Exciting Things at the Jakarta Film Fund, One of the Programs at Jakarta Film Week 2021
The Jakarta Film Fund is one of the programs of the Jakarta Film Week, an international film festival organized by the Jakarta Tourism and Creative Economy Office (Disparekraf). The Jakarta Film Fund itself is a story idea competition. The five selected story ideas received funding and support for production and mentoring from professional filmmakers, movielab directing, scriptwriting, and image editing.
All of the produced films premiered during the festival, on Friday 19 November 2021, at CGV Grand Indonesia, Jakarta. Apart from being shown offline, the five Jakarta Film Fund films can also be watched online on Video.com. What do you need to know about these five selected films? Here’s a full explanation.
Interesting facts about #JakartaFilmFund
Of the many films that were submitted to the Jakarta Film Fund, there were 5 selected works that received funding assistance for film production worth Rp. 30,000,000 per film.
But it doesn’t stop there. Because one of the five films was chosen to win the Jakarta Film Fund Award, which was announced on the closing night of the Jakarta Film Week, Sunday 21 November 2021. Here is the winner and special mention for the Jakarta Film Fund Award:
This film by production house revolves around Mulyani who is a domestic worker in a relationship with Reza, a construction worker. Within six hours, Reza will lose access to the elite housing complex where they work. They have to sneak up on security guards, absurd elitists, and face the consequences of violating Mulyani’s employment contract.
This film by William Adiguna, tells about a misunderstanding and a secret agenda that trigger an uncontrollable chain of events between a middle-aged couple and a teenage couple one night in the Chinatown area.
Another fact about the Jakarta Film Fund is that the five selected films that received funding assistance were shot in Jakarta. In other words, the selected stories all represent Jakarta. Not only as a location setting but also as a part of the story that the citizens of the capital city can closely relate to at heart.
According to the director of the film Suatu Hari di Tempat Pemancingan, Rifqi Rifaldy or also known as Jaseng, the reason why Jakarta was chosen as the shooting location is that Jaseng sees life in Jakarta from a different perspective, him being an immigrant who has lived in Jakarta for a long time.
“There are so many people living in the suburbs of Jakarta. Actually, there are a lot of stories that can be found, many unique phenomena that can be highlighted. In my opinion, Jakarta is a unique and diverse city. There are Javanese, Sundanese, and Betawi tribes,” said Rifqi.
Despite the fact that Indonesia, including Jakarta, is currently entering the rainy season and it is common for the rains to hinder our shared activities to remain productive, the film Ringroad by Director Andrew Kose, has an interesting story during the filming process. The film itself tells the story of two teenagers who long for freedom from the exploitative work that ties them down.
The inspiration for the film Ringroad came from Kose’s childhood experience. In the past, he had a domestic worker who ran away with her boyfriend after started working at his house for just a few days. This inspired Kose to make a film with the incident being the background story.
During the production process which was carried out on September 24 until it was finished, it was impossible to predict when the rain would come. Kose took the initiative to anticipate this by working with rain-averting shamans. Thanks to this collaboration, it did not rain during the shooting process and the shooting went smoothly.