Kompetisi Internasional 04: Mengaburkan Batas Fiksi dan Realita
Setelah disuguhi film-film bernuansa gelap, sendu, dan akademik, film yang lebih ringan terasa seperti menghirup udara baru. Pada 27 November 2022 pukul 16.00, ARKIPEL dengan bangga mempersembahkan produksi Douwe Dijkstra yang berjudul Neighbor Abdi (2022), dibintangi oleh Abdiwahab Ali. Tanpa bakatnya, sebagian besar humor dalam film ini takkan terwujud.
Luthfan Nur Rochman, kurator program ini dan beberapa lainnya, membuka penayangan dengan memperkenalkan penonton kepada semacam “genre” baru. Mereka yang kurang mengenal terminologi militer mungkin tidak menyadari bahwa “Teater Operasi” dimaksudkan sebagai permainan kata, mungkin sedikit merujuk pada Teater Absurd dan banyak “Teater” lainnya di luar sana. Saya sendiri cukup menyadari bahwa ungkapan tersebut adalah istilah yang wajar digunakan dalam strategi militer, tetapi rekannya dari Indonesia tidak segera menyarankan dirinya kepada saya, dan oleh karena itu, saya sempat mengira bahwa film tersebut menampilkan ahli bedah berwajah muram yang membawa pisau bedah dan penjepit. Tetapi penciptaan istilah tersebut, yang berasal dari kampanye Napoleon ketika siasat militer direvolusi untuk selamanya, telah mempertimbangkan kesetaraan antara medan perang dan teater, yang sebenarnya sudah ada dari zaman Ramayana.
Namun Neighbour Abdi tidak hanya sekedar mengingatkan penonton tentang kesetaraan. Tidak pula sekedar satir terhadap “obsesi terhadap perang sebagai spektakel”, sebagaimana diungkapkan Luthfan. Film ini meruntuhkan batasan antara keduanya, mengaburkan batas antara fiksi dan realita. Sebut saja kisah tentang masa lalu kelam para tokoh film exploitation produksi Abdi: apakah dimaksudkan untuk, atau bagian dari dialog, sejajar dengan set miniatur dan layar hijau? Ataukah keduanya? Bukankah hidup campur aduk hakikat dengan segala suka-dukanya di satu sisi, dengan khayal? Ternyata tak cuma penulis saja yang bingung tatkala menonton film ini; salah seorang penonton yang duduk di seberang berkata dia tak tahu mau menangis atau tertawa dalam adegan-adegan tertentu. Lagi-lagi kepiawaian Douwes Dijkstra, seorang maestro genre metafilm yang karyanya “humoris dan menggugah secara sosial”. (Eventive)
Sore ini jumlah penonton tidak sebanyak penayangan kemarin, cukup banyak dari penonton ‘langganan’ ARKIPEL pada saat yang bersamaan sedang menyaksikan pameran kolase Milisifilem. Namun dari tawa kecil para penonton jelas bahwa mereka menikmati film ini.
International Competition 04: Blurring the Boundary of Fiction and Reality
After the dark, mellow, and in one case, academic films a more lighthearted film felt a very welcomed change of air. ARKIPEL was proud to present, on Sunday, 27 November 2022 (4.00 pm) a Douwe Dijsktra production titled Neighbor Abdi (2022), with Abdiwahab Ali in lead, without whose talents much of the humour in the film won’t be realised.
Luthfan Nur Rochman, curator to this program and many others on the list, opened the screening by introducing us to a new “genre” – so to speak. Those less acquainted with military terminology might not be aware of the fact that “Theatre of Operations” is meant to be a pun, perhaps slightly alluding to the Theatre of the Absurd and other “Theatres” out there. I have been quite aware that the expression is an established term in the study of military strategy, but its Indonesian counterpart did not suggest itself to me immediately, and thus I was, for a while, of the impression that the film featured grim-faced surgeons bearing scalpels and tongs. But the creation of the term, originating during Napoleon’s campaigns when military stratagem was revolutionised once and for all, had in consideration the equivalence between the battlefield and the theatre – one which must have been realised since the days when the great Indian epics was conceived.
And Neighbour Abdi went further than reminding its audience of the equivalence. Much more than a satirical poke on “the obsession with war as a spectacle” (Luthfan), the film demolishes any pretence of distinction between the two – in more conventional terms, boundaries between fiction and reality. Are the accounts of gruesome pasts meant to provoke thought and sympathy, or scripted lines of Abdi’s “war exploitation” films, on par with his sets and the green screens? Or both? Isn’t life a patchwork of truth – bitter, sweet, bittersweet – and make-belief? I am not the only member of the audience left utterly confused; a fellow theatre-goer sitting just across claimed that she did not know whether to cry or laugh several times in the film. One would not expect less from Douwes Dikstra, a maestro in metafilm whose works “can be described as both humorous and socially-engaged.” (Eventive).
This afternoon did not draw in a great number of visitors, in part due to the inopportune choice of time: it would seem most of our regulars were away on an exhibition featuring a Milisifilem collage, but it was evident that the film was well-received: the soft giggles emanating from the audience attests to the cordial mood in the air.
