With an introduction and talk after the screening by Borjana Gaković

FORUM LENTENG’s selection:

Behind the Flickering Light: The Archive is dear to me personally. It was in the making when I first got in touch with Forum Lenteng back in 2012. The film itself mirrors the situation and condition of contemporary Indonesian cinema by looking at cinema history; scattered, grand, important, and about to be forgotten. The film is told through a conversation among my colleagues at Forum Lenteng and Misbach Yusa Biran, the founder of Sinematek Indonesia, which is the first and biggest film archive in Southeast Asia. The film is important for us not only as a dialogue about preserving film as a medium, but also for the knowledge of how it can be accessible to the wider public, as a national treasure, or simply as entertainment. In a country where film largely arrives as a commodity and without discourse, Behind the Flickering Light: The Archive aims to trigger awareness, to allow for reflection on why we love cinema, and to engage us to consider what's next.

– Yuki Aditya of Forum Lenteng

Forum Lenteng, a non-profit organization based in Jakarta, was founded in 2003 by artists, academics, cultural activists, and students. The collective focuses on alternative education using audiovisual media as a tool to learn and increase awareness around socio-cultural matters. Created in collaboration with local collectives in other cities and other islands around Indonesia, our programmes concern media empowerment, in order to decentralize the production of narratives and place them in the hands of common people through many local interdisciplinary programs such as Akumassa (community-based media education), 69 Performance Club (performance arts empowerment), ARKIPEL International Documentary and Experimental Film Festival, and more.

Borjana Gaković is a film and media scholar. She writes and works as a lecturer in the field of film and cinema culture, and as a curator of mostly historical cinema programs, often with reference to feminisms in film history.