Jakarta, ARKIPEL – Forum Lenteng — “Menurutnya, katalog ARKIPEL ini seperti novel,” ujar Makiko, menerjemahkan ucapan Kenji Murakami, yang kemudian disambut tawa oleh orang-orang yang saat itu duduk bersama di salah satu meja makan pujasera di Taman Ismail Marzuki (TIM). Mereka berdua datang dari Jepang, sebagai tamu istimewa Forum Lenteng pada perhelatan ARKIPEL Electoral Risk – Jakarta International Documentary Film Festival 2014.
Tahun ini, secara khusus ARKIPEL berkolaborasi dengan tiga lembaga festival internasional —Images Festival (Kanada), Bangkok Experimental Film Festival (Bangkok), dan Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival (Jepang)— sebagai langkah strategis untuk membangun jaringan antarfestival filem, demi terbukanya akses produksi dan distribusi pengetahuan filem secara lebih luas.
“Ya, setiap tahun, Forum Lenteng akan ‘menerbitkan’ novel!” seru Hafiz (Direktur Artistik ARKIPEL) dengan mantap dan senyum kebanggaan. Siang itu, selain Makiko Wakai (Koordinator Program New Asian Currents, Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival) dan Kenji Murakami (Sutradara filem Sound Hunting), hadir pula tamu istimewa Forum Lenteng yang lain, yakni Scott Miller Berry (Direktur Images Festival) dan Hasumi Shiraki (Filmmaker), yang akan menjadi fasilitator pada salah satu program ARKIPEL tahun ini, yakni lokakarya film processing.
Memang, salah satu perbincangan yang mengemuka di antara tamu-tamu tersebut dan para penyelenggara ARKIPEL ialah tentang tebal buku katalog ARKIPEL Electoral Risk (+/- 396 halaman) yang dua kali lebih tebal dari katalog tahun lalu. Ketakjuban ini pun juga muncul dalam pertanyaan salah seorang wartawan pada jumpa pers yang dilakukan sekitar 3 jam kemudian.
Hafiz kemudian memaparkan bahwa Forum Lenteng, melalui ARKIPEL, ingin mulai membangun kembali tradisi perhelatan festival filem yang bukan sekadar perayaan, tetapi juga sebagai corong untuk menyebarluaskan pengetahuan filem kepada masyarakat umum, tidak terbatas pada lingkungan para pelaku filem saja. Untuk mencapai tujuan itu, ARKIPEL merancang program kuratorial yang berfungsi untuk mengemukakan perspektif (atau lebih tepatnya, standpoint) tentang apa dan bagaimana filem dan sinema itu seharusnya. Melalui kuratorial-kuratorial ini —(1) Asia Selatan; (2) The Uprising; (3) Kluge; (4) Amerika Selatan; (5) Shinsuke Ogawa; dan (6) Jajahan Gambar Bergerak: Lumière— ARKIPEL memperdalam dan meluaskan kemungkinan-kemungkinan pembacaan atas isu sosial-politik kontemporer, baik dalam lingkup Indonesia maupun dunia, yang mana tema Electoral Risk tidak hanya dapat dibaca melalui satu pintu tentang “pilihan politik (praktis)”, tetapi juga lebih jauh ke persoalan bagaimana seorang pelaku filem menentukan “pilihan-pilihan” estetika dan eksperimentasi dalam membahasakan gagasannya sehubungan dengan fenomena-fenomena yang berkembang saat ini.
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Malam Pembukaan ARKIPEL Electoral Risk berlangsung pada Kamis, 11 September, 2014, di GoetheHaus, Pusat Kebudayaan Jerman Goethe Institut Jakarta, Jalan Sam Ratulangi No. 9-15. Anggota Forum Lenteng telah berada di lokasi sejak siang hari. Beberapa orang sibuk mempersiapkan poster-poster dan meja penyambutan tamu sementara Hafiz dan Yuki Aditya (Direktur ARKIPEL) berbincang dengan para wartawan pada jumpa pers. Gedung tersebut mulai ramai ketika jam menunjukkan pukul tujuh lebih beberapa menit di malam hari.
Ketika gong pertama berbunyi, para tamu mulai dipersilahkan masuk ke aula GoetheHaus. Aula berkapasitas 301 kursi ini terisi penuh, bahkan ada beberapa orang yang rela duduk di tangga dan berdiri untuk menyaksikan acara pembukaan festival.
Suara bising mereda ketika Yuki naik ke atas panggung, dan tanpa basa-basi mempersilahkan dua gadis muda, Dendang Belantara dan Sisilia Cellist Virgana, untuk tampil membawakan tiga buah lagu. Duet pianis dan celis cilik ini mengundang decak kagum hadirin, dan berhasil menjadi sajian pembuka acara yang meninggalkan kesan bahagia. Usai penampilan mereka, Yuki sebagai Direktur Festival mempersilahkan Irawan Karseno, Ketua Harian Dewan Kesenian Jakarta, untuk memberikan sambutan, kemudian dilanjutkan sambutan Hafiz sebagai Direktur Artistik ARKIPEL.
Hafiz memberikan pemaparan yang tak jauh berbeda dengan penjelasaanya pada jumpa pers, bahwa ARKIPEL digagas sebagai ‘ruang diskusi’ dan ruang distribusi yang memberikan kesempatan kepada publik untuk mengakses beragam bahasa dan pengetahuan filem yang berbeda dari filem-filem yang biasa diakses oleh masyarakat di bioskop-bioskop komersil semacam 21. Hal ini yang menjadikan ARKIPEL penting karena dominasi ‘pengetahuan tunggal’ media arus utama telah menyebabkan masyarakat terkungkung pada ketersempitan cara pandang terhadap filem itu sendiri. “ARKIPEL hadir untuk memberikan pilihan yang berbeda,” ujarnya.
Pada sambutannya, Hafiz juga memperkenalkan para kurator/programmer, yakni Mahardika Yudha, Bunga Siagian, Afrian Purnama, Akbar Yumni, Manshur Zikri dan Ronny Agustinus (merangkap Juri Festival). Sementara itu, diperkenalkan juga para juri, yakni Hafiz sendiri, Otty Widasari, dan Reinaart Vanhoe.
Setelah kata sambutan dan perkenalan itu, tanpa menunggu lebih lama, acara pembukaan pun dilanjutkan dengan pemutaran enam filem pilihan —Sun Song (Joel Wanek), Alles Was Irgendwie Nutzt (Pim Zwier), Broken Tongue (Mónica Savirón), 5-9 (Ulf Lundin), Gundah Gundala (Wimar Herdanto), dan Ocho Décadas Sin Luz (Gonzalo Egurza)— yang dianggap cukup representatif mewakili gagasan tentang eksperimentasi dalam sinema dan bagaimana seharusnya sinema membingkai isu mengenai “pilihan-pilihan” tersebut.
Cinema as a Knowledge is an “Option” ARKIPEL
Jakarta, ARKIPEL – Forum Lenteng — “He thinks the catalog looks like a novel,” explained Makiko, translating Kenji Murakami who can’t speak English, which sparked laughter for the people who sat around them in one of the restaurant’s table in Taman Ismail Marzuki (TIM). Both of them came from Japan, as one of Forum Lenteng special guests in ARKIPEL Electoral Risk – Jakarta International Documentary Film Festival 2014.
This year, ARKIPEL is exclusively taking three international festival bodies, viz Images Festival (Canada), Bangkok Experimental Film Festival (Bangkok) and Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival (Jepang) to collaborate with —as a strategic networking between film festivals around the world, for a wider access to production and distribution of film knowledge.
“True, every year, Forum Lenteng would be “publishing” novel!” said Hafiz (Artistic Director of ARKIPEL) reassuringly and pulled a proud smile. That afternoon, alongside Makiko Wakai (Coordinator of New Asian Currents Program, Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival) and Kenji Murakami (Film Director of Sound Hunting), another special guests of Forum Lenteng were also present, Scott Miller Berry (Director of Images Festival) and Hasumi Shiraki (Filmmaker), who are going to be the facilitators in one of ARKIPEL’s programs this year: film processing workshop.
The thickness of ARKIPEL catalog (+/- 396 pages) which is twofold the thick of the previous catalog, indeed became the hot topic among the guests and the organizers of ARKIPEL. The astonishment did also emerge in one of the questions from a reporter at the press conference, which held at three hours later.
Hafiz then revealed that Forum Lenteng, through ARKIPEL, willing to foster and retrieve a film festival tradition that’s not just simply for celebration, but also as a funnel to spread film knowledge to public, not merely in the filmmaker milieu. To achieve such goal, ARKIPEL has designed curatorial programs which serve to adduce perspective (or precisely, standpoint) about what and how film and cinema ought to be. Through these curatorial —(1) South Asia; (2) The Uprising; (3) Kluge; (4) South America; (5) Shinsuke Ogawa; and (6) Moving Image Colony: Lumière— ARKIPEL is extending and expanding the possibilities of the approach over contemporary social-politics issue, from Indonesia or even global scope, where the theme Electoral Risk not only able to be read through a single door about “political options (practical)”, but also more to question how a filmmaker decides to choose the aesthetic and experimentation’s “options” to address his idea relating to the phenomenon that occurs these days.
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The opening night of ARKIPEL Electoral Risk was held on Thursday, September 11, 2014, in Goethe Haus, German Cultural Center Goethe Institut Jakarta, Jalan Sam Ratulangi 9-15. Forum Lenteng members were already stay in the location since the afternoon. Some people were busy for preparing the posters and receptionist desk while Hafiz and Yuki Aditya (ARKIPEL Directors) were talking with the reporters at the press conference. The crowd began to overrun the building when the clock struck 7 pm.
When the first gong rang, guests were welcomed to enter the Goethe Haus hall. The hall with a capacity of 301 seats were filled, there were even some people who were willing to sit on the stairs and stood to watch the opening ceremony of the festival.
Noise subsided when Yuki went up on stage, and without further ado calling two young girls, Dendang Belantara and Sisilia Cellist Virgana to perform three songs. These little pianist and cellist duet mesmerized the audience, and successfully became a joyous opening piece which left a heartwarming experience. After their performance, Yuki as Festival Director invited Irawan Karseno, Chief Executive of the Jakarta Arts Council, to give a speech, then the speech continued by Artistic Director of ARKIPEL, Hafiz.
Hafiz provided a speech that wasn’t much different from his explanation at a press conference, that ARKIPEL conceived as a ‘discussion space’ and the distribution space to provide an opportunity for the public to access diverse film languages and knowledge that different from the films that the public normally get in cinema theatre- like in commercial cinema, 21. This is what makes ARKIPEL important because the dominance of ‘single knowledge’ from mainstream media has led the public to be confined in the narrowness of perspective about the film itself. “ARKIPEL presents to provide different options,” he said.
In his speech, Hafiz also introduced the curators/programmer, namely Mahardika Yudha, Bunga Siagian, Afrian Purnama, Akbar Yumni, Manshur Zikri and Ronny Agustinus (Festival Jury concurrently). In other hand, the judges were also introduced: Hafiz himself, Otty Widasari, and Reinaart Vanhoe.
After opening remarks and introductions, without waiting much longer, the event continued with the screening of six selected opening films — Sun Song (Joel Wanek), Alles Was Nutzt Irgendwie (Pim Zwier), Broken Tongue (Mónica Savirón), 5-9 (Ulf Lundin ), Gundah Gundala (Wimar Herdanto), and Ocho Décadas Sin Luz (Gonzalo Egurza) – that were considered sufficiently representative to illustrate the idea of experimentation in cinema and how cinema should frame such issue of “options”.
