Usually there is no Berlin
Film festival for me without attending some films from the children-,
and youth section. Here film and festival still belong together and
and in recent years some of the films selected for this section were
still with me at the end of the year.
Sekala Niskala, the
second film by Indonesian filmmaker Mrs. Kamila Andini could be one
of those films. It´s narrative style seems rather rising from
a given situation than from a conventional story. Two twin children
(the girl Tantri and the boy Tantra)somewhere in Indonesia: their
amusement is to steal sacrificial offerings like eggs. For now it is
a bit like in Hou Hsiao Hsien´s early films. This specific childlike
living from day to day suddenly stops when the boy gets seriously
ill. A new and rather dramatic situation develops where the episodic
narration will be built on. But Andini avoids any dramatization and
like the old Japanese masters the feelings the film will evoke by the
sum of experiences and not through preformed dramatic effects. For a
long time, the film is made of long static shots or shots where the
camera movement is almost invisible. Sometimes the camera, especially
in open air shots will move occasionally. The single episodes the
film´s narration is based of are not just summing up to a story but
offers options for a story. Beside a certain formal stringency, the
film introduces another element, a playfulness. Dance performances by
masked children with painted skin convert the prosaic aspect of the
films for moments into dreamlike sequences. The film develops a
dynamic between realism and dream between static and movement.
The hospital scenes follow
the sober aspect of the first scenes. The whole family camps in the
reception room to be with the sick boy. A small dialog between the
parents suggest that the boy´s illness is very serious and they have
to expect the worst.
There is for example one
shot typical for the more prosaic aspect of the film but which gives
through this very shot a subtle hint to feelings: The girl is in the
left part of this frame, just on the edge of the frame while the sick
boy on the opposite site, almost hidden by the curtains of his
sickbed. The space between them accented through the mighty
CinemaScope format.
The more the film
develops, the more the foreshadow of inevitability dominates the mood
of this film, the more the girl´s dance performances with masks
based on animals appear. The initial situation of the film changes
with rather surreal moments.
Sekala Niskala is a
wise film about aspects of life we can understand and aspects we are
defenseless exposed to.
The narration seems to
move by itself without being forced.
There are some very
impressive night scenes, a greyish darkness in which the world as
displayed in this film is always threatened to disappear in this
formless dark grey. It is a strong visual impression for a film which
also deals with grieve, loss and fear from the perspective of a
child. Sometimes we hear the mother singing. Her songs have something
of a elegy to an inevitable loss. It is like a sad rebellion against
death, literally against the fading of the light.
The paradox of cinema that
even the the cultures most alien to me can become very close for a
moment. As much as I am aware of the strangeness of this images from
a culture far away from me, as much cinema always breaks always
universal paths for me.
I have no idea when or if
I will see this film again in my country, if it enters distribution
or not. That is a reason more that to see films like Sekala
Niskala seem rather as a fleeting privilege. About one thing I am
very sure. Kamila Andini things and feels cinema, she experiments
with the core of cinema itself. And even more important, a film like
Sekala Niskala from a country which hardly appears at big festivals
makes me believe in a future of cinema.
At the end I remember a
beautiful short moment, a shadow play performed in one of these
dreamlike sequences by the sick boy. A fleeting moment but a quite
exact analogy to the scope of this film, which reminds me in one
moment in Hou Hsiao Hsien and in the next in the amazing silhouette
films by legendary German filmmaker Lotte Reiniger.
Rüdiger Tomczak
screenings:
Sun, 18.2, 10.00
Zoo-Palast
Mon, 19.2, 15.30,
Filmtheater am Friederichshain
Tue, 20.2, 12.30,
Zoo-Palast
Fri, 23.2 10.00, Haus
der Kulturen der Welt
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