Tiga Dara (Indonesian for Three Maidens) is a 1956 Indonesian musical comedy film starring Chitra Dewi, Mieke Wijaya, and Indriati Iskak. Directed by Usmar Ismail for Perfini, the film follows three sisters who live with their father and grandmother. When the eldest sister, Nunung, shows no interest in marrying, her family tries to find a husband for her.Read More »
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Lana is working on a telephone sex line. In order to be able to make the excited groaning, she does the hulahoop while she is on the phone to clients. Remake of the graduation film Soundings that Joel Coen made at the New York University.Read More »
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Yuni is an Indonesian teenage girl who realizes that when her dreams get bigger, the world around her gets smaller. She is about to finish high school and have a big dreams, she thinks everything is possible. Then one day she got proposed by a man she barely knows. She rejects the proposal, but the second proposal came. Yuni still believes in her dream, so does the family. But something came up this time. A myth, about you cannot reject more than two proposals; otherwise you will never get married. Until one day, her teacher came to her house, become the third guy who proposed to her.Read More »
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Berlian and her daughter Daya are on the run from political violence. They are forced to move inland from their seaside home to a desert of constantly shifting sands. Finally, Daya sees a vaguely familiar face from across the wasteland.Read More »
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Blind Pig Who Wants to Fly is a film that is both serious and playful. The film tackles a sensitive racial political issue, namely the denial of the cultural identity of the Chinese minority in Indonesia, but is also filled with humorous and bizarre jokes and situations.
The film is made up of several sketches that can differ in their tone and approach, yet keep returning to the central issue of the glossed-over Chinese identity. The insecurity, fear and uprooting this causes among Chinese Indonesians is the real subject of the film. The subject is obviously close to the maker’s heart.Read More »
Giving voice to the anguish of a nation fighting for its soul, Usmar Ismail’s After the Curfew follows the descent into disillusionment of a former freedom fighter who is unable to readjust to civilian life following the revolution that gave Indonesia its independence from the Netherlands. Steeped in moody atmospherics and psychological tension, the film struck its national cinema like a bolt of lightning, illuminating on-screen, for the first time and with unflinching realism, the emotional toll of Indonesian society’s postcolonial struggles.Read More »
A Balinese Trance Seance
Bringing offerings of rice, flowers, and woven coconut leaves, clients visit Jero in her household shrine to determine the cause of their son’s death. Jero lights an incense brazier, sprinkles holy water, and recites mantras as preliminaries to trance. Several ancestors and finally the young son speak through her voice, revealing the nature of his premature death (witchcraft) and his wishes for cremation. In contrast to other films about Balinese trance which focus on spectacular, community performances, this film provides an intimate view of a fascinating process of communication between Jero, the spirits, and her clients who are at one point moved to tears.Read More »
One day in a hospital room, 10-year-old Tantri realises she will not have much more time with her twin brother Tantra. Tantra’s brain is weakening and he has begun to lose his senses one by one. He now spends most of his time lying in bed, while Tantri has to accept the reality that she must soon face life alone. This situation opens up something in Tantri’s mind: she keeps waking up in the middle of the night from a dream and seeing Tantra. The night becomes their playground. Tantri experiences a magical journey and an emotional relationship through body expressions, finding herself between reality and imagination, loss and hope.Read More »