Mengamati Sosok di Balik Kamera dan Para Aktornya
Tindak-tanduk dan ucapan orang-orang yang kita temui sehari-hari selalu diandaikan berada dekat dengan kebenaran. Jika ternyata ia melenceng dari kebenaran, hidup akan kehilangan stabilitasnya. Itulah yang terjadi dalam filem-filem di pemutaran Kompetisis Internasional 09: Performativitas Keaktoran dalam Ruang-Ruang Realitas pada hari Jumat (23/08) di GoetheHaus, Goethe-Institut, Jakarta. Pukul 19.30, Anggraeni Widhiasih selaku kurator program menerangkan tema kuratorialnya di hadapan 28 orang penonton, mengenai aspek keaktoran dalam dua filem yang ditampilkan: di ruang publik dan melalui sinema.
Filem pertama yang ditayangkan adalah Tupinambá Lambido (2018) oleh Lucas Parente dari Brasil. Skandal politik yang dibongkar oleh sadapan telepon tokoh-tokoh penting membuat situasi politik di Brasil keruh. Di tengah kekacauan tersebut, para seniman poster Tupinambá Lambido beraksi melalui poster-poster yang mereka tempelkan di ruang publik. Mereka menelusup masuk ke celah “terbongkarnya” topeng para aktor tersebut dan meresponnya secara kritis.
Selanjutnya, filem yang ditayangkan berjudul The Satan’s Horn (2019) oleh Mohammad Hadi Ghorbani dari Iran. Filem dokumenter ini mengikuti kehidupan sehari-hari Rasoul Soheylifard, sebagai penjual barang “palu gada” dalam truk bak terbuka. Melalui pengeras suara yang tertempel di mobil bak terbukanya, ia menjajakan berbagai barang mulai dari sandal, anak ayam, sampai tanaman hias—kerap diusir masyarakat setempat, namun juga sering diutangi oleh mereka. Sosok bromocorah sejati. Suasana auditorium menjadi riuh penuh tawa sepanjang filem, karena pembawaan Rasoul yang jenaka dalam kemelaratannya. Namun, lambat laun, terbuka celah antara realita dan keaktoran dalam sosok Rasoul yang direkam dan dibingkai oleh si sutradara. Kebenaran cerita dan sejauh mana keterlibatan sutradara pun menjadi pertanyaan.
Di akhir penayangan, Stephanie Comilang sutradara filem Come to Me, Paradise mengajukan pertanyaan yang ada di benak semua penonton: siapa sebenarnya si Rasoul Soheylifard ini? Anggraeni pun tak mengetahuinya, karena informasi tentang filem ini tidak banyak di internet, dan sutradaranya tak dapat hadir di tempat penayangan. Namun menurutnya, pertanyaan soal karakter Rasoul justru adalah yang paling menarik dari filem ini, sebab hal itu bisa membawa kita pada pertanyaan-pertanyaan lain tentang realitas yang dihadirkan media. Di antara para penonton, filem The Satan’s Horn cukup membangkitkan semangat. “Filemnya sangat liar,” komentar Scott Miller Berry, salah satu juri ARKIPEL tahun ini. Sementara, Taufiqurrahman dari panitia ARKIPEL mengajukan pertanyaan baru: apakah filem ini digolongkan sebagai fiksi atau dokumenter? Sejauh mana batas intervensi sutradara yang diizinkan filem dokumenter?
Filem dokumenter pun pada titik tertentu menjelma jadi fiksi, ketika subjek diarahkan untuk melakukan sesuatu yang sesuai dengan keinginan si pembuat filem. Atau, melalui penyusunan narasi yang mengarahkan perhatian audiens untuk menerima pernyataan tertentu sebagai kebenaran. Namun, pada titik mana pengarahan tersebut dapat mencemari realita yang direpresentasikan?
Dalam kehidupan nyata, bukankah realita dan fiksi semakin berkelindan, apalagi di era digital ini? Narasi-narasi yang kita jumpai dalam hidup sehari-hari kita, terkadang kita terima begitu saja sebagai kebenaran, dan digunakan untuk menopang sendi-sendi kehidupan kita. Di filem Tupinambá Lambido, hal ini terjadi dalam performativitas para aktor politik, yang memegang kuasa suatu negara. Di The Satan’s Horn, performativitas si tokoh utama justru muncul langsung di depan layar kita. Keduanya dikemas dalam spektakel yang mengecoh audiensnya. Memilah fiksi dan kenyataan menjadi tidak produktif, namun dalam menavigasi kenyataan, diperlukan kesadaran akan sosok di balik kamera dan performativitas sosok-sosok di depannya.
Examining the Figure Behind the Camera and Its Actors
The common assumption is that people’s actions and words are close to reality. If they are strayed from the truth, life will lose its stable grounds. This is what happens in the films of International Competition 09: The Performativity of Actorship within Spaces of Reality screened at Friday (08/23) at GoetheHaus, Goethe-Institut, Jakarta. At 7 PM, Anggraeni Widhiasih as the program curator explained her curatorial theme in front of an audience of 28, about the aspect of actorship in the two films that were about to screened: both in the public space and through cinema.
The first film was Tupinambá Lambido (2018) by Lucas Parente from Brazil. A political scandal was revealed through a bug in the phone line of some prominent figures, resulting in a muddled political situation. Amidst the chaos, a group of poster artists Tupinambá Lambido jumped into action through the provocative posters they posted in public spaces. They slipped through the cracks behind the mask of those actors and launched a critical response.
Next up was The Satan’s Horn (2019) by Mohammad Hadi Ghorbani from Iran. This documentary followed the daily life of Rasoul Soheylifard, as a traveling salesman of miscellaneous things in a pickup truck. Through the megaphone in his car, he offered many kinds of stuff: slippers, little chicks, houseplants—few times he was kicked out by the local citizens where he parked his truck, but at the same time, they owe him money for the things they’ve bought but has not paid. Rasoul, pretty much, is a true bromocorah. The auditorium roared with laughter throughout the film, from Rasoul’s humorous way of telling us his misery. Further through the film, the crack between reality and actorship opened in the figure of Rasoul; recorded and framed by the director. The truth of the story and how far the director is involved is later questioned.
At the end of the screening, Stephanie Comilang the director of Come to Me, Paradise put forward a question we were all wondering: who is this Rasoul Soheylifard? Even Anggraeni cannot answer that, since the internet doesn’t have much information about this film, and the director wasn’t attending the screening. However, according to her, the question on Rasoul’s character is indeed the most interesting point in this film, because it will lead us to other questions about the reality presented by media. Among the audience, The Satan’s Horn lifted their spirit. “It was wild,” Scott Miller Berry, one of ARKIPEL’s jury this year, commented after the screening. While Taufiqurrahman of the ARKIPEL committee threw in a new question: is this fiction or documentary? How far the limit of director’s intervention allowed in the frame of a documentary film?
A documentary film can switch into a fiction at some point, where the subject is directed to do something by the director. Or, through the process of compiling the narrative, to direct the audience’s attention to accept a certain statement as truth. But how much direction can contaminate the reality of a film?
In real life, isn’t reality and fiction intertwined, especially in this digital era? Every day, we take for granted the narratives we bump into in our lives as truths, and we used them to support many aspects of our lives. In Tupinambá Lambido, this happens in the performativity of the political actors, who hold power over the people in the country. In The Satan’s Horn, the performativity of the main character revealed itself in front of our screen. Both are packaged as a spectacle that tricks its audience. It is unproductive to separate fiction and reality, but when navigating our everyday life, we need to become aware of the figure behind the camera, and the performativity of the figures in front of it.
