class status and consumption patterns for the middle class. In this paper, I situate overseas travel as a new status symbol for the middle-class Muslim character but one that brings certain challenges and complications. By looking at a number of recent Islamic travel films by director Guntur Soeharjanto includingAssalamualaikum Beijing(2014),Jilbab Traveller: Love Sparks in Korea (2016), andAyat-Ayat Cinta 2 (2017), this paper traces the emergence and features of the new Muslim middle class. In pursuit of pleasure and transnational desires, Indonesian Muslim characters encounter others of different faiths and cultural practices. Travel films provide new ways of understanding the cosmopolitan character of Indonesia’s middle class, its cultural politics, and the ways in which these new consumers engage with the world.

Thomas Barker is Associate Professor and Head of Film and Television at the University of Nottingham Malaysia. In 2018 he was a visiting fellow at the College of Communication, NCCU in Taiwan, in 2016 he was a visiting scholar at the School of Theater, Film and Television at UCLA, and in 2012 a Visiting Fellow at the Department of Sociology, National University of Singapore. Thomas researches and writes about the Indonesian and Malaysian film industries, creative industries, Islamic pop culture, and transnational Asian cinema. His monograph Going Mainstream: Indonesian Cinema after the New Order is forthcoming with Hong Kong University Press.

Meghan Downes (National University of Singapore, Asia Research Institute)

Religion and Development in Indonesian Cinema

Email: downes.meg@gmail.com

Abstract: The post-reform Indonesian mediascape has featured a remarkable explosion in ‘inspirational’ and ‘self-help’ products: from motivational seminars to guides on how to become a ‘Muslim Millionaire’, there is a huge push to improve oneself in a variety of ways, and religion is frequently a central part of these self-development narratives. My paper examines how this phenomenon plays out in Indonesian cinema, focusing in particular on intersections between motivation and morality, between inspiration and Islam, as well as broader links between discourses of self-development and national development. Pembangunan (development) ideology has a long history in Indonesia, and I argue that it continues to play a central role in dominant narratives of progress, interacting in complex ways with religion, both on and off the cinema screen.

Dr. Meghan Downes completed her PhD at the Australian National University in Canberra, in the School of Culture, History and Language. She is the recipient of two Australian government Endeavour Awards for her research on contemporary Indonesian film, literature, media, and the politics of popular culture. She will be working on a project that examines urban youth engagement with the natural environment and how everyday environmental problems and solutions are represented in Indonesian popular culture.

Adam Knee (Lasalle College of the Arts)

Thailand in US Faith-Based Films

Email: adam.knee@lasalle.edu.sg

Abstract: Thailand has in the past decade cropped up quite regularly as a setting in global cinema and television for a variety of reasons both economic and industrial on the one hand (a function of the development of a Thai production services industry and government production incentives), and cultural and symbolic on the other (an outgrowth of the varied signifying functions of Thailand for national cultures around the world).  Even aside from such highly visible Hollywood examples as Bangkok Dangerous (2008) and The Hangover Part II (2011), Thailand has played a central “role” as a setting in numerous low budget American action films, in Indian films from across that country’s various language-differentiated industries, and in European films ranging from art house excursions to comic romps.  Reality television has also found Thailand an attractive locale. But Thailand has also far less predictably found its way into repeatedly serving as a setting for a fairly obscure kind of American niche cinema, that of the predominantly Christian “faith-based film,” despite what might at first seem the contradiction of Thailand being a Buddhist country.  This presentation will therefore be interested to explore this phenomenon, with a particular focus on outlining the tendencies in the representation of Thailand in these films and determining the particular signifying value that the country has has had for this very niche genre.  A brief look at Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter (2010) will serve as a springboard for this discussion, not only because the film is arguably a rare example of a mainstream faith-based crossover film (with its focus on the afterlife), but because its coupling of Thailand with ideas of the spiritual continues a trend already present in world cinema and, I will argue, clearly retained in the lower-profile dramas to be analyzed here, all of which appeared in the years immediately following.  The faith-based films to be examined include Escape (2012), The Encounter: Paradise Lost (2012), The Mark (2012), and The Mark: Redemption (2013).

Adam Knee is Dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts, Media & Creative Industries at Singapore’s Lasalle College of the Arts. Prior to this, he held appointments at University of Nottingham Ningbo China (where he was Head of the School of International Communications and Professor of Film and Media Studies), Nanyang Technological University (Singapore) and Ohio University (USA).  He has published widely on topics pertaining to Asian and US popular cinemas.

PANEL 6

Aesthetics / Reception

Chair: Ratna Erika Suwarno (Universitas Padjadjaran)

Presenters: Azrain Arifin (Sunway University); Ekky Imanjaya (Bina Nusantara University); Muhammad Bahruddin (University of Indonesia); Ly Quyet Tien (HCMC Open University, Vietnam)

Azrain Arifin (Sunway University)

The Five Stations of Artistry in Film: A Sufistic Perspective

Email: azrainm@sunway.edu.my

Abstract: Sufism is the branch within Islam that deals with spirituality. Originating from the Arabic word Tasawwuf, which literally translates as “becoming a Sufi”, it is concerned with the inner self- development of a Muslim. Focusing on the cleansing of the heart through disciplined rituals of zikr, or the remembrance of God, it is aimed at attaining the spiritual enlightenment of truth. Through the persistence practice of zikr, as the heart transcends through several stations of purification, a Sufi appreciates the beauty in God’s creation in the universe around him. This appreciation is often reflected through the manifestation in Islamic art, and in particular in film. Combining the interpretation of the Quran and Ahadith, as the two primary sources in Islam, and the contextual analysis of the scholarly study of film, this paper examines how the principles of Sufism can be applied to cinema to create an aesthetically complete motion picture. It shows that film has five stations of artistry, which are similar to the stations or maqam that a Sufi attains in his journey of spiritual growth. It therefore claims that cinema is not just a vehicle for religious representation and ideologies, but most importantly, is also a spiritual medium for the remembrance of God.

Azrain Arifin is the award-winning writer-director of On the Streets of London. He is currently a lecturer in the BA (Hons) Digital Film Production programme in the Department of Performance and Media at Sunway University, Malaysia. Starting out as a screen actor at the tender age of ten, Azrain moved on to study filmmaking at Akademi Filem Malaysia and London College of Communication, University of the Arts London before founding his own film production company, Tokdalang Productions. Awarded with an MA in Scriptwriting from Goldsmiths, University of London, he is a regular workshop facilitator with the National Film Development Corporation Malaysia (FINAS) and a member of the Film Directors’ Association of Malaysia (FDAM). Prior to joining Sunway University, he spent a decade teaching documentary and screenwriting at industry workshops and across universities in Malaysia. He is currently working on Juwitaku (My Juwita), a film about a tragic tale of forbidden love that explores the conflict between ideas of Western individualism and those of Malay traditional customs.

Ekky Imanjaya (Bina Nusantara University)

Astaghfirullah Film Indonesia!: Lady Terminator, Politics of Taste, and “The Other Kind of Public”

Email: eimanjaya@gmail.com

Abstract: The withdrawal of Pembalasan Ratu Laut Selatan (1989) or globally known as Lady Terminator is one of the most significant cases in Indonesian film history, particularly the politics of taste in New Order era. General opinion——led by influential members of society, from senators and journalists to religious leaders--- in national media shows how some cultural elites along with  other influential members of society (often seen as the voice of “the public”) attacked the film due to concerns over scenes depicting explicit sex and violence.    As a result, they forced its withdrawal, and the film was withdrawn after 9 days on theatrical release. The biggest national magazine, Tempo weekly, addressed this phenomenon, particularly the case of Lady Terminator, in 22 July 1989 headline “Astaghfirullah Film Indonesia”, or “Oh My God, Indonesian Movies!”.  Astaghfirullah is an Islamic term, which literally means “Oh God Please forgive me”, and   I find it interesting that this term was used by a secular and liberal magazine to illustrate the heated situation in 1989. However, along with and following this event, the massive demand to watch this particular movie, both nationally and globally, increased. Apparently, the withdrawal elicited the distribution of illegal and uncensored video versions of the film. The situation above is unique because it is notoriously known that Indonesia’s New Order (1966-1998) undertook state control on every aspect of life, including sharp censorship and controlling film organizations. The government also framed movies to “search for the real Indonesian faces on screen” and “represent the true Indonesian culture”, which means excluding violence and erotic scenes from the screen. By looking at the discussions published in newspapers and magazines, as well as the film policies related to the issue, I will demonstrate the politics of tastes among various parties.     By focusing on audience reception, particularly the attempt of film distributors, and popular consumption, this paper is expected to give a better understanding of the consumption of “the other kind of public”

Ekky Imanjaya is an Indonesian film critic/journalist. He is a faculty member at Film Department, Binus International. He is also co-founder and editor of rumahfilm.org, a popular online film journal from Indonesia. He has graduated from a Masters Program for Film Studies at the Universiteit van Amsterdam. He just finished PhD program at Film Studies, University of East Anglia, UK. He has written some books, including A to Z about Indonesian Films, and some articles on film, pop culture, philosophy and Islamic issues.

Muhammad Bahruddin (University of Indonesia)

The Identity of Inclusive Islam in Films by Nurman Hakim

Email: bahruddin77@gmail.com

Abstract: This study aims at exploring new developments in Indonesian film production with Islamic themes within the framework of cultural studies. It examines the films directed by Nurman Hakim titled “3 Doa 2 Cinta” (3 Prayers 2 Love) (2008), “Khalifah” (2011), and “Bid'ah Cinta” (2017), by director and screenwriter, Nurman Hakim. Using the Qur’an and hadith scriptures to conduct contextual interpretation of these three films, it is possible to identify features of Islam in Indonesia as an inclusive, tolerant, and local culture accommodating by interpreting the texts of the Qur'an and hadith contextually. Moreover, these films counteract Islamic-themed films that prioritize an exclusive identity of Islam, that is, the identity of Islam which take scriptural interpretation of the texts of the Qur'an and hadith. Hakim’s three films convey that groups that promote Islamic exclusivity threaten the harmony of Muslims in Indonesia. The films convey the belief that such groups create the roots and footholds of radicalism in Indonesia, thus representing the concerns of many Indonesian citizens in contemporary times. The film describes the socio-political, cultural, ideological, and religious circumstances of a society. A filmmaker, intentionally or not, will create a new world in his movie. It will represent all that has been absorbed. Audiences can read the religious views of a filmmaker in the movies he creates. Therefore, a filmmaker has the power to represent his ideology through his works. Recognizing that film-makers create their own descriptions of social, political, ideological and religious circumstances, the three films by Nurman Hakim provide a glimpse into the struggle over construction of Islamic identity in Indonesian culture. This study uses a cultural study approach, an in-depth interview with Hakim, and close analysis of the three films as artifacts to reveal how Hakim as a filmmaker constructs Islamic identity in the process of producing Islamic-themed films. In addition, this study illustrates the diversity of Islamic identity in Indonesia and expands from previous studies that have primarily focused on Islam based on Indonesia’s urban middle-class.

Muh. Bahruddin is student of PhD program in Communications at University of Indonesia. Currently, he is finishing fieldwork for his PhD program with thesis topic: Islamic identity construction on a terrorism-themed Indonesian film. In 2005-2010 he was a lecturer and head of communications program at Yudharta University, Pasuruan. In 2010 – now, he is a lecturer in media and communications at visual communications program, Stikom Surabaya.  On this campus he has been the head of visual communications program for 4 years (2012-2016).

Ly Quyet Tien (HCMC Open University, Vietnam)

Engaged Buddhism in Saigon Mobile Force

Email: lyquyettien@yahoo.fr

Abstract: The Vietnam War has inspired lots of local film makers to produce such good films as 17th parallel-days and nights, The Wild fields, Saigon Mobile Force, Season of Northeast Monsoon, The Little Girl in Ha Noi, etc. These films express the destiny of a country that struggled against its dramatic fate to survive and the atrocities of a people who had experienced a long history of war with millions of deaths and losses. Among these films, Saigon Mobile Force is distinguished from the other Vietnam war films as it concerns a special force who took an important part in the struggle for peace and the reunification of Vietnam in 1975. The heroine in the film is a Buddhist nun who engaged in the peace movement to fight for the end of the conflict in Vietnam. She died before the end of the war and never saw the return of peace to the country. Saigon Mobile Force is the rare Vietnamese film that sketches out the portrait of the Vietnamese Buddhists, their philosophy of integration, social and political activism and the role of the Vietnamese women in the wartime. This paper will explore the questions of Vietnamese Buddhism in the Vietnam War through Saigon Mobile Force: Is Vietnamese Buddhism an engaged religion? What are the social and economic factors that compel Vietnamese Buddhism to engage in the struggle for the peace and reunification of the country? What makes it different from that of other countries in Southeast Asia? What role does tradition, culture, education, and gender bias play in the Buddhist movement? How does it exert influence over the country? By way of this analysis, it is the author’s hope that by examining the Saigon Mobile Force a better understanding the role that Buddhism played during this most challenging time of Vietnam history, a role underappreciated and often unknown by many.

Ly Quyet Tien is Head of Department of Southeast Asian Studies at the HCMC Open University (Vietnam), Doctor Ly Quyet Tien has been guest lecturer at many universities in Ho Chi Minh city. He holds bachelor's degrees in History & in English from the University of Social Sciences and Humanities. He also holds M.A. degrees in FLE from University of Rouen, in Vietnam History from the Southern Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities in HCMC. In 2008, he received his Ph.D. in Eastern Asia and Humanities from University of Paris 7- Diderot. Specialist in Vietnamese studies, he has taken part as presenter in international conferences since 2014. He can be contacted at lyquyettien@yahoo.fr

PLENARY SPEAKER

________________________________________________________________

Hikmat Darmawan

Plenary Title: The Aesthetics of Melodrama in The Indonesian Film Dakwah Industry

Email: hikmatdarmawan@gmail.com

Hikmat Darmawan (Bandung, West Java, May 22, 1970) has been active in many cultural communities since 2000, co-founding the Musyawarah Burung community to accommodate a common passion for cultural and art activities. From virtual discussions, the  Musyawarah Burung community developed concrete projects such as piano recitals, poetry readings and cultural orations. He also co-founded Akademi Samali in 2005. It is a comic community dedicated to exploring possibilities for Indonesian comic artistic and industrial development. Aside from this, Hikmat actively engages in public discussions. He has given workshops on nonfiction writings, journalism and between 2003-2004 gave a series of special comic workshops on conflict resolution in Poso (Sulawesi), Jakarta and Madura, a program supported by Common Ground Indonesia. In 2006-2007, he was program manager for MP Book Point, a bookstore in Jakarta catering to a wide range of interests. There, he developed partnerships to hold public activities on literature, movies, comics, social movements and art. In 2007 he cofounded www.rumahfilm.org, a platform for Indonesian movie critics to explore Indonesian cinema within its socio-cultural context. He returned to print media as editor of Madina Magazine in 2008-2009 and in 2010 was selected for the Asian Public Intellectuals Fellowship Program from the Nippon Foundation. During this period, he conducted research in Japan and Thailand about the globalization of manga subculture. Since 2012, he has resumed activities with Akademi Samali and ID Kreatif, besides acting as consultant on comics, books and film programs for the Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy. His current project Pabrikultur (pabrikultur.com) is a brand journalism provider, which also offers programming of cultural events. His latest book is Komik Gebrak! Esai-Esai Komik: Narasi dan Eksistensi (2015).

PANEL 7

Auteurs

Chair: Novi Kurnia (Universitas Gadjah Mada)

Presenters: Gareth Stanton (Goldsmiths, University of London); Adrian D. Mendizabal (University of the Philippines – Diliman); Miguel Penabella (University of California, Santa Barbara).

Gareth Stanton (Goldsmiths, University of London)

P. Ramlee and the Crisis of Faith: Extending Joel Kahn’s Analysis of the Ramlee Oeuvre

Email: G.Stanton@gold.ac.uk

Abstract: With the untimely death of Joel S. Kahn in 2017, Southeast Asian studies lost a nuanced commentator. His most recent work showed an increasing engagement with forms of religiosity with a particular focus on Indonesian Sufi beliefs.  While Kahn’s very early work concentrated on the insertion of Malay and Indonesian peasantries into global systems of capitalist development, his later work shifted to discussions of nationalism and cosmopolitanism in the Malay world (notably in his 2006 book, Other Malays). In this context, religion, and its dialectical relationship with emergent forms of modern national identities which come to redefine the Malay world, takes on a central importance. One way in which Kahn attempts to demonstrate these transformations is through a focus on cinema. In particular, he focusses his analysis on the work of one of Malaysia’s most celebrated directors, P. Ramlee.  Using what amounts to textual analysis, Kahn reads two early Ramlee films Penarik Beca (1955) and Semarah Padi (1956) in order to construct an emerging version of Malay modernity which evolves out of forms of identity centred on the communal ethos of the kampung. This paper will seek to extend Kahn’s reading of Islam in this process and cast the net wider in the oeuvre of Ramlee to look at some of the later films which increasingly call into question some problematic aspects of the emerging ‘national’ forms. These can be taken to include the film industry itself which is satirised in films such as Ramlee’s 1961 comedySeniman Bujang Lapok. In conducting such an exercise, however, it is important to account for the eclipse of Ramlee the man and his tragic early death. His work has now become a zone of contestation, open to a variety of increasingly politicised interpretations.

Gareth Stanton has a background in anthropology.  His interest in literary representations of exile led to his translation of Tahar Ben Jelloun’s novel La reclusion solitaire, which was published by Quartet books in the UK. He has also published a critical edition of another francophone Moroccan writer’s work, Driss Chraibi’s novel Une enquéte au pays. In particular, he has written about Tom Harrisson and the Mass-Observation movement in Britain, and the British cultural commentator Geoffrey Gorer. More recently, he has written about the area of London in which he lives, Peckham. After many years as Head of Goldsmiths’ renowned Media and Communications Department, he has stepped down to focus his interests on areas of visual culture ranging from Nollywood cinema to the colonial postcard. He is currently working on questions of world cinema, media and politics and environmental change. The geographical focus of his research at present is on West Africa and Bangladesh

Adrian D. Mendizabal (University of the Philippines – Diliman)

Metaphysics of Long Duration in the Cinema of Lav Diaz

Email: adrian.lessegers@gmail.com

Abstract: This paper seeks to problematize the concept of long duration in contemporary phenomenon of slow cinema as exemplified by the cinema of Lav Diaz. The main rationale for this film philosophical research is to categorically assess the metaphysics of long duration as deployed in the Diaz’s cinema as a form of dematerialization and sublimation of cinematic time. In order to demystify the metaphysics of long duration in Diaz’s cinema, this research uses the critical framework of dialectical materialism, as espoused by the praxiological synthesis of Marxism, to enunciate a potential material basis of long duration.

Adrian D. Mendizabal is  a Filipino media studies scholar based in Manila, Philippines. He is completing his degree on MA Media Studies (Film) at the University of the Philippines Film Institute (UPFI). He is recently a contributing film reviewer of VCinema. He has contributed several essays on Philippine cinema and the local media industry to various publications like Asian Politics & Policy, Plaridel Journal, Kino Punch, NANG 2, La Furia Umana, New Durian Cinema, Transit Journal, Sinekultura Film Journal and MUBI Notebook and is currently working on a research project exploring the relationship of time and Lav Diaz’s cinema. His main interest is film-philosophy.

Miguel Penabella (University of California, Santa Barbara)

A Theology of Cinematic Salvation: The Political Necessity of Digital in the Contexts of Lav Diaz’s Slow Cinema

Email: penabella@umail.ucsb.edu

Abstract: Those familiar with the films of Philippine director Lav Diaz understand his works to be lengthy, averaging four to ten hours. Diaz’s films are often couched in discourses of slow cinema, referring to a loose collection of contemplative films that privilege decelerated takes and a lack of narrative causality, often outside the Hollywood system. Digital technology affords increasingly longer takes not possible on celluloid. This project aims to rethink slow cinema within the contexts of digital technologies and questions of agency and access, reframing slowness less as an aesthetic choice and more as a political necessity and even as quasi-religious doctrine. For Diaz, digital represents a form of “liberation theology,” likening it as a political instrument to reclaim the tools of cinematic production for impoverished, independent filmmakers seeking to circumvent an exploitative, capitalist studio system (Baumgärtel, 2012). While scholars have considered slowness in cinema as oppositional to neoliberal global frameworks (Flanagan, 2012) and as renewing attention to the experience of duration amidst a hyper-connected world of late capitalism (Lim, 2014), this paper argues that digital allows filmmakers to resist dominant power structures by making accessible the materials of production, and in doing so, conceives of digital not as the death of film, but as a newfound creative afterlife. A closer examination of such themes confronts scholars with several questions: What does it mean to conceive of digital as a religious theology? How might considering his Catholic- Socialist upbringing inform this belief system? In addressing these questions, I will consider the politics of this digital liberation theology, confronting Diaz’s optimism with the staggering financial and environmental costs associated with digital storage. By interweaving theories of digital cinema and slowness, this project links slow cinema scholarship with broader questions of environmental problems and redistributed agency atypically brought to such analysis.

Miguel Penabella is a MA/PhD student in Film and Media Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research examines the complex effects of temporality on narrative, national identity, and spectatorship, and he is interested in theorizations of slowness in film, slow violence, and the relationship of politics and style in global art cinema with a focus on Southeast Asian filmmakers. In addition, he also has a background in theorizing videogame narrative and game space.

PANEL 8

Practitioner Panel

Chair: Roland B. Tolentino

Arbi Barbarona (Philippines): The Right to Kill (Arbi Barbarona, 2017);

Arbi Barbarona is an established Filipino cinematographer and editor. His first feature as a director, The Right to Kill (Tu Pug Imatuy 2017), won six awards, including best film, at the 2017 Sinag Maynilla Film Festival, also winning best film at the 2017 Quezon City Filmfest. The Right to Kill, which Barbarona will present and discuss at ASEACC 2018, centers on the currently ongoing conflict between indigenous Lumad peoples in Mindanao and national logging corporations supported by the Philippine military. The film’s dramatic conflict focuses on the clash of epistemologies between the Lumad, whose animist beliefs fall into neither of the Muslim or Christian majorities, and the invading, Manila-based troops who represent Catholic national modernity. Through adapting traditional legends and symbols, the soldiers’ “right to kill” is reframed by the Lumad protagonists, legitimizing their own acts of violence in defense of the land on which their livelihood and lifestyle is based.

Anucha Boonyawatana (Thailand): Malila: The Farewell Flower (Anucha Boonyawatana, 2017);

Anucha Boonyawatana is a Thai film director and founder of G-Motif Productions. Her debut feature film, The Blue Hour (2015) was nominated for best feature at the 2015 Berlin Film Festival. Her second feature, Malila: The Farewell Flower (2017), which will screen at this year’s ASEACC, won the Kim Jesoek award at the 2017 Busan Film Festival. The film provocatively combines Thai spiritual practice and philosophy with a queer romance, engaging a number of key conference themes

Hari Suharyadi (Indonesia): Sunya (The Talisman, Hari Suharyadi, 2017);

Beginning his career with a starring role in the independent film Kuldesak (1998)–which touched off the “New Wave” of post-Suharto, Reformasi-era cinema––director, actor, and novelist Hari Dagoe Suhariyadi is a founding figure in contemporary Indonesian popular culture. His latest feature film, The Talisman (Sunya 2017) follows a dynamic career as a director that moves between independent and popular drama and blockbuster horror. The Talisman has played to critical acclaim in theaters and at venues such as the 2017 Singapore International Film Festival. The Talisman focuses on the continuity of syncretic Javanese spirituality undergirding contemporary national sociopolitical reality, connecting with the conference’s focus on intervention into the worrisome popular trends toward conservative, intolerant religious thinking, particularly in Indonesia. 

Makbul Mubarak (Universitas Multimedia Nusantara, Indonesia): Ruah (The Malediction, Makbul Mubarak, 2016)

Makbul Mubarak is a film critic turned filmmaker. The 2012 Berlinale Talent Campus alum co-founded and writes for Cinema Poetica, now an acclaimed collective of film critics, journalists, academics, researchers, and activists in Indonesia. His contributions are nationally recognized when Indonesia’s Ministry of Education hailed him Best Film Critic in 2015. Makbul built a filmography of short films. His debut short film SUGIH/DOG'S LULABY (2015) won Best Film in XXI Short Film Festival 2016, the biggest festival for short films in the country. His short film THE MALEDICTION won the Indonesian National Award for Best Short Film and receives special mention at the Singapore International Film Festival, both are in 2018. He is currently preparing for his feature film debut, AUTOBIOGRAPHY, selected to FeatureLab Program at TorinoFilmLab.

PANEL 9

Producing Spiritual / Religious / Mystical Films

Chairs: Gaston Soehadi (Petra Christian University, Surabaya)

Presenters: Immanuel P. Gintings (Universitas HKBP Nommensen); Tito Imanda (Goldsmiths, University of London); Dag Yngvesson and Koes Yuliadi (University of Nottingham, Malaysia Campus and Institut Seni Indonesia, Yogyakarta)

Immanuel P. Gintings (Universitas HKBP Nommensen)

Linguistic Study on Shaman Mantra Book as Research for Producing Film Guru Sibaso

Email: manuprojectpro@gmail.com

Abstract: This paper explains linguistic research for producing film about “Guru”; (literally: Teacher), the shaman in Karo culture, North Sumatera. Guru in Karo is someone who traditionally help people for their daily problems: they heal illness, speak to the dead, or even help couples to get children. Today, the remaining gurus are very rare and already mixed with religious positions, transforming the old beliefs into acceptable religious practices, and thus, limiting access to knowledge for the traditional beliefs. However, there are remaining guru’s mantra books. Discourse and semiotic analysis on its content is expected to explore new ways of understanding the old culture, especially the Guru practice and spiritual context of Karo people in the past. Meanwhile, in bigger picture, the paper also argues that understanding language  is often overlooked in filmmaking, especially for films that focus on specific cultural context. Recent feature film set in Karo culture, Tiga Nafas Likas, for instance, fails to project specific intonation and pronunciation orders within local language, highlighting the problems of generalist approach of making film in specific cultural context, and let down Karo community members for the cultural accuracy.

Immanuel Prasetya Gintings is a linguist and filmmaker from Medan. He finished Doctorate linguistic at Universitas Sumatera Utara. Since 2014 he has been engaged as Head of the English Program at HKBP University Nommensen Medan. In addition to being active as a lecturer, he also develops local film in North Sumatra through Yayasan Sinema Manuproject Productions Indonesia which he manages with other indie filmmakers in Medan. Together they produced some movies, most of them about culture of North Sumatera. In 2016 he was elected as head of Cinematography and multimedia department of Dewan Kesenian Kota Medan. For him language, art and culture are the three things that keep creativity growing to the end.

Tito Imanda (Goldsmiths, University of London)

Fairies, Jinns, Spirits and Maintaining their Mood for Good Acting: Film, Filming and Ritual

Email: imanda@gmail.com

The paper explores the rural Javanese indigenous filmmaking, especially in its use to implement their local beliefs and customs., with a big question: can film be a part of a rituall? The filmmaking projects are done with a traditional performance group in the highland central Java called Tjipta Boedaja, where collaboration between urban filmmakers and the locals seeks to transform the group’s performance arts from stage to film. For a particular film, Tetangga (Neighbors), collaborators try to create an audio-visual representation of a ritual involving children distributing food offerings to different parts of the village. The dancers play the spiritual beings: fairies, a jinn, and spirits who accept the offerings. Collaborators hope that the film becomes not only a documentation of social and cultural situation, but also a pedagogical device for younger generations.

Film scholar Fatimah Tobing Rony reminds social scientists to break from their objective constraints and embrace the people they are studying, to accept their subjectivities, especially when related to their spirituality (2006). In accordance with this, I try to look at the shooting and the film from the locals perspectives. Indeed, the production was not an easy process for them. Elders and those who interacted with these creatures keep giving contradictory information. The dancers felt they need to prepare their body as good as possible and their soul as pure as possible. Some started to freak out when found out that the shooting would be done in the exact spot of these creature’s territories. Some others expected the creatures to enter their performing bodies.

Tito Imanda is an anthropologist and filmmaker. His master thesis from the Department of Media, Culture and Communication in New York University (2007), is about the political economy of the Indonesian film industry. In 2008-2013 he developed and managed a film school at a university in Jakarta. These days he is mostly in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, finishing fieldwork for his PhD program at the Department of Media and Communication, Goldsmiths, University of London, with thesis topic: collaborative filmmaking with a wayang orang group from the foot of Mount Merapi. He is also the Head of Research and development at the Indonesian Film Board.

Dag Yngvesson and Koes Yuliadi (University of Nottingham, Malaysia Campus and Institut Seni Indonesia, Yogyakarta)

Many Chickens, Lots of Luck: Filming Islam, Capitalism and Media in Post Reformasi Yogyakarta

Emails: Dag.Yngvesson@nottingham.edu.my;

This presentation will discuss the ideas and logistics behind the production of Banyak Ayam, Banyak Rejeki (Many Chickens, Lots of Luck), a feature length ethno-fiction that mixes documentary and narrative techniques with archival elements and contemporary events. The resulting bricolage of images, sounds, genres, and times is deployed as an irreverent satire of current developments in gender politics, conservative trends in Islamic thought, and the social and economic effects of neoliberalism in Java, Indonesia. Co-presenters Dag Yngvesson and Koes Yuliadi (co-directors of the film and scholars of film, theater, ethnography and cultural studies) will focus on their critical engagement with the use of Islam as a symbolic foundation for idealized patterns of economic development. In this context, a hardworking and gregarious Muslim persona (often male) is frequently deployed as a veil of piousness that obscures and simultaneously fuels expectations of high profitability and rapid corporatization driving the formation of small, grass-roots businesses. There is an unspoken local ‘rule,’ however, that in order to be truly marketable on a local level, these elements must somehow be combined with established Javanese cultural tropes that exceed (often quite far) what is otherwise considered “Islamic.” The film takes up this complex negotiation, satirically amplifying and deploying it––along with the effects of various new and old media used to promote small businesses––to break down and historicize the shrouds of patriarchal Islamic piety and bootstrap capitalism increasingly attached to local socio-economic practice.

Dag Yngvesson is a filmmaker and Assistant Professor of cinema and cultural studies at the University of Nottingham, Malaysia Campus. Using extensive archival and ethnographic research on globalization and political mass media in Indonesia, his forthcoming book challenges basic scholarly assumptions about the role of Hollywood and US imperialism in the development of non-Western cinemas. Current film projects include collaborative film/ethnographies on the politics of peace in Aceh, Indonesia and on the experience of migration and labor in a large migrant community in South Philadelphia. He is also finishing post-production on the experimental narrative feature Banyak Ayam, Banyak Rejeki (Many Chickens, Lots of Luck), co-directed and produced with Indonesian filmmaker Koes Yuliadi. Dag has published scholarly articles in Jumpcut, Indonesia and the Malay World, Plaridel Journal of Communication, Media, and Society, and others.

Koes Yuliadi first studied drama as an undergraduate in Theater at ISI Yogyakarta in Indonesia, majoring in creative writing and direction. Building on these skills, he began writing for television in Jogjakarta and Jakarta in 1992. In 1999-2000, he was awarded the title of best writer for television by the Jakarta Arts Council. He continued writing for television until 2006, while also working as a director. Thereafter his concentration shifted to cultural research and independent filmmaking. Since 1993, Yuliadi has been a lecturer in film and drama in the Theater department at ISI Yogyakarta. He received a Masters in Humanities from Gadjah Mada University in 2000, and completed his PhD (ISI Yogyakarta) in 2013. His latest film, on body ornamentation in Bali, is entitled The Devil’s Tatoo (2017).