---- YOU WILL BE INFORMED . . On The Killing . . !!

Kolom IBRAHIM ISA 

Monday, 15 July, 2013

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---- YOU WILL BE INFORMED . . On The Killing . . !!

---- “The Film Maker Oppenheimer: I’ve managed to create something that is effecting real positive change in the country.”

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Joshua Oppenheimer, reminded me, of his interview with Greg Spring, on the documentary film “The Act of Killing”. A documentary, in which the murderers themselves acted as “superstars” in the film, ---- Showing proudly how they killed, in North Sumatra, Indonesia, --- thousands upon thousands of innocent people, clearing thereby the way for THE NEW ORDER regime of General Suharto (1965/'66/'67).

You will be informed of the attrocities committed by gangsters, in coordination with the military and some others in collaboration with the army under General Suharto.

Greg Spring: --- “Not only have they avoided punishment, but some have retained influential positions within Indonesian politics and public life. This was helped in part by Cold War politics, as the subsequent media coverage in the West reported the genocide as a victory against Communism. And whilst wider Indonesian society knows what really happened, crippled by fear, it remains quiet.”

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In the latter part of his interview, Joshua Oppenheimer, underlined that:

“The film has transformed how the country is talking about these events. They still ban film screenings in Indonesia, which makes it a crime to do so. That’s then an excuse for the military to attack screenings with total impunity. So to avoid that we arranged special screenings at the National Human Rights Commission in Jakarta, for Indonesia’s leading journalists, film producers, publishers, writers, historians and so on. Everybody loved the film, and they felt that they needed to do something with it.

The editors of Indonesia’s largest publication felt the need to break their silence, as up until now, they were very much part of this rotten system. And I think seeing how broken Anwar was, they felt the need to speak out. I guess they didn’t want to grow old as perpetrators of these crimes. So they came forward with their own accounts of what happened at the time.

They also went out in to country and picked up countless testimonies of those that killed, and produced a double edition of Tempo magazine, which was essentially an Act of Killing edition. So it’s set the tone, and the press now openly investigate and report these crimes, which just wasn’t happening before. We also arranged fifty or more private screenings throughout the country on the 10th Dec, which is Human Rights Day. Now, I really wouldn’t have any idea how many screenings have taken place, but it’s a lot.

That is the most satisfying thing about finishing this picture after so many years. I’ve managed to create something that is effecting real positive change in the country. The most disappointing thing is that I can’t be there to experience it all and take part. This is my love letter to Indonesia.

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The Act Of Killing – An Interview with Joshua Oppenheimer

Posted on July 10, 2013 by Greg Spring
Joshua Oppenheimer’s brave and inspired documentary The Act of Killing, focuses on a brutal period in Indonesia’s history during the mid 1960’s. Following a failed military coup, roaming gangs along with the military were guilty of killing between 500,000 and 2 million people that they believed to be Communist sympathisers. A morbid figure not just for its sheer volume, but also its ambiguity.
Oppenheimer sets out to expose the impunity that the perpetrators of these horrific crimes still receive to this day. Not only have they avoided punishment, but some have retained influential positions within Indonesian politics and public life. This was helped in part by Cold War politics, as the subsequent media coverage in the West reported the genocide as a victory against Communism. And whilst wider Indonesian society knows what really happened, crippled by fear, it remains quiet.
The Act of Killing serves as a political expose, but is elevated to something truly unique when we meet Anwar Congo, a gangster turned paramilitary leader. Anwar was personally responsible for the murder of over 1,000 people, and countless others were brutally killed on his order. He freely admits that as a young man he killed for pleasure, but the Anwar we see in this film is deeply conflicted and haunted, attempting to keep the demons at bay with a mixture of denial, ecstasy, marijuana and alcohol.
As we venture in to the deepest recesses of Anwar’s soul, the film becomes a surreal meditation of the human condition. Prompted by the collective openness of the perpetrators, Oppenheimer offers Anwar and his friends the opportunity to make a movie about the crimes that they committed, shooting each scene in a style of their choosing. It is a chilling insight in to the minds of those responsible, and how they have both coped with and justified their brutal actions. The line between reality and fiction rarely reveals itself throughout.
The result is something profound beyond words. It exposes on many levels, and leaves us with a number of uncomfortable questions about the Cold War, media collusion, impunity, and unimaginable human cruelty. And artistically, this film will change how we think about the documentary form. It will be a yard stick for originality in the years to come. Quite simply, you just have to make time to see this picture.
Director Joshua Oppenheimer talks to Greg Spring about making the film, his own experiences with Anwar and working with two documentarian heavyweights in Errol Morris and Werner Herzog.



GREG SPRING: Can you tell me what drew you to Indonesia, and that period in the country’s history?
JOSHUA OPPENHEIMER: It was quite random how my association with Indonesia began. I was asked to make The Globalisation Tapes, which was a film about plantation workers struggling to organise a union. Unions were illegal at the time, which certainly wasn’t an Indonesian phenomenon. So I could have been sent anywhere, India, Bangladesh or Columbia. But I was sent to a place just outside of Medan, where I ended up filming The Act of Killing.
GS: At what point did you become aware of the genocide that had occurred there?
JO: While we were filming the Globalisation Tapes, we found that the government had been spraying a herbicide that was killing the workers. Naturally they wanted to organise a union to stop the use of the herbicide. We found that their biggest obstacle was fear, because their parents and grandparents had been in a union until 1965 and were accused of being Communists and subsequently murdered. They were concerned that history was going to repeat itself. So that’s where I first became aware of this presence of fear. The situation felt extraordinary, but in another sense it isn’t all that unusual. Those in power at the time have retained power, and used fear to rule. That fear means they can be exploited and that is part of the reason that everything we in the West buy is so cheap. I think that the reality that you see in The Act of Killing isn’t some distant far off reality; it’s the underbelly of our own reality. That’s what makes this personal for all of us. Whether we like it or not, we rely on men like Anwar for our everyday living. A certain part of our existence relies on the suffering off others, and that damages us. And there was a connection for me too. My own family had narrowly escaped the holocaust, and it sort of felt to me that I was now in a place where the Nazis had won. I felt that I needed to give it whatever it took to tell this story.
GS: And you went back to Indonesia in 2003 to began work on the film? At what point did you encounter Anwar?
JO: That’s right, the film has been seven years in the making. We went back in 2003, and then in 2004 we started filming with the perpetrators of the genocide. It was here where I first encountered their boasting. They were only too happy to recount the story as they saw it. I then met Anwar in 2005, and once I started filming him and his people, they offered to take me to the places where they had murdered people, where they would launch in to this spontaneous demonstration of what they did. This pride again is extraordinary and it isn’t. The atrocities at the time were largely reported by the media, both home and abroad, as a victory against Communism. They reported it as good news, so these people still feel they have nothing to be ashamed of. They insist to themselves and to others that what happened wasn’t wrong, which they know isn’t the case. But to admit it to themselves would mean they would have to look in the mirror and see a murderer.
GS: What was Anwar’s understanding of your intentions when making this film?
JO: When I met Anwar my pitch was very straight forward. I said to him that he was a part of one of the biggest mass killings in history, your life has been shaped by it, and I asked, “Do you want to show me what you’ve done?” I will film the process and put it together in a new form of documentary. A documentary of the mind.
GS: So Anwar was aware of the film’s direction from the start?
JO: Absolutely. He watched each scene back as we progressed with filming, and he also saw the finished film. He was very moved. Anwar doesn’t feel betrayed. He feels it shows what it is like to be him, and that it was honest. Adi (Adi Zulkadry, a peer of Anwar’s, who was involved in the killings in much the same way as Anwar was but seems to lack the same remorse that Anwar now carries) kept saying that we were making them look bad, and that we shouldn’t be making the film. But Anwar continues and presses on, because he is trying to deal with his pain. He knows that the agenda wasn’t to make him look heroic. And the method and form of the film wasn’t to get him to open up, it was a direct response to his openness. It was in a sense a way of trying to understanding why they were so open. What I didn’t anticipate was the surreal dramatisations. They came about due to Anwars love of movies. And watching Anwar watch each scene back was quite incredible. He was often unhappy with what he was seeing on screen, so he would insist on a new location, new costumes or a new hair do. He wasn’t unhappy with the scene, he was unhappy with facing down what he had done. He’d never had to see it like this before, and that troubled him deeply.
GS: It appeared that there was a genuine closeness and trust between you both. The relationship must have been conflicting for you?
JO: It was conflicting; in the sense that I could never forget the crimes that he and his friends committed. But at the same time I demanded of myself that I always see him as a human being that was capable of love and being loved. That is inherently conflicting. And when I became close with Anwar, the horrendous things he would tell me were horrifying in a different way for me.
GS: All these things Anwar is telling you, the apparent guilt he felt, how did that effect the direction of the movie?
JO: The motor for the whole film became Anwar’s conscience. And because his conscience is the motor and the drive behind each scene, the film then becomes this dark mirror through which he finally realises what he really did. And it wasn’t the point at which he says “I finally feel what my victims felt”, I felt that was a dishonest moment and I told him as much. The truest moment is the scene in the movie where Anwar plays the victim. That was when he saw the unbridgeable abyss between his version of events, and the unspeakable horror he put people through. And that’s what makes the film right? Film is not good at words, it’s good at subtext and emotion and doubt. This a film where the characters hardly ever believe a word they are saying. For me, great films often occur when the film maker doesn’t know what is about to happen. For me if you can envisage the whole picture before you make it, it’s a little dead on arrival.
GS: There is a point in the film where we see members of Pancasila Youth extorting money from Chinese shop keepers. It was intensely uncomfortable to watch, but for you to be there must have been difficult? I was really aware of you, and what it must have been like to be there.
JO: There are three points in the film that raise these ethical questions. Shortly before this encounter, we were at a production meeting where I said that I didn’t think we should film this because we will be seen at the gangster’s personal TV crew. But my Indonesian crew told me that we absolutely had to film it. That we had a responsibility to do so as it happens every day. So, what happened after we filmed each interaction, I told the crew to go on ahead and that I would get a release form signed. What I was really doing was telling the shop keepers why we were there, and paying them back too. We visited over fifty shops that day, so it cost us a lot of money. Perhaps I shouldn’t have, because it could have put us in danger. But I felt that I should. I’m not a film maker that will stop at nothing to get what I want, even though it appears that this film went in to areas that perhaps haven’t been explored before.
GS: It didn’t strike me that you set out to make an overtly political film, but nonetheless, The Act of Killing shines a light on a rather grim political culture that still exists. Would you feel comfortable going back to Indonesia since the film’s release?
JO: The high ranking politicians in Indonesia may well feel betrayed, and if they didn’t feel betrayed then I haven’t done my job properly. So whilst I think I could get in to Indonesia, I probably wouldn’t be able to get out. But I’d correct one thing. I did set out to make a political film. I wasn’t trying to bring a man to recognise the severity of his crimes. That just came about and happened to be the mechanism that revealed the horror most fully and perfectly. But I intended to work in collaboration with survivors and to highlight a regime of impunity. Anwar’s conscience was a sort of necessary accident. Like so much in non fiction film. That’s the reason I’m a film maker. It gives you a chance to explore the world and stumble across the unexpected. But what I intended on making was a political film.
GS: Can you tell me a little about working with both Errol Morris and Werner Herzog. At what point did they get involved?
JO: Both Werner and Errol have been really wonderful and caring. They both put tremendous energy in trying to put the word out to say that this is an important work of art, and not just a political film. Werner came on board in 2011 after he saw the director’s cut of the film. I remember he said to me that I shouldn’t cut the film down. I said we had to, that we had promised broadcasters the 90 minute version. He still prefers the longer version though, as do we all. Errol came on board earlier than that, in 2010, on the basis of some early sequences of the film. He was really captivated by the project, and he helped us raise the last bit of finance for the film. He has been an energetic force since coming on board. But they compliment each other so well. There are different things they most love about it. Werner really appreciates the surrealism of it all, where as Errol is more taken by the tricky philosophical question posed by the film. You know, what is in our nature.
GS: Open discourse about the atrocities has been sorely lacking in Indonesia up until now. Have you heard how the film is adding to that conversation since it’s release?
JO: The film has transformed how the country is talking about these events. They still ban film screenings in Indonesia, which makes it a crime to do so. That’s then an excuse for the military to attack screenings with total impunity. So to avoid that we arranged special screenings at the National Human Rights Commission in Jakarta, for Indonesia’s leading journalists, film producers, publishers, writers, historians and so on. Everybody loved the film, and they felt that they needed to do something with it. The editors of Indonesia’s largest publication felt the need to break their silence, as up until now, they were very much part of this rotten system. And I think seeing how broken Anwar was, they felt the need to speak out. I guess they didn’t want to grow old as perpetrators of these crimes. So they came forward with their own accounts of what happened at the time. They also went out in to country and picked up countless testimonies of those that killed, and produced a double edition of Tempo magazine, which was essentially an Act of Killing edition. So it’s set the tone, and the press now openly investigate and report these crimes, which just wasn’t happening before. We also arranged fifty or more private screenings throughout the country on the 10th Dec, which is Human Rights Day. Now, I really wouldn’t have any idea how many screenings have taken place, but it’s a lot.
That is the most satisfying thing about finishing this picture after so many years. I’ve managed to create something that is effecting real positive change in the country. The most disappointing thing is that I can’t be there to experience it all and take part. This is my love letter to Indonesia.



The Act of Killing is screening in selected cinemas now. Details can be found at theactofkilling.co.uk



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