The filmmaker as activist

ABSTRACT

This study is focused on those filmmakers who make films as a way of fighting to defend human rights. I look in particular in this article at their activist role in the process of documenting human rights abuses in contemporary film projects that explore the aftermath of genocide. In Asia, we can find two examples: the anticommunist genocide in Indonesia in 1965–66 and the genocide perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia in 1975–79. Two contemporary filmmakers have produced works that recover the history of the atrocities: Joshua Oppenheimer and Rithy Panh. Traditionally, filmmakers have formed relationships only with victims; however, this article shows how the involvement of the perpetrators is also necessary to fully understand the conflict. This article explores why filmmakers decide to engage with the perpetrators, how they get them to participate, and what the consequences of this process may be. Since Oppenheimer’s involvement with his protagonist, Anwar Congo, in The Act of Killing (2012) turns out especially problematic, exploring this relationship in depth is the central purpose of this article.

Notes

¹ For a further discussion of Site 2, see Norindr (2010).

² See Barnes (2016, p. 195) and Boyle (2014, p. 30).

³ The Missing Picture is not actually the last step on Panh’s personal journey, as last year he released a new film, Exile (2016). At the time of writing this article, I have not yet had the opportunity to see this film.

⁴ See Winston (1988).

⁵ The banalization of evil recalls Hannah Arendt´s idea about the “banality of evil.” The observation of the trial of Nazi Adolf Eichmann inspired her to explore in 1964 the reasons why people commit atrocities.

⁶ Two different examples of this idea could be the fictional drama Gie (2005) directed by Riri Riza and the documentary Mass Grave (2001) directed by Indonesian journalist Lexy Junior Rambadeta.

⁷ Statements from The Act of Killing official Website.

⁸ The other co-editor was Joram ten Brink, a professor at the University of Westminster. This book and the two documentaries The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence have been the core of the research project “Genocide and Genre,” sponsored by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK).

⁹ For example, North Sumatra Governor Syamsul Arifin, Vice President Jusuf Kalla, and State Minister for Youth and Sports Affairs Sakhyan Asmara, among others.

¹⁰ One example can be seen in The Act of Killing, where Congo and his colleagues are praised and applauded on a talk show.

¹¹ As we can also see in The Look of Silence, Rukun has to endure the brainwashing of his own child at school by his teacher.

¹² One example of this narrative is the propaganda film Pengkhianatan G30S/PKI (Arifin C. Noer, 1984), a film sponsored by the Indonesian government to justify the massacre. In The Act of Killing we see Congo watching it, which suggests, as Paramaditha points out, that this “canonical film inspired him in the same way as gangster films and musicals” (2013, p. 44).

¹³ Statements from The Act of Killing official website.

¹⁴ Statements from The Act of Killing official website.

¹⁵ As Mohamed points out, some commentators “reflect on whether Anwar’s remorse is genuine or staged … Surely he knows how to craft a Hollywood ending for his own story” (2015, p. 1194). It is beyond the scope of this article to address this controversial question.

¹⁶ The University of Roehampton submitted to Reseach Exellence Framework (REF2014) a report that evaluates the impact of The Act of Killing (http://impact.ref.ac.uk/casestudies2/refservice.svc/GetCaseStudyPDF/20542). As the report notes, notwithstanding that the film was banned, “over 500 clandestine screenings in over 95 cities across the country” were feasible. The Act of Killing was initially clandestinely screened in Indonesia, but its impact allowed The Look of Silence´s premier to be projected at the largest movie theatres with the support of two government agencies, the National Human Rights Commission and the Jakarta Arts Council, becoming a public phenomenon (Behlil, 2015, p. 30; Schenkel, 2015, p. 101). In order to increase The Act of Killing´s visibility in Indonesia, the film was up to download for free by Drafthouse Films as of September 30, 2013. As of this writing, on June 19, 2017, the film had registered 1.145.950 views in YouTube. Other interesting indications of The Act of Killing´s domestic impact noted in the report are the following: First, the editors of Tempo, Indonesia´s premier news magazine, decided to publish in October 2012 a double edition about the film and the events it engages with. As Behil suggests, The Act of Killing encouraged mainstream media for the first time to start reporting about what happened at that time in Indonesia (2013, p. 31). According to the Britdoc Foundation´s report, another remarkable evaluation of The Act of Killing´s impact (https://impactguide.org/static/library/TheActofKilling.pdf), “as of February 2013 there were over 600 new Indonesian press articles reexamining the genocide … in July 2012, the [National Human Rights Commission of Indonesia] published an 850 page report documenting and condemning the genocide as a crime against humanity and recommending a truth and reconciliation process .” In this report, the commission points out that “no film … has done this more effectively than The Act of Killing.”