ARKIPEL International Documentary and Experimental Film Festival initiated by Forum Lenteng and has been held in Jakarta, Indonesia since 2013. The festival’s name is derived from “archipelago” and it aims to explore and understand global phenomena within social, political, economic, and cultural contexts through cinema. It screens documentary and experimental films from around the world, fostering an exploration of the cinematic language and the complexities of global society.

Curator’s Notes

Dance was the one that linked Sardono with film. As a dancer, he uses film in his journey to learn various cultures in different locations, especially in Indonesia. Initially, he intended the recording as a kind of diary, not to be showcased to the public. For him, seeing through the viewfinder is a way to practice his visual sensitivity, inseparable from the effort to train the six senses he needs as a dancer and choreographer: hearing, sight, touch, taste, and smell also the strength of soul in certain sacred dance traditions. Rather than speciality and productivity, he believes that art should be approached with the mode of training sensibility towards complexity. He criticized the 19th-century modernity approach that encouraged specialization solely in pursuit of productivity that came to “cul-de-sac”—and therefore it was detached from everyday reality. Only through sensitivity training can artists understand the complexity of life and its problems. That is why the recording of the dances performances in Sardono’s frame does not become a static moving image document, but it is through direct cutting of the events before him that these dances become dynamic, poetic. Sardono’s films also become a kind of autobiography of himself, his perspective, feelings, and thoughts.

TAIFUN

Director : Sardono Waluyo KUSOMO

Indonesia / 1970 / 7’37

KECAK RINA

Director : Sardono Waluyo KUSOMO

Indonesia / 1972 / 16’05

DONGENG DARI DIRAH

Directors : Robert CHAPPEL / Sardono Waluyo KUSOMO 

Indonesia / USA / 1992 / 40’10

*With post-screening/performance sharing session