Cinema In Twilight Zone

ARTISTIC STATEMENT

Hafiz Rancajale Artistic Director

After almost two years of a pandemic that swept the world, various changes in our interaction behavior began to occur. This forced ‘distancing’ situation triggers various impulsive responses from those who have become comfortable with human previous habits. Many art events stopped happening for almost two years and ARKIPEL is no exception. In 2020, we decided to ‘pause’ or recess while looking at the development of the situation in society. The one-year hiatus made us feel strange because the routine that had been going on for almost ten years by preparing the festival annually was forced to ‘disappear’. However, the pause also gave us space to find new methods or ways of organizing the festival. There are many experiments carried out by various world festivals, both big and small festivals. Since mid-2020, online festivals have started to mushroom, providing a new nuance in interacting with film and the social field of cinema.

In 2021, we decided to organize the ARKIPEL Twilight Zone – 8th Jakarta International Documentary and Experimental Film Festival. We decided to hold a hybrid festival by combining online and offline screening. The main challenge in organizing an online festival is to conquer digital media technology so it can provide convenience to the audience in watching the films in our festival. Another challenge is the security issue in which many films on the online video streaming platforms are still prone to easy downloads. Of course, the next challenge is to build trust in filmmakers. Not all filmmakers agree to screen their works online, with security concerns as the main reason. So, we are trying to find a platform that we consider the safest to ensure that the works screened on ARKIPEL are not easily downloaded. To maintain the ‘festival’ spirit as a meeting space, we continue to hold the festival offline on a very limited basis. The space we used is the cinema room at Forum Lenteng—a room we just finished building in the last few months. This limited offline event may be able to maintain the festival’s spirit as a building that maintains relationships with fellow audiences as well as experimental and documentary film enthusiasts in Jakarta.

At this year’s event, we raise Twilight Zone as our theme, and we have decided on it since 2019 for the 2020 festival. We decided not to look for a new theme for the 2021 festival because Twilight Zone fits the situation we are facing now. Twilight Zone is a zone we can’t predict. It can be very dark, gray, shiny, or alight. No one could have guessed what happened in the dark of the situation. This twilight is a big challenge in seeing the socio-cultural, socio-political issues of the region, which are intertwined with the spaces that surround it. Cinema in this case has an aperture to enter and interpret the ‘vagueness’ of the situation. Since 2020, we have selected films in the International Competition session that are in accordance with the theme that we offer to the applicants. If we refer to the selections of the selectors who are also programmers in this competition session, it is very clear that the themes raised in these films are still relevant to our current uncertain situation. There are works that raise historical findings that are still in the dark, but they give us space for interpretation of how history can relate to how our lives today began. Likewise, works that present optical wonder in cinema, where the truth of reality can change in the capture of camera and sound. Even though they are very formalist, these kinds of works still provide a limitless aesthetic exploration experience in cinema. As in previous years, there are many works that raise the themes of fights and the struggle for space of power, both in the context of ‘power’ or imaginary space in the relationships with other societies. It is unnecessary to interpret these fights negatively because it can be a very ‘conceptual’ fight space in seeing cinema’s cleverness to frame the real problems in contemporary society.

Twilight Zone can also be read as our affirmation on our alignment toward marginalization of ‘local’ aspects in the modernity of today’s civilization. We can see this in how the concept of survival of local communities, tribes, or people living in remote areas, who have been able to maintain their culture throughout centuries. This is what is often overlooked by ‘modern thinkers’ in resolving various conflicts related to the problems of local communities, indigenous peoples, and so on. The locality is a twilight zone that sustains our society (Indonesia) today. It can live in various social situations at various times. It is evident that the current pandemic does not come from local practices, but the carelessness of modern civilization in managing the world’s public health safeguard. In the works that are present in ARKIPEL Twilight Zone 2021, many abstractions of these local issues are raised in cinema. These works do not intent to lament about the marginalization of locality, it celebrates the locality in a critical way instead. The recordings depicted in various programs at this festival can be a reflection for us in seeing how to get through these various uncertain twilight zones. We cannot go through it alone, because the twilight zone can be seen clearly only by being together. The ARKIPEL Festival is just one of those spaces of togetherness where we can see through the twilight zone. Hopefully, this can contribute to some of us in getting through the pandemic situation, which we don’t know for sure its end. Let us celebrate cinema in the twilight zone.

Happy watching.

Hafiz Rancajale Artistic Director of ARKIPEL