Stay Tune for the Next Movie Screening

If you are being asked to choose which one will you prefer, watching movie in the cinema with popcorn on your right hand and soda on your left or watching movie in a coffee shop while sipping a good taste of coffee? For me, I would prefer the second one.

That adds one more reason why for the past few months I have been busy organizing some movie screenings.

Another reason is because I basically like to organize social events. Organizing national and international events was part of my job-list at my previous working place. Even until now, I sometimes organize events in smaller yet intense scope. Thus, I am pretty much happy to throw myself into this.

So for the past few months, there were two movies that I made on a coffee shop's screen:

1. Prison and Paradise (28 April 2013)

Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/169280126561317

Timing: I intentionally did the screening on Sunday morning since the content of the movie is heavy (for sure I did not want to see somebody is sleeping during the screening).

The director of this movie, Daniel Rudy Haryanto (I call him Mas Rudy), just happened to work as a video maker in my current working place. One day, during a light conversation with him, I figured out that he actually has a very good movie that won several international awards. So I thought why dun we have a screening of that movie. The movie which I later on known titled Prison and Paradise is actually a deeply educative one. It challenges the viewers to think critically about terrorism discourse in Indonesia. Yet the movie is being banned by the government, probably because some of the contents, especially the part in which Mas Rudy interviewing the executors of the Bali bombing, are considered vulgar.

For the movie screening, I successfully invited Mbak Angel Damayanti, a lecturer from Universitas Kristen Indonesia (UKI), as a reviewer to discuss the content of the movie. Mbak Angel also brought around 10 of her university students to watch the movie.

I could see that there were some people who curiously thrown questions to Mbak Angel and Mas Rudy during the discussion. It made me happy to see that people could actually broaden their knowledge by attending the event that I organized.

About Prison and Paradise movie:

On 12 October 2002 Bali island was bombed by a group of Indonesian suicide bombers. The incident took 202 lives, mostly foreigners and of course, Indonesians too. Since that, Indonesia experienced a number of religiously motivated bombings targeting international and national asset and embassies. In 2003, Daniel Rudy Haryanto had the opportunity to interview first Bali bombers. They are: Imam Samudra, Ali Gufron a.k.a Muklas, Amrozy and Ali Imron. He also met Mubarok a.k.a Fadlullah Hasan a.k.a Utomo Pamungkas in Kerobokan prison, Bali. In 2004, He was introduced to Noor Huda Ismail, a journalist at the Washington Post and an alumni of Al Mukmin Ngruki Islamic Boarding School (pesantren) on his duty covering the Bali bombing incident.

This documentary portrays some interesting stories both from perpetrators’ families as well as victims’ families. They believe in the same religion, that’s Islam, they believe in the same Holy Quran, they pray with same manner and ways, but in Jihad, they do have different opinions.

Indonesia has been an important site for terrorism and terrorism debate. The film “Prison and Paradise” would like to portray this issue closely.


Awards:

- Yamagata Documentary Film Festival winner 2011
- Bgyor International Film Festival 2011
- Dubai International Film Festival World Premiere And Competition 2010
- Jogjakarta Asian Film Festival (NETPAC) 2010
- Jogjakarta Documentary Film Festival (FFD) winner 2010


Official Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGzV7QD9ULg
Official Website: www.prisonandparadise.com/

Mas Rudy and Mbak Angel were talking on the stage.

I gave a brief introduction (this is not a good pic, but this is the only pic of me in this event).

2. Grease (16 June 2013)

Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/500244140029940/

Timing: Sunday night was a perfect timing for this classic musical drama movie. Why? Simply because on Friday and Saturday night people are busy partying around.

The story behind conducting the screening of this movie is as follow. One day I attended yet another social event organized by my friend who is a real globe trotter. His name is Fritz. So while sitting on the bench, Fritz (out of the blue) asked me why am I named Olivia. Just like me or probably the rest of you, he thinks that the name is too Western. So I said to him that I was named after Olivia Newton John, my Dad is a big fan of her. Then he goes "Have u watched Grease*?". Then I goes "'No." Then he screamed (I think it is just his tone, he is a loud person anyway) "I'll be bold! We need to watch it together!”. And I was "Hmmm... ok."

So that was the beginning of me having the idea to do the screening of Grease. Later on I had another thought, why don’t we make the movie linked to support my current project Yep Camp (the project aims to reduce the number of youth unemployment in some rural areas of Indonesia). And I am glad that we finally did it. Frankly, it was the first time I got a chance to introduce Yep Camp in public. And I even felt happier knowing that Yep Camp received many positive responses from public after the screening.

Another thing which I liked the most from the Grease movie screening was Fritz idea to have some 60-70-ish songs and old trailers played before showing the main movie. I have to admit, such a brilliant idea.

Here is a bit about Grease:

A musical about teens in love in the 50's! It's California, summer 1959 and greaser Danny Zuko and Australian Sandy Olsson are in love. They spend time at the beach, but when they go back to school, what either of them don't know is that they both now attend Rydell High. Danny's the leader of the T-Birds, a group of black-jacket greasers while Sandy hangs with the Pink Ladies, a group of pink-wearing girls led by Rizzo. When they clash at Rydell's first pep rally, Danny isn't the same Danny at the beach.

The Screen showing Olivia Newton John a.k.a Sandy

I was giving an opening and an introduction of Yepcamp

In the near future, me and my Yep Camp team will organize another movie screening which aims to get more support for our project (a.k.a crowd funding). The next movie will be held in September and the topic will be more into the environmental issues (I promise you that it won’t be the boring one, it will be a drama not scientific movie).

We are planning to have it screened in a café around Cikini or Sabang. The donation will be based on voluntary. Stay tune, I’ll keep you update soon!



Love,


Olivia


Note: * Grease was one of  the most popular movies of Olivia Newton John