ARKIPEL Catch-22 – 9th Jakarta International Documentary and Experimental 2022, reflecting on the experiments at ARKIPEL Twilight Zone (previous edition) and regular screenings at Bioskopforlen, was held in a simple and intimate setting at Bioskopforlen, in the headquarters of Forum Lenteng. With the theme Catch-22, which departs from the escalation of the Eastern European conflict and the post-pandemic crisis, ARKIPEL Catch-22 seeks to explore the spectrum underlying the conflict and dismantle the structures that allow its escalation. The series of ARKIPEL activities began with the opening ceremony of the festival on 25 November 2022 at the Forum Lenteng headquarters on Jalan H. Shibi and the screening of the four opening films from the International Competition program followed by a conversation at the festival rooftop lounge on the 3rd floor of Forum Lenteng. This year ARKIPEL received 728 film titles from 76 countries. A total of 20 films qualified for the International Competition. Two of them are from Indonesia, Mayday! May day! Mayday! (2022) by Yonri Revolt and Sedap Malam (Agave Amica) (2022) by Gembong Nusantara. Overall, this year’s festival screened 39 films consisting of International Competition, Candrawala, Special Presentation, and Special Screening programs. In Special Presentations, ARKIPEL collaborates with curators from contemporary art institutions and international film events, ranging from Abhishek Nilamber and Laura Kloeckner (SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin), and Ding Dawei (Beijing International Short Film Festival). This year, Candrawala, ARKIPEL’s reading program on Indonesian film trends today is curated by I Gde Mika. ARKIPEL also presents Shalahuddin Siregar’s film Pesantren in a Special Presentation. This year’s special screening presents the film Segudang Wajah Para Penantang Depan (2022) by Yuki Aditya and I Gde Mika. As ARKIPEL intended to continue providing a critical space for the public and map the development of contemporary cinema, the Forum Festival, which was divided into two panels, was held at Bioskopforlen. The Forum Festival invited five panelists from various backgrounds to discuss “Catch-22” as the theme of this year’s ARKIPEL. The first panel was titled “Catch-22 in Southern Modernism”, which invited Risa Permanadeli, an academic, writer, and Director of the Center for the Study of Social Representation and JJ Rizal, historian, writer, and founder of Komunitas Bambu publishing house, as panelists. Focusing on the scope of Indonesian Modernism and Asia, a region that is considered to offer a different color from the dominant discourse of Western Modernism, the first panel is expected to present a visionary exposure in providing a counter discourse to the Catch-22 logic accompanying modernism in Indonesia. The second panel of the Festival Forum titled “Cultural Production Networks and Artistic Strategies of North-South Cinema”, invited Akbar Yumni, writer, artist, film critic, and Abhishek Nilamber & Laura Kloeckner, writer and curator, artistic producers at Savvy Contemporary-Berlin as panelists. Focusing on North-South geopolitical relations, this panel aims to dissect the work of networks in offering artistic strategies that in recent decades have become increasingly cross-medium and cross-disciplinary. An offer that reflects on the dilemmas, rationalizations and impacts of human decisions in the midst of conflict, with an awareness of the technological development of the medium of cinema. On December 4, 2022 at the Awards Night, Yonri Revolt’s Mayday! May Day! Mayday! (2022) received the Peransi Award. By The Throat (2021) by Belgium’s Effi & Amir received the Jury Award. This year the jury decided to give Special Mention to Broca’s Aphasia (2022) by Ming Yen-Su from Taiwan. The ARKIPEL Award as the highest honor was received by Di Hu’s The Efficiency Exhibition (2022) from Ireland. The five judges who selected the films for the three awards were Yuki Aditya, Manshur Zikri, Shalahuddin Siregar, Risa Permanadeli and Ding Dawei. This year’s Forum Lenteng Award was presented to Nicole Hewitt’s Croatian film Women Minor Speculations (2021). The ARKIPEL Catch-22 Awards Night – 9th Jakarta International Documentary and Experimental 2022 was closed by a performance titled Turbulensi Bunyi, a collaboration between two sound artists Aldo Ahmad (West Sumatra) and Sabrina Eka Felisiana (Samarinda, East Kalimantan). Year Jakarta, Indonesia
2022
ARKIPEL Catch-22 – 9th Jakarta International Documentary and Experimental Film Festival 2022
