Festival Director’s Note

Yuki Aditya

This year is supposed to be ARKIPEL’s 10th festival, but the COVID-19 pandemic forced us to minimalize the events of last year’s festival. In 2020, we only held Forum Festival, our public symposium with a theme which attempted to respond the situation of last year, whether through topics directly related to cinema or everyday life. To be honest, there are many things we miss from organizing offline festivals, because in addition to finding and watching films that enrich our minds, festivals are also meant to bring people together to share their insights with each other.

For ARKIPEL’s 9th festival, we decided to hold it online, hoping to meet again soon in our original format, face to face. Considering last year’s Forum Festival ARKIPEL which was held online, there were several challenges and opportunity for ARKIPEL itself. One of them is recruiting the participants spread in wider range of areas than our usual offline festival, and how we must maintain these

networks and relationships in the future.

We can imagine that last year’s Forum Festival participants’ interests can be associated with their interest towards the panelists or the topic of discussion. I hope this interest will be as great as our enthusiasm in organizing this festival film in a new format, which is to always find new ways of communicating through the medium of film and its discourse. In fact, we can feel the potential of cinema when there is a freedom to express ourselves and to form an audience who are not only conditioned to be entertained, but to be stimulated and aware of the sociocultural issues around us.

ARKIPEL was first held on 2013 by the framework that we ourselves, the members of Forum Lenteng as organizers, want to present films that are intended to be more than entertainment, but also to place them as mediums for experimenting in the act of learning through cinema: learning to see, to read, write, and organize anything related to cinema through film festivals.

Our current theme, Twilight Zone, agrees with what we have done throughout the past eight ARKIPEL festivals, namely the question of an in-between space which enjoins language and artistic presentation, which opens our eyes and minds towards sensitivity and imagination.

Hopefully, we can experience both things together during ARKIPEL Twilight Zone – 9th Jakarta International Documentary and Experimental Film Festival, from November 26 to December 19, 2021, through a number of programs such as Forum Festival, Kultursinema’s Harimau Tjampa book release, International Competition, Curatorial Program, and Candrawala program.

ARKIPEL would like to thank our partners for the long-standing support and collaboration; both those who have worked with us since the beginning, and the relationships that have only been realized this year, such as supports from cultural institutions from friendly countries and private institutions, which have always been facilitating Forum Lenteng and encourage the realization of various creative ideas related to film, especially the ARKIPEL festival.

Many thanks to our festival partners, community partners, artists, audiences, and last but not least, all Forum Lenteng members who have worked hard to create ARKIPEL Twilight Zone, as well as to the volunteers who are ready to work this November and December. We always welcome your input, ideas, and suggestion.

See you at the festival!

Jakarta, October 10, 2021