Festival Film Dokumenter 2020

For 19 years, the Competition program has always been one of the main programs of Festival Film Dokumenter. Competition aims to exhibit films that capture actual issues around us and provide critical perspectives. The issues presented critically are certainly not independent of the forms and styles of creative documentary storytelling.

Festival Film Dokumenter Competition Program does not limit its attention to a single documentary theme, type, or shape. Therefore, the composition of this program is enriched by different perspectives, manners of storytelling, and approaches. For the second time, this year’s edition of FFD will celebrate four categories: International Feature-length Documentary, Indonesian Feature-length Documentary, Short Documentary, and Student Documentary.

309 films were received during the period of submission from May to August. We sincerely appreciate this enthusiasm, and as it has been our annual tradition, we will announce the winner of each of the categories at the Awarding Night and Closing Ceremony of Festival Film Dokumenter 2020.

— Rugun Sirait
Program Coordinator

For 19 years, the Competition program has always been one of the main programs of Festival Film Dokumenter. Competition aims to exhibit films that capture actual issues around us and provide critical perspectives. The issues presented critically are certainly not independent of the forms and styles of creative documentary storytelling.

Festival Film Dokumenter Competition Program does not limit its attention to a single documentary theme, type, or shape. Therefore, the composition of this program is enriched by different perspectives, manners of storytelling, and approaches. For the second time, this year’s edition of FFD will celebrate four categories: International Feature-length Documentary, Indonesian Feature-length Documentary, Short Documentary, and Student Documentary.

309 films were received during the period of submission from May to August. We sincerely appreciate this enthusiasm, and as it has been our annual tradition, we will announce the winner of each of the categories at the Awarding Night and Closing Ceremony of Festival Film Dokumenter 2020.

— Rugun Sirait
Program Coordinator

For 19 years, the Competition program has always been one of the main programs of Festival Film Dokumenter. Competition aims to exhibit films that capture actual issues around us and provide critical perspectives. The issues presented critically are certainly not independent of the forms and styles of creative documentary storytelling.

Festival Film Dokumenter Competition Program does not limit its attention to a single documentary theme, type, or shape. Therefore, the composition of this program is enriched by different perspectives, manners of storytelling, and approaches. For the second time, this year’s edition of FFD will celebrate four categories: International Feature-length Documentary, Indonesian Feature-length Documentary, Short Documentary, and Student Documentary.

309 films were received during the period of submission from May to August. We sincerely appreciate this enthusiasm, and as it has been our annual tradition, we will announce the winner of each of the categories at the Awarding Night and Closing Ceremony of Festival Film Dokumenter 2020.

— Rugun Sirait
Program Coordinator

For 19 years, the Competition program has always been one of the main programs of Festival Film Dokumenter. Competition aims to exhibit films that capture actual issues around us and provide critical perspectives. The issues presented critically are certainly not independent of the forms and styles of creative documentary storytelling.

Festival Film Dokumenter Competition Program does not limit its attention to a single documentary theme, type, or shape. Therefore, the composition of this program is enriched by different perspectives, manners of storytelling, and approaches. For the second time, this year’s edition of FFD will celebrate four categories: International Feature-length Documentary, Indonesian Feature-length Documentary, Short Documentary, and Student Documentary.

309 films were received during the period of submission from May to August. We sincerely appreciate this enthusiasm, and as it has been our annual tradition, we will announce the winner of each of the categories at the Awarding Night and Closing Ceremony of Festival Film Dokumenter 2020.

— Rugun Sirait
Program Coordinator

This year, Perspektif invites the audience to imagine about the future while reflecting on what we confront right now, these days. Instead of a futuristic imagination full of sophisticated technology jargons as a solution, we want to present an observation of everyday life, from the perspective of the general society.

The program began with In Touch, a film that takes us to give meaning to the intimate relation between human and technology, something very close to our daily activities during the pandemic. Through a medium experimentation (video mapping), the filmmaker tries to build intimacy between the family in Poland and their loved ones, separated by distance all the way to Iceland. This approach creates a sensation as if they are present at the same location. Nevertheless, a paradoxical relationship emerges: technology connects them while also separates them. This phenomenon presents a dilemma, can intimacy really be achieved?

At the same time, the elaboration of film-photography media is able to capture the traumatic collective memories. Map of Latin American Dreams captures a two-decade past-present transformation convoluted with authority and power. Conflict, war, racism, as well as the dreams and hopes that stretch all the way through Latin America are knitted from the perspective of the people downtrodden by the country’s dictatorship. On the other hand, in Letters to Buriram, conflict becomes obscure and everything seems fine. The historical conflict between Asian countries like Taiwan, China, Japan, and Korea doesn’t really appear on the surface, but felt. With a poetic-reflective approach, Letters to Buriram takes us to slowly enjoy the cinema as if listening to a fairytale.

The eviction in China portrayed in A New Era is an undeniable reality that also happens around us. Hotel and garden constructions—ironically labelled as ecological—forced the people of Guangzhou to live with uncertainty without a house nor a hope for the future. A similar issue also appears in Doel. In a different part of the world, a small number of people abandoned in the dead town of Belgia trying to survive within their space, regardless of the presence of a nuclear power plant and a giant container just a few metres away. Subtly, this film captures the daily life of the small Doel community that is disturbed by the economical, development, and state interests. Could all of this possibly be the new era for us? Can we imagine a different world rather than these phenomena?

Those are the points we hope to answer with Into the Movement, the last film on the list. It invites us to imagine a world with empowerment. That the collective efforts offer possibilities to stop living off a vulnerable established system. What the youth fights for in Into The Movement becomes relevant to today’s generation, who wrestles with their future: financial crisis, precarious works, never-ending house loans, and the exploitative law.

— Irfan R. Darajat & Syifanie Alexander
Programmer

This year’s Retrospective program brings the experience of watching the works made by Bert Haanstra. Haanstra is a director from the Netherlands who was born at the end of October 1916. His name is recorded in The Academy Awards at the Oscars for Best Short Documentary and the Grand Prix du court metrage at the Cannes Festival. Haanstra had studied at the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences but then quit because he felt that long studies would be nothing compared to real-life experiences. Later he worked as a photojournalist, experimenting in stage photography, and made his first film, Catfish. His vision is gentle, ironic, and filled with his love for people and nature.

Haanstra built up his career through his own efforts. Nearly all his movies, whether short or long, enjoyed tremendous success in numerous countries. His brilliant camerawork and editing produced films that become highlights in Dutch film history. Through the documentaries Mirror of Holland (1950) and The Voice of the Water (1966), he shows his vision of the Netherlands and water as an inseparable unity. The two films depict the beautiful scenery of the Netherlands coastline and the human relations that live, work, and enjoy recreational water.

Haanstra found a special interest in the work of the great Dutch painter, Rembrandt. Through Painter of Man (1957), Haanstra presents refined lighting, vital details in the painting, and the gradual dramatization of Rembrandt’s character in relation to his master and to one another.

The yellow sheen on liquid glass is the radiance in Glass (1958). Combining music, sound effects, and editing, Haanstra infuses the routine process in a bottle factory into a sense of deep awe. Zoo (1962) is a touching and humorous film about the way humans and animals behave at Artis (Amsterdam Zoo).

The Human Dutch (1963) paints a picture of the Dutch and pokes gentle fun at their peculiarities. Haanstra observed the Dutch after the post-war reconstruction era with compassion and wit, and they emerged with a sense of sorrow and joy, religion and individualism and, above all, freedom.

We present four short films and two feature films from Bert Haanstra to provide a visually captivating experience: seeing with fresh eyes. The most striking of Haanstra were his enthusiasm, drive, skill, artistic integrity, and creativity. His work is a blending of drama and comedy, imagination, and reality.

— Anita Reza Zein
Programmer

The end of 2020 finds Indonesia in a solemn vagary. The pandemic near the end of 2019 and its impacts on various sectors apart from healthcare, the government’s recent policies that evoke controversies, are but a fragment of predicaments that haunt us in a question, what will happen next? How and where do Indonesia go? A perspective at a national level oftentimes obscures the tumults of the other layers, layers that we’re actually standing upon but overlooked as eyes are glued to the horizon. Constructing a way out of disaster involves not only unflinching focus towards a goal, but also the courage to hold back and look around at even nooks and crannies to ask: how will a choice affect this scenery in the future?

This year, Festival Film Dokumenter’s Lanskap tries to provide a lens for these supposedly meager tumults and turbulences, through eight films that are a combination of archived films of Forum Film Dokumenter the year of 2018 and 2019, and the 2020 film entries that will also be part of the archive. In the films, an idyllic life that hides social complexities, a personal history that reveals bigger realities, as well as a play of individual’s possibilities bound and unbound out of their identities, are explored. The method of storytelling and artistic choices can always be argued subjectively, but meanings born out of issues captured should always be viewed objectively, which in return would hopefully stir thoughts and discussions about Indonesia, both on the personal and social level.

In Paguruan 4.0, Gedoran Depok, and Di Pinggir Kali Citarum for example, the very simple and undeniable fact that people try to fit themselves into the perceived reality that contains them, is shown. In each, they face struggles particular to their environment, their background, their passion, and profession. The demand to adapt and mold themselves to their surroundings, the inability to resist the power that’s trying to erase them, the resolution to accept and preserve amidst things happening outside of their control, are all dynamics captured in three films.

Meanwhile in Shin Hua, Golek Garwo, and Mbah Kancil, the inevitability of old age is delivered with grace. In one, people try to live by the things they know and love. In another, people are shown to never stop pursuing what tugs at their heart. And in the last, people hold their passion close even as twilight stares at them and questions how it reflects their journey.

Banyak Ayam Banyak Rejeki sees the mash up of realities and how easy it collapses and rebuilds when one alters one’s identity; identity that seems to bring with it an inherited burden and unshakable stigma in Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.

— Ukky Satya Nugrahani
Programmer