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Press Release5th Annual US-ASEAN Film Festival - Week ThreeStrength, Allure, and Beauty: The Women of Southeast AsiaTuesday, September 23, 2008 US-ASEAN Creative Project and the Embassy of Indonesia are proud to present "Chants of Lotus," a feature omnibus project about four marginalized Indonesian women, directed by four women directors with scripts by two women writers. Fatimah Rony, Upi Avianto Nia diNata, and Lasja F. Susanto directed each of the segments written by Vivian Idris and Melissa Karim.
The four-part anthology follows the lives of four women from such different walks of life and their life struggles in modern-day Indonesia. In Chant from an Island, Sumantri, a midwife from a small village on an island, sacrifices her health to protect the innocence of a mentally-challenged girl, while in Chant from a Tourist Town, Safina and her friends, high school students in the tourist town of Yogya, deal with their budding sexuality in this information age where it's easier to find answers online than from their parents no matter how misguided that might lead them. In Chant from a Village, Esih tries hard to provide a good life and education for her daughter even if that means working as a janitor at a local nightclub; sadly a series of unfortunate events brought her family into the middle of a trafficking ring. Meanwhile, in Chants from the Capital City, Laksmi has to make hard decisions as her perfect upper middle-class life falls apart following the death of her husband and her in-laws' insistence on taking custody of her only daughter. Women account for over half of Indonesia's 200-million population, and they prove to be highly productive members of the society, whether they work in the formal sector, home industry, or being homemakers providing care to their children. While Indonesia in recent times has made forward strides in women's rights, the mostly patriarchal society still has much to improve in its gender equality practices. Many women nowadays hold high and important positions as shown by the election of their first women president Megawati Soekarnoputri or the many successful women business owners. Yet a lot of women are still living as marginalized members of the community, unable to access the same rights and benefits as their male counterparts. This feature by no means represents a typical life of every Indonesian woman but it offers us a glimpse of the many women and children whose lives consist of daily struggles which often exacerbated by the fact that they are of the fairer sex.
In honor of the film screening, the Embassy of Indonesia and the US-Indonesia Society will host a reception on Friday evening, September 26, at the Indonesian Embassy on Masachusetts Avenue. One of the film's directors, Fatimah Tobing Rony who directed the Chant from an Island segment, will be in town to attend both the reception and the Q&A session following the film screening at the Smithsonian Institute's Meyer Auditorium on Sunday afternoon, September 28 at 2pm. Please contact USINDO for more information about the reception.
Preceding "Chants of Lotus," the weekend will start on a lighter note with the screening of a heartwarming Lao/Thai romantic drama, "Good Morning, Luang Prabang," the first commercial movie to come out of Laos since the seventies. Sorn, a Lao-Australian photographer, found himself in Luang Prabang, his ancestral home of Laos; and Noi is a beautiful tour guide hired to show him around. Luang Prabang follows the love story between Sorn and Noi as she guides him across the country, finding photography objects and maybe more importantly, his roots. "Good Morning, Luang Prabang" (Sabaidee Luang Prabang) will be shown on Friday, September 26, 2008 at 7PM and "Chants of Lotus" on Sunday, September 28, 2008 at 2PM. Free tickets for the screening can be obtained one hour in advance at location - the Meyer Auditorium of the Smithsonian Institute's Freer and Sackler Galleries (1050 Independence Avenue SW - 202.633.4880 - Limited street parking available after 6.30pm on Friday and all-day Sunday). The screening of "Chants of Lotus" was made possible with the sponsorship of the Embassy of Indonesia and the US-Indonesia Society (USINDO). They will hold the reception at the Indonesian Embassy on 2020 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20036. If you wish to attend the reception, please send an e-mail to USINDO (program@usindo.org) with your name and organization. This is the fifth installment of the US-ASEAN Film Festival. It opened with a Singaporean feature "Gone Shopping" on September 12, 2008 and it will run for a month until October 12, 2008 when the award-winning Vietnamese film "The White Silk Dress" will close the festival. The GRACE Heritage Foundation through their US-ASEAN Creative Project partnered with the Smithsonian Institute's Freer and Sackler Galleries to bring new, exciting, quality films from the dynamic region of Southeast Asia - often touted as the up and coming region in international cinema. ASEAN stands for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, an economic and political grouping of the ten countries of Southeast Asia: Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam. The US-ASEAN Film Festival is proudly sponsored by the Embassy of Indonesia, the Embassy of Singapore, the Royal Embassy of Thailand, the ASEAN Secretariat, and the Washington Post. Contact information |
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