Bagaimana sinema mengimbangi hegemoni? – begitulah kira-kira pertanyaan yang diperhadapkan pada partisipan kedua acara yang diadakan sore ini. Pengunjung yang datang ke Forum Lenteng Selasa (29/11/2022) sore dapat mendengarkan dua paparan yang cukup menarik dan menggugah pikiran dari tiga pembicara kita. Pembicara pertama adalah Akbar Yumni: penulis, seniman, dan kritikus filem (kebetulan beliau juga mengkurasi beberapa film yang dimuat di ARKIPEL). Beliau juga menaruh ketertarikan pada seni pertunjukan; karya-karyanya telah ditampilkan di berbagai pameran di tanah air. Selain itu ada Abhishek “Abhi” Nilamber dan Laura Kloeckner, dua orang kurator dari Berlin dari kolektif seni United Screens. Bagi sebagian besar partisipan, termasuk kurator dan produser dari bermacam latar belakang, Forum Festival menjadi ruang diskusi intelektual yang cukup santai.
Bagi pemula, paparan Akbar dapat dianggap sebagai pengantar terhadap performans reka-ulang (reenactment performance). Akbar sempat menyinggung konsepsi Diana Taylor soal arsip dan repertoar. Ia menekankan bagaimana seni pertunjukan mengimbangi dua pengaruh yang mendominasi narasi-narasi dalam perfileman, seni, historiografi, dll.: “Epistemologi Eropasentris” serta campur tangan rezim totaliter.
Imitasi berperan cukup penting dalam seni pertunjukan. Dalam salah satu slide presentasinya Akbar menampilkan salah satu adegan dari pameran berjudul Menonton Turang. “Imitasi ialah seikhlasnya bentuk sanjungan”, demikian tutur Oscar Wilde, namun imitasi juga bisa mengomentari, mengkritisi, mentertawakan ataupun mengejek; mendekontekstualisasi dan merekontekstualisasi.
Acara sore ini dilanjutkan dengan pemaparan dari Abhi dan Laura bertempat di lantai dua. Pada salah satu dinding terbentang kertas raksasa namun cukup sederhana, berisikan mind-map sederhana yang baru saja dipasang sore kemarin, yang merangkum isu-isu sekitar perfilman, hasil dari perjalanan keliling dunia selama dua tahun yang mempertemukan Abhi dan Laura dengan sutradara, kurator, dll. seluruh dunia. Para pengunjung ARKIPEL diberi kesempatan mengisi mind-map tersebut menggunakan spidol yang disediakan. Mind map yang terbentang di lantai dua tersebut dibawa jauh-jauh dari Berlin. Dan ia akan melanglang buana, akan ke Mesir dan India bersama dengan kedua kurator dan menampung aspirasi berbagai sineas dan penonton.
“Apa yang menghalangi film yang diproduksi di Indonesia tayang di Chile?” Begitu kira-kira bunyi salah satu pertanyaan yang Abhi lontarkan. Acap kali ketika aku melancong ke bioskop-bioskop komersial ibukota pertanyaan serupa muncul di benak: selain produksi-produksi tanah air pasti ada poster-poster ngejreng yang mengiklankan blockbuster Hollywood, kadang ditampilkan pula film dari Jepang, India, Korea, China. Sebaliknya film dari Nigeria, Argentina, dan Meksiko jarang sekali ataupun bahkan belum pernah diputar di bioskop-bioskop tersebut, padahal masing-masing menempati urutan ke 2, 12, dan 13 dari jumlah produksi film. Mungkin saja budaya negara tersebut belum terlalu “merasuki” imajinasi populer masyarakat Indonesia. Dari segi politik negara-negara Selatan bisa dikatakan cukup bersatu dengan adanya Gerakan Non Blok, namun dari segi budaya tampaknya bangsa-bangsa Selatan masih belum terlalu terhubung; hubungan Selatan-Selatan masih dimediasi dunia Utara: teknologi ‘Utara’, media budaya Utara’, dll. sebab masih belum matang terhubung.
Sinema “pinggiran”: eksperimental, avant-garde, indie, dll. berpotensi besar memelopori penjembatanan negara-negara dunia Selatan, sebab tidak terkekang oleh insentif keuntungan semata ataupun selera populer. Film dapat mengobarkan aksi dan merintis perubahan: Isu-isu yang dipaparkan dalam film Petrichor (2018), dokumenter yang diproduksi Vipin Dhanurdharan di Kochi, India tentang pendangkalan kanal dan jenis perairan lainnya di kota tersebut, dapat terasa relevansinya oleh masyarakat lainnya di belahan lain dunia, terutama di bagian Selatan. Film-film semacam ini berpotensi menghubungkan masyarakat-masyarakat tersebut, meski terpisah oleh jarak dan perbedaan bahasa dan budaya, dan mempelopori diskusi yang nantinya mungkin bisa berujung pada aksi nyata.
Namun dari pemaparan Abhi dan Laura dapat diduga pula bahwasanya beberapa isu sekitar perfilman “mainstream” dapat pula dirasakan oleh sinema “pinggiran”. Ini menjadi salah satu hal yang diperhadapkan pada United Screens sebagai kolektif yang dianggap oleh anggotanya, salah satunya, sebagai jembatan: antara Utara dan Selatan, antara Selatan dan Selatan, dll.
Lebih relevan lagi untuk Forum Lenteng ialah kisah-kisah dan anekdot yang Abhi dan Laura curahkan tentang suka-duka United Screens: spontanitas pembentukan komunitas tersebut, kegiatan kesehariannya, dll. Berbagi pikiran, menonton bahkan makan bersama, begitu kira-kira tutur Abhi soal kegiatan United Screens.
Sebagai seseorang yang belum lama berkecimpung di Forum Lenteng menurutku kemiripan antara kedua kolektif cukup mengagumkan – keduanya membuktikan bagaimana rasa percaya, solidaritas, dan tenggang rasa dapat menyatukan asa dan rasa dua dan lebih insan.
The two activities held this evening appeared to prompt their participants with the following question: How does cinema resist? Those who attended Forum Lenteng on Tuesday (29/11/2022) evening had the chance to listen to two interesting, thought-provoking talks. The first speaker is Akbar Yumni, author, artist, and critic (he happens to curate some of the films screened on ARKIPEL). He has a penchant towards performance and performing arts – his works have graced exhibitions in several locations in Indonesia. The second speakers are our guests Abhishek “Abhi” Nilamber and Laura Kloeckner, curators based in Berlin who founded the artistic collective United Screens. To the greater majority of its participants, including curators and producers of varying levels of experience and expertise, Forum Festival serves as an arena for intellectual, but easy-going, discussion.
Akbar’s talk might serve to the uninitiated as a brief, rather theoretical introduction on reenactment performance. Among the topics introduced in the talk was Diana Taylor’s conception of the archive and the repertoire. He placed special emphasis on how the genre serves as a medium to resist two hegemonic influences in cinematic, artistic, and historiographic narration: the “Eurocentric epistemology” and totalitarian interference.
Imitation plays a significant part in reenactment performances. Akbar included, in one of his slides, a scene from an exhibition of his titled Menonton Turang. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so the adage goes, but it can also critique, deride, and lampoon; decontextualise and recontextualise.
Abhi and Laura’s exposition took place on the second floor, in front of a gigantic but spartan poster recently installed (just yesterday sundown, in fact). The poster, marker-and-paper mind map, is a product of two years of a painstaking, but enjoyable, journey across the world, which brought Abhi and Laura producers, curators, directors, etc. around the world. For the remainder of ARKIPEL, our guests are given the opportunity to use a marker provided nearby to contribute to the mind map. The mind map was painstakingly flown over from Berlin, and will make appearances in Egypt and India together with the two curators,
“If a film is shot in Indonesia, what stops it from being shown in Chile?” prompted Abhi. Similar questions occur to me whenever I wander through commercial cinemas in the capital: besides posters advertising the latest Indonesian comedies and horrors are those of Hollywood blockbusters. Very occasionally one would find Japanese, Indian, Korean, Chinese films being advertised on those posters. But hardly, if ever, would films from Nigeria, Argentina, Mexico (nos. 2, 12, 13 largest by number of films produced) be played on the reels – for the sociocultural milieu from which these films spring forth are yet to permeate the hearts and minds of ordinary Indonesians. The Non-Aligned Movement has succeeded, to an extent, in uniting the global South politically, but it seems much still remains to be done to connect the peoples of the South as far as culture is concerned; the South, being not too strongly interconnected, makes use of the “North” as ‘cultural intermediaries’: “Northern” technology, cultural media, etc.
The anti-mainstream cinema has great potential to pioneer concord between nations of the global south, being neither strictly driven by profit motive (at least in tendency), nor confined by popular tastes and fashions. A film may do much: many communities around the world, especially in the global South may identify with the issues portrayed in Petrichor (2018), Vipin Dhanurdharan’s documentary on “depleting water bodies” shot in Kochi, India. These sorts of films have the potential to bring entire communities separated by miles of distance and cultural and linguistic boundaries together, and spur them into common action.
But Abhi and Laura’s accounts suggest that some of the issues in mainstream cinema might also hold through for the outliers – a question which United Screens, a collective which sees itself as, among other things, a bridge: between North and South as well as across the global South concerns itself with.
More relevant takeaways for Forum Lenteng are the ‘sneak-peeks’ Abhi and Laura have offered on United Screens as a community: how it came to be (quite spontaneously, in fact), what people do within (“doing things together, watching films together, eating together” – I think Abhi might have said something to the effect), etc. As someone who has just participated in Forum Lenteng’s activities, I think the similarities between both collectives is breathtaking – both show how human trust and charity can unite hands and brains.
