Contemporary Indonesian Film; Spirits of Reform and ghosts from the past

Front matter

Spirits of Reform and ghosts from the past

Katinka van Heeren

Southeast Asia Mediated

PART 1 FILM MEDIATION PRACTICES Production: The attempt to produce Provokator the New

Order way

Distribution and exhibition: Trade and charade in cinemas and film formats

Exhibition and consumption: Film festivals as forums for national imaginations and representations Conclusion

Reformation in film production: Kuldesak and film independen

Distribution and exhibition of new media formats: ‘Local’

Beth versus ‘transnational’ Jelangkung

Alternative sites of film consumption: Additional identifications and modes of resistance

Part 2 Film Discourse Practices

Film history: New Order patronage of film perjuangan and film pembangunan

Film and historiography: Promotion and representations of New Order history

‘Film in the framework of’: G30S/PKI and Hapsak xiii

| Contents

Counter-history: Changes and continuities in post-Soeharto modes of engagement

Post-colonial histories and identities: film islami

Film in the framework of Ramadan

Part 3 Film Discourse Practices

5 THE KYAI AND HYPERREAL GHOSTS: NARRATIVE PRACTICES OF HORROR, COMMERCE, AND CENSORSHIP

Horror films under the New Order: Comedy, sex, and religion

Horror films for television: New narratives and debates on their bounds

Horror films for cinema and television: Developments of Reformasi

6 THE CELEBRITY KYAJ AND PHANTOMS OF THE PAST: TUSSLING WITH THE BOUNDS OF INDONESIAN MORALITIES, REALITIES, AND POPULARITIES

The ban on Kiss me quick!: The kyai, the foreigner, and Indonesia’s morality Censorship from the street: The authority of religion

The post-Soeharto dispute over censorship: Spirits of Reform and ghosts from the past

Conclusion CONCLUSION GLOSSARY BIBLIOGRAPHY FILMOGRAPHY

INDEX vi

107 115 122 129

AAK Aliansi Anti-Komunis (Alliance of Anti-Communists)

ABG Anak Baru Gedhe (teenager)

ABRI Angkatan Bersenjata Republik Indonesia (Armed Forces of the Republic of Indonesia)

AMAP Aliansi Masyarakat Anti Porno-Aksi (Alliance of People against Pornographic Acts)

Asirevi Asosiasi Importir Rekaman Video Indonesia (Indonesian Video Recording Importers Association)

BP2N Badan Pertimbangan Perfilman Nasional (National Film Assessment Board)

BSF Badan Sensor Film (Film Censor Board)

DFN Dewan Film Nasional (National Film Council)

DGI Dewan Gereja-Gereja di Indonesia (Council of Churches in Indonesia)

DVD Digital Video/ Versatile Disc

FBR Forum Betawi Rempug (Betawi Brotherhood Forum)

FFAP Festival Film Asia Pasifik (Asia Pacific Film Festival)

FFB Forum Film Bandung (Bandung Film Forum)

FFD Festival Film Dokumenter (Documentary Film Festival)

FFI Festival Film Indonesia (Indonesian Film Festival)

FFI Festival Film Independen Indonesia (Indonesian Independent Film Festival)

FFVII Festival Film dan Video Independen Indonesia (Indonesian Independent Film and Video Festival)

FKLD Forum Komunikasi Lembaga Dakwah (Communication Forum of Dakwah Institutions)

FLP Forum Lingkar Pena (Pen Circle Forum)

FPI Front Pembela Islam (Islamic Defenders Front)

FSI Festival Sinetron Indonesia (Indonesian ‘Electronic

Cinema’ Festival) Gasfi Gabungan Studio Film Indonesia (Indonesian Association of Film Studios)

Gasi Gerwani

GPBSI

Konfiden

Kopassus

Gabungan Subtitling Indonesia (Indonesian Association of Subtitlers)

Gerakan Wanita Indonesia (Indonesian Women's Movement),

Gabungan Perusahaan Bioskop Seluruh Indonesia (All-Indonesian Association of Movie Theatre Companies)

Gerakan Perempuan Hindu Muda Indonesia (Indonesian Young Hindu Women's Movement) Himpunan Artis Film dan Sinetron Indonesia (Indonesian Film and “Electronic Cinema' Association) Himpunan Artis Film dan Televisi Indonesia (Association of Indonesian Film and Television Artists) Hari Peringatan Kesaktian Pancasila (Day of Commemoration of the Sacred Pancasila)

Himpunan Film Keliling Indonesia (Association of Indonesian Mobile Cinema)

Himpunan Mahasiswa Islam (Association of Islamic Students)

Himpunan Pengusaha Bioskop Indonesia (Indonesian Association of Movie Theatre Agents)

Hizbut Tahrir (Party of Liberation, an international Sunni pan-Islamist political party)

International Intellectual Property Alliance

Institut Kesenian Jakarta (Jakarta Art Institute) International Monetary Fund

Jakarta International Film Festival

Karyawan Film dan Televisi (Union of Film and Television Employees)

Karyawan Film Television — Asosiasi Sineas Indonesia (Film and Television Employees — Association of Indonesian Cineasts)

Komite Indonesia untuk Solidaritas Dunia Islam (Indonesian Committee for Solidarity in the Islamic World) kisah misteri (mystery tales)

korupsi, kolusi dan nepotisme (corruption, collusion and nepotism)

Komunitas Film Independen (Community of Independent Film)

viii

KP2N

LEKRA

LPI

LPPD

LSF mafin

MAPPI

MAV-Net

MFI

MMI

MPAA MPR

MUI

NU

P4

Parfi

Komite Peduli Perfilman Nasional (National Committee of Concern for the National Film Industry) Komisi Perlindungan Anak Indonesia (Indonesian Children Protection Commission)

Komisi Penyiaran Indonesia (Indonesian Broadcast Commission)

Komisi Pengawas Persaingan Usaha (Business Competition Supervisory Agency)

Konferensi Waligereja Indonesia (Indonesian Bishops’ Conference)

Laser Disc

Lembaga Kebudayaan Rakyat (Institute of People's Culture, the key cultural mass organization affiliated to PKI

Laskar Pembela Islam (Warriors of Defenders of Islam)

Lembaga Pengkajian dan Pengembangan Dakwah (Institute for the Study and Development of Dakwah)

Lembaga Sensor Film (Film Censor Institute) mahluk film independen (independent-film creature)

Laskar Masyarakat Anti Pembajakan dan Pornografi Indonesia (Indonesian Paramilitary Unit of People Against Piracy and Pornography)

Morality Audio Visual Network

Masyarakat Film Indonesia (Indonesian Film Society) Majelis Mujahiddin Indonesia (Indonesian Council of Defenders of the [Islamic] Faith)

Motion Picture Association of America

Majelis Permusyawaratan Rakyat (People’s Consultative Assembly)

Majelis Ulama Indonesia (Indonesian Council of

Muslim Scholars)

Nahdlatul Ulama (Revival/Awakening of Religious Scholars, 30-million-strong Muslim organization) Pedoman Penghayatan dan Pengamalan Pancasila (Directives for Instilling and Implementing Pancasila) Persatuan Artis Film Indonesia (Indonesian Film Artists’ Union)

PBR PDI Pelita Perbiki Perda

Perfiki

PFN PHDI PJKA PKI

PKS PPFI

PPFN PPHUI PPKI

PSA PSI

PSPB pungli PWI

QFF RCTI

RUU APP

Partai Bintang Reformasi (Star of Reformation Party)

Partai Demokrasi Indonesia (Indonesian Democratic Party)

Pembangunan Lima Tahun (Five Year Development Programmes of the state).

Persatuan Pengusaha Bioskop Keliling (Union of Operators of Mobile Movie Theatres)

peraturan daerah (regional regulations)

Persatuan Pengusaha Pertunjukan Film Keliling Indonesia (Association of Indonesian Mobile Cinema Screening Companies)

Perusahaan Film Negara (State Film Corporation) Parisada Hindu Dharma Indonesia (Hinduism Society) Perusahaan Jawatan Kereta Api (State Railway Company)

Partai Komunis Indonesia (Indonesian communist party),

Partai Keadilan Sejahtera (Prosperous Justice Party) Persatuan Perusahaan Film Indonesia (Indonesian Film Company Union)

Pusat Produksi Film Negara (Centre for State Film Production)

Pusat Perfilman Haji Usmar Ismail (Haji Usmar Ismail Film Centre)

Panitia Persiapan Kemerdekaan Indonesia (Preparatory Committee for Indonesian Independence) Public Service Announcement

Pesta Sinema Indonesia (Feast of Indonesian Cinema)

Pendidikan Sejarah Perjuangan Bangsa (Education in the History of the Struggle of the Nation) pungutan liar (unofficial contributions)

Persatuan Wartawan Indonesia (Association of Indonesian Journalists)

Queer Film Festival

Rajawali Citra Televisi Indonesia (Indonesian Hawk Image Television)

Rancangan Undang Undang Anti Pornografi dan Pornoaksi (Anti-Pornography and Porno Action Bill)

SARA SCTV sinetron

TPI

Trans TV

VCD suku (ethnic groups), agama (religion), ras (race), and antar-golongan (class)

Surya Citra Televisi (Sun Image Television)

sinema elektronik (soap)

Televisi Pendidikan Indonesia (Indonesian Education Television)

Transformation Television

Televisi Republik Indonesia (Indonesian Republic Television)

Universitas Muhammadiyah Malang (Muhammadiyah University in Malang)

United States Information Agency

Video Compact Disc

warung internet (internet stalls)

Yayasan Nasional Festival Film Indonesia (National Foundation of the Indonesian Film Festival) Yayasan Masyarakat Mandiri Film Indonesia (Independent Society of Indonesian Films)

xi

Preface

The research for this dissertation was carried out under the auspices of the Indonesian Mediations Project, part of the Indonesia in Transition programme (2001-2005), funded by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). I would like to thank the School of Asian, African, and Amerindian Studies (CNWS), and the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) for their financial support.

There are so many people both in my professional and in my personal life who have contributed to this book that the list is too long to mention them separately. I owe them my sincerest gratitude. In particular, I am indebted to all the persons in the Indonesian film scene, who supported me in so many ways. A special word of thanks goes out to the filmmakers for allowing me to use their work in the DVD that formed part of the thesis on which this book is based.

Introduction

The contemporary media shape identity: indeed many argue that they now exist close to the very core of identity production. In a transnational world typified by the global circulation of images, sounds, goods, and peoples, media spectatorship has a large impact on national identity, communal belonging, and political affiliations. By facilitating a mediated engagement with distant peoples, the media ‘deterritorialize’ the process of imagining communities. And while the media can destroy community and fashion solitude by turning spectators into atomized consumers or selfentertaining monads, they can also fashion community and alternative affiliations (Shohat 2003:74).

The audio-visual mediascape in post-Soeharto Indonesia is very dynamic; it is marked by a great variety in film formats, genres, and styles, and entrenched by a host of discussions and activities. All sorts of films can be found in cinemas, at cultural centres and in galleries, in cinema clubs at universities, and in other public or private places. Indonesian independent film productions, documentaries, auteur films, popular films, and gay and lesbian films are just some examples of what is on display. National television is also animated by numerous programmes, such as soaps, infotainment programmes, game shows, and reality shows. At first glance, many Indonesian films and television programmes make use of styles, genres, and formulas that are similar to those that can be found all over the world. Even so, all films and programmes which are produced, distributed, screened, or watched in Indonesia are part of a specific complex of discourses and mediation practices. This setting suggests particular ways of reading and understanding film texts. Consequently, notwithstanding the effects of globalization and transnational media flows, similar genres, styles, programmes, and formulas engage in representations and interpretations which tap into Indonesian imaginations of community and nation.

In Virtual geography, a book about the media coverage of the First Gulf War, McKenzie Wark wrote about a staged media appearance by Saddam Hussein. Filmed with Western people whom he had taken hostage, Hussein gently ruffles the hair of one of them, a little boy. Wark asserts that in doing so Saddam Hussein was making use of, and performing, a well-known and widely accepted Iraqi generic style: to give the impression of ‘the noble and respected elder’. In the West, however, that same image had a totally different affect as it tapped into other ‘confounded and most cherished beliefs about genres of television and the kinds of stories they legitimately tell us’. Viewers in the West, raised on “Orientalist media literacy, responded with disgust on seeing a vile Arab who harassed a little boy (Wark 1994:4). Wark comments on how people brought up in different cultural frames are geared to other ways of handling information, and have a repertoire of quite different stories with which to filter events. As he phrases it: ‘How could we claim to know what goes on at the other interzones, in quite other spaces where different flows from different vectors meet quite other memories and experiences of everyday life?’ (Wark 1994:19). In other words, how do we make an image of and imagine the other, and how do they make an image of and imagine themselves?

In any nation, the significance and possible interpretations of images and media texts are based on both discourses that circulate in society as well as mediation practices. In this book, I situate film as a social practice within the shifting political and cultural frames of the Indonesian nation.' Exploring historically emergent forms of representation and imagination of communities in the Indonesian audio-visual mediascape, I address the impact of discourses and film mediation practices on the production of collective identities and social realities. My account ranges from discussions on the ‘idealized Indonesian self in television discourses’ (Kitley 2000:12) and film (Sen 1994) under the New Order, to a topsy-turvy heated debate about the representation of the Indonesian nation and the daily lived reality of the people in film and on television in 2007.

‘Discourse’ is a prominent concept in this book. Along the lines of Norman Fairclough’s media discourse analysis, I use the term in a combination of two senses. I use it in the sense which is prevalent in language studies: “discourse as social action and interaction, people interacting together in real social situations’ (Fairclough 1995:16). In addition, I use the term in the sense in which it is prevalent in post-structuralist social theory, as propounded by Foucault: ‘a discourse as a social construction of reality, a form of knowledge’ (Fairclough 1995:16). Discourses appertain broadly to knowledge and knowledge construction. In a combination of these two senses, a dis-

1 Other authors who discuss film as a social practice include Friedberg 1993; Stacey 1994; Staiger 1992; Turner 1992; Wasko 1994; Willemen 1994.

course is the language used in representing a given social practice from a particular point of view. For instance, the social practice of politics is signified differently in liberal, socialist, and Marxist political discourses (Fairclough 1995:18, 56). In addition, film mediation practices are defined here as the practices of film production, distribution, exhibition, and consumption. The use of language studies or literary theories to analyse audio-visual media is not uncommon. Here I would like to mention two constructive studies in which the research of this book can be placed. The first is a more general study on film by Robert Stam, professor of cinema studies at New York University. Stam uses Mikhail Bakhtin’s literary theories drawing on key concepts associated with Bakhtin’s works such as dialogism, heteroglossia, the carnivalesque, and chronotope. Through these concepts, Stam (1989) presents a ‘translinguistic’ critique of Saussurean semiotics and Russian formalism. Furthermore, he addresses the question of language difference in cinema, analyses issues of national culture in Latin America, and considers ‘the carnivalesque’ in literature and film. The second commendable study of audio-visual media that uses a critical discourse analysis approach concentrates on Indonesian television: Klarijn Loven’s research (2008) on the popular television serial Si Doel.

There is no one-to-one meaning which clings onto media (McLuhan’s ‘the medium is the message’ (1995)); rather, different, culturally imbued practices, mechanisms, and politics lie at the base of all meaning. This is not to say that politics and mechanisms of mediation practices are the key to how a text is read, for it is up to the audience ‘to decide whether to read the image in terms of ‘our’ frame of reference, or in the frame of what we know about the other’ (Wark 1994:5), and there are many other ways of reading from which to choose. Prevailing discourses and film mediation practices disclose competing forms of representation and the imagination of specific identities, as well as the construction of social realities. In my account of the construction of social realities, I draw on the Foucauldian idea that each society has its own regime or general politics of truth. This refers to the types of discourse that a particular society harbours and causes to function as true: which facts, narratives, myths, or representations are acknowledged to function as true in a society. Rather than focusing on audience research, I concentrate on the broader mediation practices and discourses about films. This account will be interspersed with the opinions and comments of film-makers, journalists, academics, film fans, or other people who participate in the filmmaking process or who explicitly discuss the films or developments in the Indonesian mediascape that are analysed here.

Even though audience research has not been the main focus of my investigation as such, I can make a few general remarks based on my personal experiences watching films in Indonesian movie theatres, at various film festivals, and at the homes of Indonesian friends. For those not familiar with Indonesia it may be useful to mention that like other parts of Asia in the 1980s-1990s, Indonesia experienced a rapid process of industrialization and economic growth in the three decades of New Order rule. In a relatively short period various groups of people, among them bureaucrats, manufacturers, traders, and entrepreneurs, accumulated wealth and began to enjoy much higher levels of prosperity. The Asian economic boom led to the rise of an affluent middle class and the so-called New Rich, who engage in new lifestyles and new forms and patterns of consumption. Many of the affluent middle classes now live in residential estates, purchase international designer brands, eat out, and seek entertainment in luxurious shopping malls; depending on their level of wealth, they also travel around the world. The Asian New Rich, increasingly preoccupied with lifestyle and consumption, emerged, in the words of Michael Pinches, in contexts of ‘substantial material inequality and social tension’, whose characteristics ‘are changing rather than disappearing’ (Pinches 1999:7).

Generally speaking, Indonesian films are hardly, if ever, watched by my upper-middle-class and middle-class friends who are not part of the Indonesian film scene. They only watch transnational productions, mostly from the US but also art house movies from all over the world. Generally they watch films and transnational TV series at home on transnational cable networks such as HBO, Star Movies, Cinemax, E, and so on. Another option is pirated DVDs. If my friends watch a film in a movie theatre, it is because they want to have a nice night out, or the special effects of the film are deemed significant enough to watch them on the big screen. My film-maker and independent-film friends, who are mainly middle-class, watch both transnational and Indonesian film productions. The Indonesian films they watch are primarily the ones produced by their network of colleagues and friends. Mostly they watch these films at the premieres or at film festivals. Less often they watch Indonesian commercial films in movie theatres. Only if there is some sort of buzz about a commercial film they may want to see it. As a rule my film-maker friends ignore the Indonesian cliché horror, teenage, slapstick films. But if these films are so bad that it makes them excel in inferiority some film-makers will buy the pirated version of these films for fun. The people that I know who do watch commercial Indonesian films are lower-middle-class and lower-class audiences. Some of the staff of the shops I regularly visit, waiters in my favou-

Introduction rite restaurants, my construction worker friends, and hairdressers from beauty salons have told me they like to go to movie theatres to watch commercial Indonesian films. They also rent VCDs of Indonesian films or buy the pirated versions to watch them at home. The household staff in the houses of my friends mostly watch TV, in particular soaps and reality shows. They say they never go to a movie theatre, believing it not to represent value for money. Apart from these fragmented observations, in this book the audiences ‘just do it’: they watch, or do not watch, the films, and appreciate or dislike them, or both at the same time.?

Central discourses, such as those about the ethical values of a nation, resound in discourses on film and permeate the discourse practices and narrative practices of film texts, television programmes, and soaps. The term ‘discourse practice’ is a concept within Fairclough’s discourse analysis theory. Discourse analysis ‘is concerned with practices as well as texts, and with both discourse practices and sociocultural practices’. With discourse practice Fairclough (1995:16) means ‘the ways in which texts are produced by media workers in media institutions, and the ways in which texts are received by audiences [...], as well as how media texts are socially distributed’. Sociocultural practice refers to ‘the social and cultural goings-on which a communicative event is part of (Fairclough 1995:57). Thus discourse practice is media text production and consumption, and sociocultural practice is mass communication as a particular type of situation, the economics of media, the politics of the media, and the wider cultural context of communication in the mass media. Discourse practices and sociocultural practices intermix, since there are various levels of sociocultural practice that may constitute parts of the context of discourse practice (Fairclough 1995:57). Film discourse practices entail the merger of societies’ discourses with mediation practices. In discourse practices, discourses are put into practice in the production, distribution, and consumption of film texts; in other words, discourses materialize in film texts. An example of a discourse practice is the production of historical films and documentaries and their mode of distribution. In Chapter 3, I show that the production of these genres represents prevailing concepts of historiography and the nation-state, and that

2 Iuse the phrase ‘Just do it’ as it refers to a slogan in both the Indonesian and Malaysian independent-film scene. In Indonesia ‘Just-do-it-(yourself)’ was first used to encourage aspiring independent film-makers to start making their own films. Later, the phrase was used as the slogan to get beyond the complicated discussions that had emerged about independent film and its makers’ identity, legitimacy, and aspirations. For more about the Malaysian independent-film scene, see Khoo Gaik Cheng 2004.

their mode of distribution ties in with the endeavour to direct discourses on historiography.

Film narrative practices are a component of discursive practices; they relate to the form and content of film texts. Narrative practices are about stories and the way in which these are told in audiovisual media within the context of power relations. Power relations involve both the actual power of the state in controlling the mass media through censorship and broadcasting and press policies, and through the possession and control of private national and transnational media industries and institutions.' These elements coalesce to shape the form and content of domestic audio-visual products. Powerful as they may be, the state and public and private media industries and networks are not alone in shaping the form and content of film; audiences and pressure groups are also important in defining these. Audiences can decide if they want to watch a film or not, and even though rating polls have been criticized for their inaccuracy, they guide advertisers who in turn influence private media industries.* Furthermore, state censorship is not the only force delineating the margins of the form and content of media productions. Pressure and protests from audiences, mass organizations, or communities of conviction can lead to selfcensorship on the part of film-makers and even to the banning of films and television programmes. The form and content of audiovisual media, in conjunction with the questions of power, authority, and access to resources, impinge on what representations of the nation, communities, and social realities circulate in society. Social truths or realities are not stable, but are constantly defined and re-defined in competing discourses. Fairclough (1995:52) argues that ‘[c]hanges in society and culture manifest themselves in all their tentativeness, incompleteness and contradictory nature in the heterogeneous and shifting discursive practices of the media’. Particularly after the resignation of President Soeharto, the Indonesian mediascape has been marked by a wide range of discourses in which different communities compete for representations of the Indonesian nation and its social realities. Contemporary imagined community in Indonesia is pluralistic, diffuse, and not easily tied to place. It is formed around a range of social and cultural concerns, not simply political ones (Kitley 2002:211).

3 Abu-Lughod 1993; Croteau and Hoynes 1997; Dasgupta 2007; Harbord 2002; Hong 1998; Lull 1991; Shohat and Stam 1994, 2003.

4 Ien Ang (1991, 1992), among others, has argued that the rating institutions do not really measure the ‘audience’, but rather create and manage an image of it to bind advertisers. For more on the corporate practice of ‘audience measurement’ and its pitfalls, see Ang 1991, 1992.

Benedict Anderson's idea (1983) of imagined communities, a phrase he coined to draw attention to the imagined rather than experienced character of communities, is one of the key concepts in my research. Anderson showed how new media technologies contributed to the formation of nations by enabling imaginations of the nation as a sovereign and territorially bounded community. He argued that with the rise of print media, the wide circulation of newspapers and novels written in national languages induced readers to imagine themselves as being part of a vast community, one not based merely on face-to-face encounters between its members. Whilst the imagination of communities can be connected to consumption of media technologies and discourses, Anderson's notion of imagined communities has been criticized. As Philip Kitley (2002:211) has argued, the totalizing, unifying ideas suggested by Anderson were an intrinsic part of post-colonial national communities, and are no longer applicable to contemporary imagined communities. These are far more pluralistic and diffuse, and often transcend the boundaries of the nation. Several others have also criticized Anderson's theory. Griticisms leveled at Anderson include that he fortuitously strengthens a Eurocentric argumentation while de-legitimizing Third World nationalisms as Western constructs (Desai 2009). Some condemn his shortfall in addressing wider connections and a central dynamic between particular aspects of nationalism, in particular with regard to the spread of capitalism (Davidson 2007) and globalization (Hamilton 2006). Others point to the ‘missing analysis’ of why some national myths are successful while others are not (Haesly 2005). For a critical assessment of various individual points of critique on Anderson’s theory, see Ozkirimli (2000).

In the last decade scholars have questioned the capacity of the nation-state in the post-colonial world to bind its citizens in the same way as this was achieved in Western history. In film and cultural studies, the crisis of the nation-state, which is central to current debates as well as to actual power struggles, led to a shift in focus towards transnational formations. Extensive circulation of transnational mass media and a growing access to these media through new technologies have led to an expansion of constructions of new shared worlds, and in imaginations of distinct communities of sentiments, which are no longer confined by national borders. In this context, the nation-state and national identity are no longer recognized as the privileged

5 Meyer 2000. See also Bayart 1993; Chabal 1996; Mbembe 1992; Taussig 1997; Van der Veer 1994; Werbner 1996. 6 Appadurai 1996; Garnham 1993; Gillwald 1993; Shohat 2003; Sen 2003.

space and form for the imagination of communities.” Nevertheless, notwithstanding a globalizing world, the state is still important in shaping political realities (Baumann 1996; Duara 1999, 2008; Shami 1999). Moreover, the state can be important in defining the shape of cinema. As Wimal Dissanayake has argued, cinema in Asian countries was closely allied to the nation-state for the simple reasons of economics and exercise of content control. In Asian cinemas, assistance from and co-ordination by the government was imperative as film corporations, script boards, training institutes, and censorship panels in Asia were mostly supported or supervised by the state (Dissanayake 1994:xiv). Krishna Sen (2003:147) emphasized this point in relation to Indonesian cinema:

Ata time when the border zones of the Indonesian nation are being violently tested by ethnic, religious and regional differences, when in fact it has contracted in relinquishing the world’s newest nation, East Timor, it may be foolhardy to speak at all of something called Indonesian cinema. But the institutional organization of films produced and consumed in Indonesia is such that it is impossible to discuss these except as ‘national cinema’.

Now the tide has turned and in the past decade, it would be hard to speak of a ‘national cinema’ — not only in the context of Indonesia, but possibly also with reference to other Southeast Asian countries that have experienced similar developments in their access to new media technologies. In Indonesia, particularly after the stepping down of President Soeharto, several changes have occurred in the constitution of power relations and the discourses which define Indonesian cinema. The resignation of Soeharto on 21 May 1998 marked the commencement of the era of Reformation (Reformasi). The slogan Reformasi — reform of Indonesian politics, economy, and legislation — reigned supreme.

Before Soeharto decided on the wisdom of retirement, Reformasi in politics had meant the demand for a new president, free general elections, the freedom to found political parties, and the annulment of five political acts from 1985 which lay at the core of the deficiencies in the formal political system. Economically, those in favour of Reformasi demanded an end to crony-capitalism, monopolies and cartels,

7 See Birgit Meyer’s research project ‘Modern mass media, religion and the imagination of communities; Different postcolonial trajectories in West Africa, Brazil, and India’ (2000-2006). This project investigated the shift from the nation-state as the privileged space for the imagination of identity to the genesis of new publics in a pluralist public sphere in which the role and place of the state is called into question, and in which religion often plays a crucial role.

and the dominant role of the big conglomerates. Supporters of Reformasi also called for a strong legislative power, a bureaucracy and judicial power which were not at the beck and call of the ruling elite, and an end to corruption, collusion, and nepotism (korupsi, kolusi and nepotisme, KKN) (Van Dijk 2001:114-5). After the fall of Soeharto, the bid to introduce reform affected every possible field and led to a negotiating and redefining of all kinds of issues.®

Besides being stirred by the euphoric atmosphere of Reform, which induced a new-found freedom of expression as opposed to the hegemonic narratives of the nation-state, an important part of the changes in Indonesian film mediation practices and discourses can be traced to the circulation of new audio-visual media. Many new activities and developments in Southeast Asian cinemas were made possible by the growing and widespread availability of such new technologies for film production and exhibition as digital video cameras, computer editing programmes, and digital video projectors. Digital video, for instance, presented ‘the ability to construct and transform meanings and practices’ (Ukadike 2003:128), which challenged the dominant cinematic practices and film culture. Both Indonesian film-maker Garin Nugroho and filmmaker and academic Gotot Prakosa asserted that because of the new video technologies virtually everyone in Indonesia was given access to audio-visual media. In their opinion, the advance of new technologies has definitely shaped democratization processes in film production and creativity in Indonesian cinema.’ It must be noted, however, that while the availability and relatively low costs of new media technologies indeed have broadened the access and possibilities to produce films, a majority of Indonesians still cannot afford to purchase a computer and broadband internet or to buy a video camera. The ‘democratization’ process is mainly within the reach of the New Rich and middle classes. Internet and movie cameras are not restricted to the richest of middle classes. Many members of the middle class own computers, laptops, and smartphones. Moreover, if you cannot afford a computer there are lots of warnet (warung internet, internet stalls) where you can rent a computer for around Rp 4,000 per hour to surf the internet. However, the further away one goes from the capital and city centres, the slower the connection will be. The same goes for video cameras. A rich