Festival Film Dokumenter 2018

The first few steps in the journey of finding the core essence of our festival started this year. It certainly was not built on zero, and certainly not the first attempt. Seventeen years are not a short period of time for perpetual experiments, for trials to formulate a viable concept of a film festival. Time never stops, and people change, not unlike the documentary film scene on which this Festival is built.  Today, years later from when it was first organized, a motley crew of people are trying to trace the breadcrumbs. Each edition of the festival is a brick that serves as a building block for the foundation of our dream.

“Recording the remnants, searching for the unseen, finding insight.”

That sentence is not just a series of pretty words. It is coined a long time ago, by the founders of our organization. For quite some time, it went unnoticed, almost forgotten. Now it is printed on a poster, hung on the walls of our office, as a reminder for us and the future organizers.

The contemplative mood of this year’s preparation led us to question a lot of things. All the questions could be summed in one cliché yet essential question: what is our purpose, and how does our festival fit within that purpose?

Unlike the previous editions, this year’s festival comes without a theme, without big words attached to the front page. Each program now could stand on its own, as a response to the dynamic social landscape, without the confine the festival’s theme. Now we could address even more concerns, more voices for the marginalized and the voiceless.

The keyword that underlines our programs is “education”. Not in the sense of us coming to educate other people, but in the spirit of creating an open space for the public to learn from one another. We believe documentary is a rich medium of communication, a wide open field of possibilities. It is a delightful combination of the discipline of truth-seeking and the art of cinematic storytelling.

We might be film lovers and festival organizers. But, first and foremost, we are human beings who need others to survive. Our focus on education is never about a singular pursuit of knowledge. It is about being open to others, to share and discuss, to create dialogues, to sow the seeds of changes for the greater good. After all, education is all about empowering the minds and the hearts to brave the ever-changing world and to create better futures for all of us. For the road that lies ahead, we can only keep on paving with honesty and integrity.

A festival is never a one man’s work. We want to thank our organization’s founders; the organizers, this generation and the previous generations; the filmmakers; our partners; and our ever-faithful audiences.

Ukky Satya Nugrahani