What is the background of this festival?
The idea of this festival starts from our analysis on previous festivals. Technically, we perceive a widening gap between starters—in this case students—and the established short-filmmakers. Figuratively speaking, these students are yet to pass to the next grade. While at the same time the pros are getting more advanced. There is agony within us, and also among friends, regarding this void of fresh names emerging from short film festivals. It becomes a major question to us. Where are the new seeds? Why is there no punching work any longer, with fresh perspective?
We used to believe a work is a work. It’s indivisible. What differentiates the pros from the amateurs is their working process. But, looking back to the past three years, it seems that we need to provide a playground and competition, designated specifically for students.
Why Tawuran?
We planned on naming it Hura-Hura (to party, to have fun) since it truly reflects high school life which is full of fun and carefree. Once rediscussed with the board of program, there was an idea from Andang Kelana (a member of the board) to switch to a more aggressive name. The name tawuran came upon that idea. We try to adhere positive meaning to the word. The philosophy being is to mob-fight does not necessarily mean to march the street and strike on a clash. If one should involve oneself in a fight, why not try with a video. To compete in creation.
In Jakarta, Konfiden arranges workshops for students. What are the obstacles?
This competition has a lot of weaknesses and is full of evaluations. To us, it’s a learning process. We think workshops are important to stimulate students to create. We thought about raising new generations free to create. On that ground, we try to provide various mentors to have more varying results as well. Names such as Dinda Junanda, Otty Widasari, Athpal Paturusi, Mirza Jaka Suryana, among many other, are there to give different perspectives. The board of program as well. We pick out youths yet leaders of the pack. The mentors are also varying. We realize these high school students need to know about structure. So we choose popular names who, at the same time, possess good knowledge on structure. For workshops, we feature the likes of Joko Anwar, Edwin, Ifa Isfansyah. This variety ultimately brings more fun in the process.
Anything unique during the workshop?
On the third week, we were approached by a teacher, he teaches audio visual in the school. Being there, he caused quite a hassle due to the unnecessary interruptions he made during the workshop. He has this rather different view from us regarding film. He thinks film has to be morally correct, while on the other hand we encourage students to free their minds in expressing ideas. We are there merely to help them turning the ideas into films. We are their playground, to see how they progress later in the future. But other than this incident, overall it went well.
Did their basic audio visual knowledge taught in school help?
It did, their logic in grasping things is faster. But the workshop process still dominated, though, and basically because they’re young, they’re very absorbent. We let them talk and articulate their ideas, which were unthought of to us. And we merely provided a playground for them to create. I personally think their works are quite strong. They may be unfamiliar because we are not accustomed to their world. But we were also astonished to see their works. We can see this in a work entitled 2 (Satrio Ramadhan and Khariz of Madania High School, Jakarta). It confounded us, the fact that they made use of the game The Sims. We never thought of that at all because we are not very familiar with the game. They record such current prevalence. We can also look at the work Facebooked (Siti Nurul Azizah, Sevia, and Deden Ramadani of 34 State High School, Jakarta). To their generation, facebook is real life while we only think of it as social networking. Then, there’s also Sigi (Efi Sri Handayani of 6 State High School, Jakarta), with a very wild storyline. It tries to picture the mind an extremely bored student, feeling terribly ostracized, that she even thinks of killing someone.
What is expected from this festival?
Probably, the most important thing now, is to introduce the language of video to common people. It’s a challenge for all of us. We have to realize that the now generation watches TV since the day they were born. They are familiar with video and film, they just don’t recognize them as channels to creation yet. If we can maintain a steady network with institutions and organizations, I believe the language of video will eventually be more familiar. I should hope for more incredible works coming from Indonesian youth.
Photos: Konfiden
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1 In Indonesian, the word specifically refers to violent mob-fight, usually and especially between students of different schools.
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