On ....a night with the film maker

It seems that I was destined to have all around movie experiences lately. It started since I suddenly realized that had not done my old hobby on visiting the cinema for quite a while…. Then it continued with more “make a sense” decision to make an unlimited pass to visit my favorite cinema here ….. many movies I have watched since then (from the rubbish one until the life changing one .. huehehehehehe .... gak ding) …. couples of reasons why I did that … self indulgence, looking for some distractions from the real world, find the place that I don’t need to communicate to another human being, tired because piles of junk in my desk, which is increasing exponentially (probably quadratic, but who cares?? ... nerd) in height every each day … well just simply looking for a tiny space in this world that I can relax and don’t have to think about thorny stuff such as drops, relationship and everything that come to my head lately ……

Somehow, all of these things lead me to meet my old friend Rani in Rotterdam (if you look at my first posting, I mentioned her there ….) …. She is a movie maker and artist who is really passionate with her work ….. she came last week to promote her movie screening in the IFFS , in which she is a producer and director of one short movie titled Sugiharti Halim. This film itself is a part of fiction-documentary film titled ‘9808 An Anthology of 10th Year Indonesian Reform’, collection of 10 short films … This film is about the socio-culture changes for the past 10 years after the event so called ‘reformation’ took place such as testimony of people who witnesses the riot and the student movement … and the one that interest me most ….. about the Chinese Indonesian condition as a ‘citizen’ of this ‘democratic’ country …. Some of the films have a straight forward point … some are less straight forward ……. and two of them really ambiguous ….. but in general, I give two thumbs up for the idea and how they brought up the matter in a nice way ….

Sugiharti Halim film is about the girl who reluctantly accepting her name …. she hates her first name because (perhaps) the inability of her parents to find a better name …. just simply silly name (huahahaha …… according to Rani, the first choice is Sugiyanti but somehow this name sounds more unacceptable ….even I think both crack me up) .. but the most intriguing part is about her last name … since it is an alternation of the Chinese surname ‘Liem’ … which is in this case an obligatory for Chinese Indonesian to change their name into Indonesia-sounded name, due to disguise (perhaps...) or to repress the chinese identy among the chinese for certain reasons (or just sentiment to one particular race, which is called racist ...) ….. the story of the film is about conversation of SH with her three separate dates (well, I assume she is a bit bitchy …hehehehe) …. and on each date, she always grumbles … start with about her given name, about her uncommon first name … and how useless her father effort to disguise their Chinese identity if all the Chinese with surname ‘Liem’ change their name into Halim …. and at the end how she is suffered from this particular government policy due to her ethnicity ….. however, Rani can illustrate in an interesting way … funny, but smart and sometimes sarcastic (love it …due to mz nature ... hehe) … and at the end she really made her point (even I wasn't impressed by the performance of the third guy …. Rani told me that the guy suppose to be the climax of this film .. however …. it doesn’t really meet the expectation …) .. but still .. it is a nice film …. I like it …

Had a dinner with her after the screening … haven’t been talking with her for almost 10 years, and I think that she hasnn’t changed that much .. … talking about film, life …. yaps we are growing older and we still chasing on our dream … and for sure I had a nice evening …. something to remember about ….

ps... see the difference with the photos??? .... wakakakakaka ... pamer mulu ..... and thanks Dan .. for coming to the screening ...