History of motion picture film in Indonesia.

Banyak penulis film yang menulis tanpa memiliki pengetahuan tentang dunia yang ditulisnya. Mereka dapat menjadi angin yang membawa kapal penonton ke arah yang salah. Membaca buku ini, saya memiliki harapan kalau Ekky akan menjadi angin yang positif buat penonton. -Rudi Soedjarwo, Sutradara Bahasa buku ini tidak njelimet dan tidak saja mendorong kita untuk menonton film, tapi juga memberikan cara memahami film. -Deddy Mizwar, Sutradara dan Aktor Segala aspek film Indonesia terkumpul di sini. Dari dulu sampai sekarang, orang-orangnya, dan sejarahnya. Pokoknya seru! Penulisannya juga enak, kayak sedang cerita. -Wulan Guritno, Aktris Sineas-sineas muda berkarya, bintang-bintang baru bermunculan, film-film Indonesia baru terlahir dari generasinya. Tentu saja, tidak lepas dari pujian dan kritikan. Saatnya kritikus film muda hadir dengan perannya untuk memperkaya kebangkitan film Indonesia, yang akan menempatkan kembali film Indonesia di dunia industri sekaligus dunia idealisme "alam pemikiran" agar tidak terjebak dalam euforia. Maju terus perfilman Indonesia! -Artika Sari Devi, Putri Indonesia 2004 dan Pemain Film [DAR! Mizan, Anak, Film, Indonesia]

This highly informative book explores the world of Post-Soeharto Indonesian audio-visual media in the exiting era of Reform. From a multidisciplinary approach it considers a wide variety of issues such as mainstream and alternative film practices, ceremonial and independent film festivals, film piracy, history and horror, documentary, television soaps, and Islamic films, as well as censorship from the state and street. Through the perspective of discourses on, and practices of film production, distribution, and exhibition, this book gives a detailed insight into current issues of Indonesia’s social and political situation, where Islam, secular realities, and ghosts on and off screen, mingle or clash.

In Indonesian Cinema after the New Order: Going Mainstream, Thomas Barker presents the first systematic and most comprehensive history of contemporary Indonesian cinema. The book focuses on a 20-year period of great upheaval from modest, indie beginnings, through mainstream appeal, to international recognition. More than a simple narrative, Barker contributes to cultural studies and sociological research by defining the three stages of an industry moving from state administration; through needing to succeed in local pop culture, specifically succeeding with Indonesian youth, to remain financially viable; until it finally realizes international recognition as an art form. This “going mainstream” paradigm reaches far beyond film history and forms a methodology for understanding the market in which all cultural industries operate, where the citizen-consumer (not the state) becomes sovereign. Indonesia presents a particularly interesting case because “going mainstream” has increasingly meant catering to the demands of new Islamic piety movements. It has also meant working with a new Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy, established in 2011. Rather than a simplified creative world many hoped for, Indonesian filmmaking now navigates a new complex of challenges different to those faced before 1998. Barker sees this industry as a microcosm of the entire country: democratic yet burdened by authoritarian legacies, creative yet culturally contested, international yet domestically shaped. “This is a significant piece of scholarly contribution informed by an extensive range of interviews with industry insiders. This volume is particularly welcome given the dearth of English-language publications on Indonesian cinema in the last two decades. I have no doubt that the book will be extensively used in any future work on national cinema, not just in Indonesia, but Southeast Asia more widely.” —Krishna Sen, University of Western Australia “Indonesian Cinema after the New Order is a marvelously entertaining and important contribution to the study of Indonesian cinema, youth culture, and media worlds in a global context. In fact, I would consider it the best book I have seen on the subject of the Indonesian film industry.” —Mary Steedly, Harvard University

A film-goer accustomed to the typical Hollywood movie plot would feel uneasy watching an Indonesian movie. Contrary to expectations, good guys do not win, bad guys are not punished, and individuals do not reach a new self-awareness. Instead, by the end of the movie order is restored, bad guys are converted, and families are reunited. Like American movies, Indonesian films reflect the understandings and concerns of the culture and era in which they are made. Thus Indonesian preoccupations with order and harmony, national unity, and modernization motivate the plots of many films. Cinema has not traditionally been within the purview of anthropologists, but Karl Heider demonstrates how Indonesian movies are profoundly Indonesian. Produced in the national language by Indonesians from various regions, the films are intended for audiences across the diverse archipelago. Heider examines these films to identify pan-Indonesian cultural patterns and to show how these cultural principles shape the movies and, sometimes, how the movies influence the culture. This anthropological approach to Indonesian film opens up the medium of Asian cinema to a new group of scholars. "Indonesian Cinema" should be of interest to social scientists, Asianists, film scholars, and anyone concerned with the role of popular culture in developing countries.

This book examines popular culture in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, and the third largest democracy. It provides a full account of the key trends since the collapse of the authoritarian Suharto regime (1998), a time of great change in Indonesian society more generally. It explains how one of the most significant results of the deepening industrialization in Southeast Asia since the 1980s has been the expansion of consumption and new forms of media, and that Indonesia is a prime example of this development. It goes on to show that although the Asian economic crisis in 1997 had immediate and negative impacts on incumbent governments, as well as the socioeconomic life for most people in the region, at the same time popular cultures have been dramatically reinvigorated as never before. It includes analysis of important themes, including political activism and citizenship, gender, class, age and ethnicity. Throughout, it shows how the multilayered and contradictory processes of identity formation in Indonesia are inextricably linked to popular culture. This is one of the first books on Indonesia's media and popular culture in English. It is a significant addition to the literature on Asian popular culture, and will be of interest to anyone who is interested in new developments in media and popular culture in Indonesia and Asia.

History of motion picture film in Indonesia.

This book explores ways in which diverse regional cultures in Indonesia and their histories have been expressed in film since the early 1950s. It also explores underlying cultural dominants within the new nation, established at the end of 1949 with the achievement of independence from Dutch colonialism. It sees these dominants—for example forms of group body language and forms of consultation—not simply as a product of the nation, but as related to unique and long standing formations and traditions in the numerous societies in the Indonesian archipelago, on which the nation is based. Nevertheless, the book is not concerned only with past traditions, but explores ways in which Indonesian filmmakers have addressed, critically, distinctive aspects of their traditional societies in their feature films (including at times the social position of women), linking past to the present, where relevant, in dynamic ways.

This book explores Indonesian cinema, focusing on moments of unique creativity by Indonesian film artists who illuminate important but less-widely-known aspects of their multi-dimensional society. It begins by exploring early 1950s ‘Indonesian neorealist films’ of the Perfini group, which depict the ethos and emerging moral issues of the period of struggle for independence (1945–49). It continues by discussing four audacious political allegories produced in four discrete political eras—including the Sukarno, Suharto and Reformasi periods. It also surveys the main approaches to Islam in both popular cinema and auteur films during the Suharto New Order. One chapter celebrates the popular songs and B-movies of the Betawi comedian, Benyamin S, which dramatize the experience of the poor in ‘modernizing’ Jakarta. Another examines persisting Third World dimensions of Indonesian society as critiqued in two experimental features. The concluding chapter highlights innovation in a renewed Indonesian cinema of the post-Suharto Reformasi period (1999–2020), including films by an unprecedented generation of women writer-directors