re:assemblage collective

THE MYRIAD OF FACES OF THE FUTURE CHALLENGERS / SEGUDANG WAJAH PARA PENANTANG MASA DEPAN

Directed by I Gde Mika & Yuki Aditya
Indonesia · 2022 · 91'00

During the leadership of President Soeharto (1966-1998) under the New Order government, Indonesian Cinema brought forth important names that are still being discussed now. It was a period in which censorship operated firmly toward regulating and maintaining national narratives that may or may not appear on the screen. This was an era when the opposition could only be represented through the perspectives of the New Order regime itself, to propagate a latent danger – namely, a spectral enemy. However, can cinema represent the faith of its own era? Can cinema speak about what should not be expressed or has not been expressed? Mostly the preordination of these films spread wildly in cyberspace, travelled through one duplicate to another. This film is about examination of such propaganda and at the same time offering new contexts and interpretations in these films whose qualities are now increasingly blurry and faded, affected by the algorithm of inter-device migration, in which their condition and impact continues to be degraded by the times and ultimately increasingly difficult to trace.

“This essay film starts from a question of how the society of a nation lived under one of the longest leadership regimes in modern history. A regime that consciously used cinema as one of the instruments to preserve its power through narrative patterns and rules that were closely held tight. We use essay as an approach to distort the dominant perspective in New Order cinema for speculating new contexts and interpretations…This essay as an alternative reading the history of the New Order regime. Most of the conditions of the films that we discuss in this essay have spread wildly in cyberspace circulating between copies and preserved by anonymous hands, netizens (internet citizens) whose political roles as spectators and at same time as distributors to bringing together the films with other spectators. The watermark is not only as an interruption of the audience’s perception but also to the interpretation itself. Free from material restraints due to material deviations. This is a reaction as well as a logical consequence toward limited accessibility of film material and archiving institutions. Interpreting is an act of citizen participation.” (I Gde Mika & Yuki Aditya)

I Gde Mika (Mataram, 6 desember 1999) is a cultural worker currently studying at the Jakarta Arts Institute (IKJ) majoring cinema studies. He is a member of Forum Lenteng and a participant of the Milisifilem Collective. Actively in collaboration in making films with friends as a cameraman in the film DOLO (2020) directed by Hafiz Rancajale, as realisator with Yuki Aditya in the film THE HYPOTHESIS OF WANDERING IMAGES OF JAKARTA (2021) and THE MYRIAD OF FACES OF FUTURE CHALLENGERS (2022).

Yuki Aditya (b. 1980, Jakarta) graduated from University of Indonesia majoring in Fiscal Administration. He once worked as a Tax Auditor at a Public Accountant in Jakarta. He is now the Festival Director of ARKIPEL International Documentary and Experimental Film Festival since 2013, and also acting as producer of films produced by Forum Lenteng; GOLDEN MEMORIES: PETITE HISTOIRE OF INDONESIAN CINEMA (2018), OM PIUS…THIS IS MY HOME COME THE SLEEPING (2019), DOLO (2021). Along with I Gde Mika as realisator in the films THE HYPOTHESIS OF WANDERING IMAGES OF JAKARTA (2021) and THE MYRIAD OF FACES OF FUTURE CHALLENGERS (2022).