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Print December 29, 2007

Aryo Danusiri: Breaking new ground for observational cinema

Features News - Thursday, December 13, 2007

James Bourk Hoesterey, Contributor, Wisconsin, United States

Improvement in domestically-produced films ... that address themselves to actual life and
sociocultural situations will require the creation of a new atmosphere for filmmaking ...
even though Usmar Ismail is dead, the dream of making films that deal with Indonesian
problems and issues has not completely died in the hearts of other filmmakers -- Salim
Said, Shadows on the Silver Screen (1991:121-128).

Based on the documentary films directed by Aryo Danusiri, we are assured that the dream
of Usmar Ismail is indeed alive and well. Danusiri's films seem to suggest that making
quality Indonesian films about the lives of real Indonesians -- rather than market-driven
caricatures -- requires more than a "new atmosphere" for filmmaking. It requires a new way
of looking at Indonesia and a new way of telling stories about Indonesia.

As Danusiri explains, his documentaries are "born not out of a grand idea, but rather
intimate relations to bring up a story from within". He does this through "observational
cinema" -- a style of documentary film that developed in the 1960s as part of a conscious
effort to film life as it unfolds, without imposing the filmmaker's agenda onto the story or
the narrator's voice onto the soundtrack.

Observational cinema privileges the kinds of truths acquired through filming everyday life
over the insights gained by a series of a series of "talking head" interviews about a particular
subject. Unfortunately, documentary film in Indonesia has thus far been dominated by the
latter.

Danusiri explains the difference between observational cinema and other methods of
documentary film in terms of the difference between hunting and fishing: "With hunting,
you look for something. You are projecting your ideas onto reality. But with fishing, you
are being patient in time and space. Being there with your subject, you 'catch' the moment."

This approach to filmmaking has brought Danusiri international acclaim for his
award-winning documentary Lukas Moment, which tells the story of a young Papuan
fisherman. However, the desire to impose one's own ideas in documentary filmmaking is
not easy to overcome. As Danusiri modestly admits, "Because of this hunting attitude, I
failed twice with two characters before I met Lukas." This film taught Danusiri the
importance of going fishing, not hunting.

To go "fishing" requires a different approach, one enhanced by an ethnographic encounter

where the filmmaker spends long days and nights with his subjects in order to gain their
genuine trust. Only then can the real story emerge. For Danusiri, the key is developing
sincere human connections: "With 'fishing', you have to be ikhlas (sincere) in following
your character ... to give them your time and energy to be their interlocutor ... but this is a
process." What is important is the way in which the documentary filmmaker serves as
interlocutor, not as authoritative presenter.

What is evident in Danusiri's documentary Playing Between Elephants is that he was not
filming with an agenda or to take anyone's side. Rather, his role as filmmaker was to make
clear that which was unintelligible to others.

Danusiri brings this unique filmmaking talent to his current project Connexxcreen, which
allows communities to make films about themselves. These films are later viewed and
discussed by other communities in Indonesia. These films become a tool for initiating
discussion and encouraging understanding about a range of issues central to the very

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diversity of Indonesia (for example, the implementation of Islamic law in certain districts).

Rather than listening to pundits who have their own agendas, Indonesians can use these
filmic representations to think about and to engage on these issues through conversations
with each other. For Danusiri, the power of film lies in its ability to cross boundaries, to
negotiate diversity and to transcend our stereotypes of the other. In his documentary style,
Danusiri differentiates between melihat (just "seeing") and menatap (actually looking
intently). Indeed, the brilliance of his films is their capacity to provide new ways of looking
at Indonesia by carefully documenting the real lives of Indonesians.

Danusiri has developed his filmmaking style over the course of several years and has
received international recognition for his efforts. In 2001, his first Aceh documentary
Village Goat Takes the Beating was an official selection at the Amnesty Film Festival in
Rotterdam. In recent years, his other films have been screened at various film festivals
including the Royal Anthropological Institute (where he was awarded the "Blackwell Best
Student Prize"), the Margaret Mead Film Festival, as well as other festivals in Singapore,
Brisbane, Taiwan, and Japan.

In 2005, Danusiri completed his master's in Visual Cultural Studies at Tromsoe University
in Norway, under the tutelage of renowned ethnographic film scholar Peter Ian Crawford.
In 2007, Danusiri was awarded a Fulbright Presidential Scholar Award to pursue a PhD in
Anthropology and Ethnographic Film at Harvard University in the United States. After
completing his doctorate, Danusiri will return to Indonesia to produce more films and to
teach the art of observational cinema.

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