Film and Publicness

Tim dosen Budaya Populer

Have you ever watch a documentary?
Kindly tell us the story plot!
 Documentary film culture in Indonesia
(New Order era)
• Documentary film was considered to be a propaganda tool for the
state and ignored by the audience.
• Documentary films were used to promote the achievements of
economic development in Indonesia
• Produced by Pusat Produksi Film Negara (PFN)
• Distributed by TVRI
 Reformasi
• The official censorship body Lembaga Sensor Film or LSF remains, but
laws and regulations that used to restrict film production and
circulation were abolished after the transition.
• The lack of infrastructure for the production and circulation of
documentaries > help of international non-government organisations
(NGOs) and foreign embassies
• The NGOs and foreign embassies wanted the recipients of the funding
to be public, non-profit institutions rather than commercial entities
• Jakarta International Film Festival (JIFFest), became the main site for
the development of this new documentary culture and film culture in
general
• Since the release of The Act of Killing, documentary film in Indonesia
has been ‘promoted’ into the public realm, and institutions outside
the film community have started to pay serious attention.
• On negative side: as the state apparatus has become anxious about
people making audio-visual recordings of sensitive topics in
Indonesia.
• On positive note: there are a few cases in which documentary film
has been taken seriously by political leaders
 Publicness
• Publicness and discussion of the public provides another way of
talking about the role of documentary in the context of political
transition and the post-authoritarian setting.
• ‘agora’, an open, hybrid space for exchanging ideas, which also serves
as the site for announcements or economic activities. It is sometimes
presented as the space in which the idea of the ‘public’ is formed
• Publicness in this context: means a meeting, dialogue and political
actions that happen in physical spaces, facilitated by the media, in
particular documentary films.
 Public Sphere (Habermas)
• …. öffentlichkeit designates a sphere of open (public) spaces and
communication where a public discourse on matters of common
concern can take place and lead to the formation of an opinion on the
part of the public of citizens that in turn may influence political
decision making (Habermas).
• Relies on the bourgeoisie to make decisions in the totality of the
public sphere.
 Public Sphere (Fraser)
• Public spheres are not only an arena for the formation of discursive
opinion, but also for the formation and enactment of social identities.
• Public sphere suggests multiple spheres that represent different
interests, including underprivileged groups.
 Public Sphere (Negt and Kluge)
• Develop their idea of the proletarian public sphere, with alternative
media to instigate a model of subjectivity > to resist the hegemonic
model of bourgeois subjectivity
• They suggest examining the proletarian public sphere as a “counter-
public” to open the possibility of the formation of a ‘social horizon of
experience’ > enables the working class to understand their class and
social relation within the capitalist society.
 Public Sphere (Hanse)
• Hansen takes a close observation of the possibilities of cinema in
producing space and cultural accommodation of fantastical spaces
that allowed marginal groups within society to “organise their
experience on the basis of their own context of living”.
Case of Indonesian Documentary Film Centre
(In-Docs)
• Asserting the Importance of Documentary Film in Indonesia
• In-Docs: a civil society organisation to open the space for media as
well as for putting documentary film as part of public culture in
Indonesia.
• In-Docs operates as an NGO to work with its stakeholders in the
global non-profit sector
• It assist filmmakers to participate in the newly opened public sphere
 Case of Festival Film Dokumenter (FFD)
Yogyakarta
• Celebrating Documentary Films and Beyond
• The festival has become part of the city agenda and has role as a
“counter-discourse”
• The engagements that have been produced in the festival were done
through the screenings of documentary films, especially off-screen
activities.
• The screenings provide platforms for certain discourses to become
public, questioning the audience’s position on the issues and at the
same time enabling them to imagine a world that is different than
their immediate surroundings.
Case of Watchdoc Documentary Maker
• Documentary film and social movements
• Watchdoc: a community-based organisation that has taken the
format of a private company to assert its independence and
impartiality from short-term political interests.
• Watchdoc has become a hybrid organisation: a mix of media
organisation, community-based social movement, and private
company.
• Watchdoc operates like an NGO
• Watchdoc have pioneered the non-middle class nature of the cinema
event, especially compared to exhibition formats that have a
relatively similar nature > layar tancap
• Watchdoc has brought another possibility of public deliberation, as
they place the transnational public as part of the pressuring factor in
the decision-making process at the national and even local levels