{"id":5796,"date":"2020-12-01T21:50:48","date_gmt":"2020-12-01T14:50:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ffd.or.id\/uncategorized\/doel-peeking-out-the-town-from-a-ghost-point-of-view\/"},"modified":"2020-12-01T21:50:48","modified_gmt":"2020-12-01T14:50:48","slug":"doel-peeking-out-the-town-from-a-ghost-point-of-view","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ffd.or.id\/en\/film-review-en\/doel-peeking-out-the-town-from-a-ghost-point-of-view\/","title":{"rendered":"Doel: Peeking Out the Town from A Ghost Point of View"},"content":{"rendered":"

If a lonely and empty Doel were called a Ghost Town, who exactly is haunted by whom? Who is the ghost?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A street in Doel Town that recorded a crowd of the stall turns to be a desolate place full of critical murals. There is no more the smell of freshly-baked bread as well as the law that governs the residents. A nuclear power plant, some plans for the port of Antwerp expansion, and some people who occupy the building for night clubs as well as some twenty-four traumatic inhabitants who are still there, all remain.<\/span><\/p>\n

Federik S\u00f8lberg captures the activities in Doel through the life of several people that still remain. Various threats to their mental and physical health are compiled by S\u00f8lberg in a film entitled <\/span>Doel<\/span><\/i> (Federik S\u00f8lberg, 2018); a film that pictures a city in Belgium known as a \u2018ghost town.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

The city of Doel holds various internal and external conflicts. An incident that S\u00f8lberg discovered is a particular party is utilizing the conflict as a tourism attraction. An attraction as if it is a display case selling the trauma of its citizens that can be enjoyed from the window bus while listening to the tour guide\u2019s explanation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The tourists relish the town, Doel, differently. Some of them get involved in street racing on a lonely road while the others try their physical strength out by destroying an abandoned building. All those activities are captured by S\u00f8lberg from a distance as if he wants to show his position that is different from the tourists.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span> Federik S\u00f8lberg is not a Belgian living in Doel, but he is a Dutch who got interested in that ghost town while he is going on a tour. It is all explained by Liam Cristello in his interview for Northeastern University. He wrote that S\u00f8lberg had a desire to tell about this city began to emerge when he saw various kinds of factories, refiners, and nuclear power plants while he started entering the town. However, S\u00f8lberg finds an obstacle in which his position is just an ordinary tourist; a position that does not differentiate him from other tourists on that bus.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

S\u00f8lberg\u2019s attempt to keep his distance away is seen through the visual characters of <\/span>Doel<\/span><\/i> (2018). The characters that S\u00f8lberg built speaks honesty as a filmmaker. He does not appear as a tourist nor a resident. He observes all the activities of his chosen subjects from a distance. There are no close-up shots to show the details. Contextually, this visualization explains that the city is not really dead even from the eyes of foreigners.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span> S\u00f8lberg\u2019s visualization tells a story that a ghost town, a label for Doel, might go wrong. This region is still a place for its residents to do their activities, not a dead town. As a tourist, he tells all the phenomena through a subject that is attached to their place. Humans and their space are connected and they interact one to another as if it is a cow that is in a lawn craving for green grass, an aunt with a television on, or a kitchen with a tea maker and their Xanax.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

S\u00f8lberg utilizes his freedom to observe the subject as if it were a ghost. It can come through those personal boundaries that have never been reached by a foreigner or a tourist. On the other hand, this visualization raises a big question; if it were true that Doel is a ghost town, then who exactly is haunted by whom? Who is the ghost then?<\/span><\/p>\n

The film Doel\u00a0<\/i>(2018) is a part of the Perspektif<\/a>\u00a0program at FFD 2020. You can watch\u00a0Doel <\/i>(2018) for free here.<\/a> \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Written by Annisa Rachmatika<\/span><\/p>\n

Translated by Shafira Rahmasari<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If a lonely and empty Doel were called a Ghost Town, who exactly is haunted by whom? Who is the ghost?\u00a0 A street in Doel Town that recorded a crowd of the stall turns to be a desolate place full of critical murals. There is no more the smell of freshly-baked bread as well as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":3858,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"edition":[65],"class_list":["post-5796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-film-review-en","edition-ffd-2020-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ffd.or.id\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ffd.or.id\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ffd.or.id\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ffd.or.id\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ffd.or.id\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ffd.or.id\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5796\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ffd.or.id\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ffd.or.id\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ffd.or.id\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ffd.or.id\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5796"},{"taxonomy":"edition","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ffd.or.id\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/edition?post=5796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}