Since 25 July 2019, Mahardika Yudha has been a participant in Seniman Mengajar 2019. He conducted a small research on the development of local commercial fiction films in West Kalimantan, especially in Pontianak, Singkawang, Bengkayang, and Sambas for 43 days. Kinematek Singkawang tries to collect, to record and to see the archives, documentation, and small stories that revolving around the production, distribution, and culture of cinema in West Kalimantan range from 2010-2019. Departing from collecting the data and information, this project tries to unfold the cartography on how the relationship between cinema and society; tensions between the local cinema aesthetic and its position in the midst of the dominant narrative of national, regional and global cinema aesthetics; how it constructs public’s perceptions, perspectives, and culture; how images absorbed from other films to reproduce into mimicry; how does these new images might affect the daily lives of the society; and how the DIY culture has become part of the daily lives for West Kalimantan filmmakers in providing the infrastructure of cinema. From 28 August 2019 to 3 September 2019, Mahardika Yudha presented a simulation of the Kinematek Singkawang project in the form of an archival exhibition and a public program; Pekan Filem showcases films that have an aesthetic correlation with West Kalimantan cinema since 1935, as well as the discussion on The Saga of Moving Images inviting cinema and art practitioners in Singkawang to discuss possibilities in reading the culture of moving images production. All these programs were held at the NHP Commerce Center, Singkawang. This simulation is the initial presentation of the continuous project of Singkawang Cinemateque which he will work on for the next one year. Kinematek Singkawang project is a continuation of the petite histoire of Indonesian cinema research project that has been going on since 2016 as part of Forum Lenteng program. The research project is trying to collect, to record, and to see the small stories outside the dominant narratives in the history of Indonesian cinema – which have been dominated by the writing of cinema history in Java – which has been established since 1896. Dissecting small stories and positioning them as alternative perspectives in reading and writing cinema history is an attempt to open up other possibilities in translating the role and correlation of cinema with the cultural development in society. How the reciprocal process of knowledge production continues and creates a variety of socio-cultural phenomenon until now. Year Singkawang, Indonesia
2019
Kinematek Singkawang: Petite Histoire of Indonesian Cinema
