FORUM FESTIVAL
Forum Festival: Mereka yang Bertahan
Forum Festival sebagai rangkaian dari acara ARKIPEL homoludens – Jakarta International Documentary and Experimental Film Festival berlangsung dari tanggal 8 – 9 Agustus 2018 di GoetheHaus, Goethe Institut Indonesien, Jakarta. Forum Festival mengundang partisipan dari pembuat, pegiat, dan kritik filem di seluruh Indonesia untuk mengikuti lima panel yang diadakan. Seusai malam pembukaan, kebanyakan partisipan Forum Festival pun kembali ke tempat asal mereka masing-masing dengan alasan yang beragam. Fausto Keiluhu, salah satu partisipan yang mewakili komunitas Liga Film Mahasiswa ITB mengaku bahwa ia dan teman-temannya harus kembali keesokan harinya, karena ada perwalian dan pengisian KRS di kampus mereka.
Namun, tak semua partisipan telah pulang. Beberapa dari mereka setia mengikuti acara, bahkan nanti hingga malam penutupan. Dua di antara mereka mengikuti acara sarapan bersama di hari Minggu (12/08) lalu di Forum Lenteng, Jalan Haji Saidi No. 69, Jakarta Selatan, dan tim berita ARKIPEL berkesempatan untuk berbincang singkat bersama mereka.
Para tamu dan penyelenggara festival setelah sarapan pagi di kantor Forum Lenteng
Syahrullah, biasa dipanggil Ule, adalah peserta Forum Festival yang berasal dari Samarinda, mewakili komunitas filem Sindikat Sinema. Ini adalah pertama kalinya ia mengikuti Forum Festival. Ia mendapatkan informasi tentang program ini dari temannya yang kebetulan aktif di Forum Lenteng. Ule tertarik mendaftar karena ia ingin belajar lebih lanjut mengenai sinema, dan juga ingin mengembangkan kegiatan komunitasnya di luar penayangan filem. Setelah mengikuti Forum Festival, ia mengaku mendapatkan banyak pengetahuan baru yang akan dijadikan landasan untuk merombak program Sindikat Sinema. Salah satunya, ia ingin mengundang komunitas lain dalam kegiatan-kegiatannya, dan melakukan penayangan dengan tema yang lebih spesifik. “Kita akan memperoleh banyak pandangan, terutama jika kita membuka [kesempatan] diskusi, [kita] akan memperoleh lebih banyak pengetahuan,” demikian tutur Ule. Dari filem-filem yang telah ia tonton di ARKIPEL, ia merasa tertarik dengan filem dalam proyek hitam-putih Milisifilem, yang dianggapnya memiliki banyak ide bagus, terutama Into the Dark dan Pagi yang Sungsang, meskipun menurut penilaiannya, kedua filem tersebut masih memiliki kekurangan.
Para partisipan Forum Festival
Partisipan selanjutnya yang berbincang dengan tim berita ARKIPEL adalah Rosalia Engchuan, berasal dari Max Planck Institut, Berlin, Jerman. Ia menetap di Indonesia sejak Desember lalu, dalam rangka riset doktoralnya dalam bidang antropologi, dengan fokus pada pergerakan komunitas filem di Indonesia. Ia bercerita dengan Bahasa Indonesia yang fasih, bahwa pada awalnya ia tak mengetahui keberadaan komunitas filem Indonesia karena kurangnya kajian ilmiah tentang subjek ini. Minatnya berfokus pada filem Indonesia dimulai oleh korespondensinya dengan Adrian Jonathan Pasaribu, pendiri Cinema Poetica, membentuk kerangka riset awalnya tentang swasensor filem di Indonesia. Namun, setelah menonton filem Balada Bala Sinema di Singapore International Film Festival, ia beralih kepada komunitas filem Indonesia, karena keberadaan komunitas filem merupakan sesuatu yang menarik untuk diteliti, namun belum banyak kajian tentangnya.
Ia juga menghubungkan fenomena komunitas filem yang diamatinya selama melakukan riset dengan panel-panel Forum Festival, salah satunya ketika panel kedua yang bertajuk Melampaui Kolaborasi: Antara Berkarya Secara Kolektif dan Individu, Otty Widasari sebagai panelis membahas gotong-royong sebagai sifat asli masyarakat Indonesia. Rosalia melihat fenomena tersebut dalam syuting filem pendek independen yang diikutinya beberapa waktu lalu, dan menyadari universalitas konsep tersebut. Namun, ia juga melihat bahwa beberapa komunitas berusaha membentuk struktur dalam kegiatan-kegiatan mereka, di antaranya ia menyebut kegiatan Ifa Isfansyah dalam mengorganisir Jogja Film Academy, yang sempat dibicarakan oleh Ifa sendiri dalam panel ketiga: Pendidikan Film Sekarang dan Masa Mendatang.
Bincang-bincang di sela waktu istirahat antar panel Forum Festival
Setelah berbicara dengan partisipan-partisipan yang bertahan, besar harapan saya dan kawan-kawan ARKIPEL lainnya agar Forum Festival yang telah terlaksana dapat membagi pengetahuan dan pengalaman bagi kawan-kawan komunitas filem, untuk diterapkan kembali dalam usaha mengembangkan sinema independen di Indonesia.
FORUM FESTIVAL
Forum Festival: The Survivors
Forum Festival as a part of ARKIPEL homoludens – Jakarta International Documentary and Experimental Film Festival took place from 8th to 9th August 2018 at GoetheHaus, Goethe Institut Indonesien, Jakarta. Forum Festival invited participants consisting of filmmakers, activists, and critics all over Indonesia to attend five of the panels that were held. After the opening night, most of the Forum Festival participants went back to their hometowns, or the cities where they came from, with various reasons. Fausto Keiluhu, one of the participants representing Liga Film Mahasiswa, ITB, admitted that he and his friends had to go back after the opening night, because ITB students had to fill in their courses for the semester.
However, not all participants returned. Some of them stuck throughout the event, even possibly until the closing night. There are even two Forum Festival participants who attended the breakfast on Sunday (08/12) at Forum Lenteng, Jalan Haji Saidi No, 69, Southern Jakarta, and the ARKIPEL news team had the chance to have a small talk with them.
Guests and organizers of the festival after breakfast at the Forum Lenteng office
Syahrullah, known as Ule, is a participant of Forum Festival from Samarinda, representing Sindikat Sinema community. This is his first time participating in Forum Festival, which he found out from his friend, an activist in Forum Lenteng. Ule was interested to participate, because he wanted to learn more about cinema, and he wants to develop his community’s activities outside the regular screenings. After following the panels, he admitted that he learned a lot of things that he can use to rearrange the programs of Sindikat Sinema. One of the things he can apply is to invite other communities as a part of their activity, and hold screenings with specifically chosen themes. “We can learn new perspectives, especially if we open [the] discussion, [we] can receive more knowledge,” Ule said. From the films he had watched in ARKIPEL, he was interested in the films in Milisifilem’s black-and-white project, which he thought contained many interesting ideas, especially Into the Dark and Pagi yang Sungsang, even though he still thought the film had a few drawbacks.
Forum Festival’s Participants
The next participant we talked with was Rosalia Engchuan of Max Planck Institut, Berlin, Germany. She had been staying in Indonesia since last December, on her doctoral research in Anthropology, focusing on the movement of Indonesian film communities. She told me in a fluent Indonesian, that at first she did not know about the existence of Indonesian film community because of the lack of scientific research on that subject. She started focusing on Indonesian film since her correspondence with Adrian Jonathan Pasaribu, the founder of Cinema Poetica, building her early framework on Indonesia’s self-censorship. After watching Balada Bala Sinema in Singapore International Film Festival, she changed her subject to Indonesia’s film communities, because it is an interesting subject to study, but there haven’t been a lot of journals or academic studies about it.
She also connected the phenomenon within film communities which she observed while researching, to Forum Festival panels. For example, on the second panel titled Beyond Collaboration: Between Collective and Individual Practice, Otty Widasari as a panelist explained gotong-royong as a natural trait of Indonesian society. Rosalia observed the same phenomenon during the shootings of independent films she participated in, and realized the universality of the concept. While she also learned that some communities tried to build a structure in their productions—she mentioned Ifa Isfansyah’s organizing of Jogja Film Academy, which Ifa himself talked about in the third panel: Film Education: Current and Future Practice.
Participants chatted during coffee breaks between the Forum Festival’s panels
After chatting with the remaining participants, we hope that the previous Forum Festival were able to share knowledge and experience for other film communities, that can be applied in their attempt to develop Indonesia’s independent cinema.
