Asian Cinema Fund

ACF Asian Cinema Fund

Asian Network of Documentary(AND) Fund

2011 Asian Network of Documentary (AND) Fund

LIST Cinema of Terror

Category	BIFF Supporters Fund
Project	Cinema of Terror
Director	Dain SAID, Yayan WILUDIHARTO
Country	Indonesia, Malaysia
Director's Profile	Dain Said is a Malaysian filmmaker who has directed feature films, documentaries, media installations, television shows and commercials. His work has been screened at the Biennale of Sydney and the University of British Colombia Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver. He is currently in post-production for his feature film, [Bunohan]. In 2007, Dain was a recipient of the Nippon Foundation’s Asian Public Intellectual fellowship, during which time he researched the role of films and propaganda in Indonesian history. [Cinema of Terror] is the direct outcome of this research. Yayan Wiludiharto is a self-taught filmmaker, working primarily with grassroots rights-based organizations, from human, women and child rights to those of individuals and families traumatized and stigmatized by various episodes of political violence in Indonesian history. Unearthing the stories of the post-1965 era has become almost an obsession for Yayan, perhaps as a way to reconcile the arrest and disappearance of his father during this period.

Synopsis: The 30th September 1965 in Indonesia began with a mysterious attempted coup and the grisly murder of six high-ranking generals. General Suharto took command and went on to rule Indonesia for more than 30 years. The subsequent witch-hunt for the alleged perpetrators and their alleged supporters led to an unimaginable bloodbath. Amnesty International estimates that almost 1 million Indonesians were butchered. Thousands of others were imprisoned and tortured for decades.
In 1998, when the democratic movement rose up against Suharto’s tyranny, many people picked up video cameras to record their struggle and eventual triumph.
Today thousands of survivors of torture and detention are still trying to pick up the pieces of their lives, shattered by a history not of their making. [Cinema of Terror] is a feature-length, creative documentary about the power of film to shape reality.

Director's Note: Our documentary film will look at terror, and the torture and murder of victims of General Suharto’s regime, and at his role as producer on the infamous propaganda film [Pengkhianatan G30S PKI], or [The Betrayal]. What will be discovered in our film is the terror in the relationship between history and its cinematic representation, and also between reality and its filmic projection.
We feel that this story needs to be told, not just for Indonesians but for people everywhere, as an example of how power, history and cinema collude in defining who and what we are, through the imagining and re-imagining of cultural memory and identity.

LIST