As Engchuan notes, to focus solely on the finished product is to overlook the complex network of agencies in play. Rosalia Namsai Engchuan’s analysis is more tightly focused on Candra’s filmmaking, and the specific conditions under which it was possible to make a film like Dewi pulang. Barker’s analysis charts the changing significance of ‘indie’ cinema against the backdrop of broader trends in the recent history of Indonesian filmmaking. Our first essay, from Thomas Barker, situates Dewi pulang in the context of short filmmaking in post-authoritarian Indonesia. Context for the essays is provided by a critically annotated transcript and translation of the film’s dialogue, and a conversation with the filmmaker, Candra Aditya. 2 This special issue of BKI is meant to offer an introduction to the film, and to provide materials that may be used for further analysis-both as a window onto contemporary short filmmaking in Indonesia, and as a commentary on the social and cultural circumstances the film depicts.Įach of the four essays presented here addresses a different aspect of the film. The film was subsequently shown at the 2017 Singapore International Film Festival, and was one of two entries Candra submitted for the 2018 Viddsee Jury Awards, where it has since been freely available for streaming online. 1įirst publicly screened at the Purbalingga Film Festival in 2017, Dewi pulang was produced with funding from the Pusat Pengembangan Perfilman (Pusbang), Kementerian Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan Indonesia (Indonesian Culture and Education Ministry’s Centre for Motion Picture Development). As a meditation on conflicting responsibilities, desires, and aversions, Dewi pulang offers a filmic examination of the challenges that confront a growing number of young Indonesians who find themselves caught between differing ways of life-commonly, if perhaps oversimply, described as traditional and modern, rural and urban. In 18 minutes of studied realism and closely observed dialogue-in Indonesian, Javanese, and English-Candra’s film explores the profound disjoint between these two worlds, as Dewi leaves Indonesia’s cosmopolitan capital city for the slower rhythms and familial obligations of Javanese home life.
Taken as a whole, the special issue offers at once a window onto short filmmaking in Indonesia and new primary materials for further analysis.Ĭandra Aditya’s short film Dewi pulang (Dewi goes home) follows a young woman as she travels from Jakarta to her natal home in Central Java to help prepare funerary rites for her father. Issues addressed include the changing nature of short films and ‘indie’ cinema in post-authoritarian Indonesia the filmmaking practices specific to Dewi pulang the interplay of absence and presence in Dewi’s movement between Jakarta and her natal home in Central Java and the juxtaposition of Indonesian-, English- and Javanese-language dialogue, and the forms of sociality they respectively embody. A critically annotated transcript and translation of the film’s dialogue is followed by four essays on various aspects of the film and a conversation with the filmmaker.
As an example of the genre, this special issue of BKI presents Candra Aditya’s (2016) short film, Dewi pulang (Dewi goes home), which follows a young Javanese woman as she travels from Jakarta to her natal home in Central Java to attend her father’s funeral. Short films have proven an important medium for social commentary in contemporary Indonesia.
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