Live Nude Dancing

door Fleur Pierets | dec 25, 2013 | Movies

Live Nude Dancing

Photos Daniel Trese

Live Nude Dancing is a collaboration between photographer Daniel Trese, choreographer Ryan Heffington and animator Johnny Woods. Commissioned by MOCAtv. The film is based on a piece from Heffington’s critically acclaimed show KTCHN that premiered on May 3rd at Mack Sennet Studios in Los Angeles.

Inspired by the characters of Nolan Hendrickson’s paintings, KTCHN bridged the gap between a dance-performance, a contemporary art installation, a fashion show and a killer dance party that explored celebrity culture, human loneliness, public versus private image and new elements of drag and queer culture. Live Nude Dancing airs on MOCAtv as part of the channel’s artist video projects strand which features special commissions and innovative artist video collaborations.

In Live Nude Dancing, the leading character becomes consumed by newfound fame. He starts off arrogant, cocky and confident, seemingly knowing that he has the seductive qualities to become a star. He works his moves, stellar presence and dresses to impress – serenading his audience. As he takes on his public persona, we enter on-and-off dual realities narrated through extraordinary use of animation. One follows his intrinsic experiences and submission to fame, and the other his determination to maintain his status.

Success quickly turns into greed, taking over his famished personality and clouded ego. The camera and the public eye become his worst enemy. Their ownership of his life turns absolute as he performs in tandem with the stream of cash, desperately holding on to his stardom trough degrading cheap tricks and thrills. At the point of saturation, money slows down, and his exhausted need for attention and validation leads to a state of desperation that have his fans and the celebrity machine pull away from their desired super star. Left alone, naked and defeated, he is brought down to his knees scrambling for leftover cash, and ultimately becomes a victim of his own doing.

Trese’s film functions as an extension of a specific scene from KTCHN based on Hendrickson’s painting ‘Live resort wear’, a flattened representation of human desperation and the attempts to conceal and defeat it when placed in the public eye.

Written and performed by Alex Black
Features Greedy Boy
Filmed on location at Mack Sennet Studio

Live Nude Dancing by Daniel Trese, Ryan Heffington and Johnny Woods is viewed on:

www.youtube.com/mocatv

This article is featured in Et Alors? Magazine 8.

Read the complete issue here.

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Ed Wood

door Fleur Pierets | dec 25, 2012 | Movies

Ed Wood

Text Susan MacDonald

Since the biopic ‘Ed Wood’ starring Johnny Depp, the for nearly two decades forgotten eccentric of the 1950s, Edward D. Wood Jr. enjoyed a success that quite escaped him in life. His technically inept, but oddly fascinating films are shown at midnight screenings in off-beat picture theatres around the world.

This revival is largely due to his being presented to a new audience by Michael Medved’s 1981 book The Golden Turkey Awards, a volume which attempted to satirise the Academy awards by presenting nominations and awards for lack of quality. In a Ben Hur-like performance, Ed Wood won both the award for the worst director of all time and the award for the worst film of all time, which was given to his magnum opus, Plan 9 from Outer Space. Ed Wood had his own troupe of players: a bizarre entourage of friends which included the flamboyant newspaper and television seer Criswell, blond cowlick spit-stuck to his forehead, whose dramatic future predictions were nearly always wrong. (“I predict that in 1980 public executions will be shown on television, sponsored by your local gas company!”) Criswell (his full name was Jerome King Criswell ) lived his childhood at the rear of his father’s mortuary business, and for the rest of his life he preferred sleeping in satin-lined coffins, because he found them so comfortable (as one Ed Wood acquaintance commented, “Where does Ed find them?”) Another famous member was the Gothic spider-woman Vampira (Maila Nurmi), whose raven-black hair, dark make-up, and bloodless pallor marked her as the heiress to a tradition going back to the early Victorian age, through the female vampires in Dracula, the silent film temptress Theda Bara, Morticia Addams of the New Yorker’s cartoons, and the villainesses of a thousand forgotten radio and Saturday matinee serials. Even Natasha, from the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon series, is a parody of this interesting genre and bears an especially striking resemblance to Vampira. In the early 1950s she was a late night horror film hostess in Los Angeles, with an enormous cult following throughout America, and her own sub-retinue of flunkies and minders. Just before his untimely death James Dean had been having a love affair with her.

With the popularity of the Goth look in more recent times, Vampira was forty years ahead of her time. John Breckenridge (“Bunny”) was the scion of a wealthy European family. He was transsexual and dreamed of having a ‘Christine Jorgensen’ procedure to change his gender. For several years he was an acquaintance of Ed Wood’s but made one film appearance only, as the alien Ruler in Plan 9 from Outer Space. It is a performance of such outrageous and hilarious world-weary camp that one regrets he did not appear in more movies. There were others: Loretta King, who could not drink any liquids because she was “allergic to water”, the growling Swedish professional wrestler Tor Johnson, hack actors Paul Marco and Conrad Brooks (the latter is nicknamed by enthusiasts “the John Geilgud of bad movies”), and Bela Lugosi, who had starred in Dracula in 1931, but who was now forgotten, depressed, and a narcotics addict. Ed Wood gave Bela Lugosi something to live for again. The two became friends, and Bela was overjoyed to be making films once more, and with a much more interesting crew than he had ever known at the major studios. And there was another interesting sidelight to Ed Wood’s film career. He was a very public cross-dresser. This would be unusual today, but in the 1950s it was unique. There were female impersonators of course, but Ed was a genuine transvestite. He found women’s clothes and their soft fabrics sexually enticing, and extremely relaxing. If there was stress on the film set – and there often is – he would disappear, and return wearing a wig, a skirt, nylon stockings, and a fluffy sweater and beret knitted from angora, his favourite fibre.

Of course the members of his outlandish menagerie were not put off by this at all. In order to raise money for his pictures however, Ed had to deal with the wider world too. He confronted a great deal of misunderstanding and prejudice, and one of his films, Glen or Glenda (1953), is partly a documentary explained by a psychiatrist and overseen by a kind of Science God played by Bela Lugosi. It’s also partly a fictional story of courtship, with the purpose to help people understand and empathise with the phenomenon of cross-dressing. Ed Wood even played the lead role himself. He wanted there to be no doubt in the minds of the audience that the difficulties the hero encountered were based on personal experience. It was probably the most courageous film of the 1950s, and still remains the only main stream movie about genuine transvestism from any English-speaking country. As Ed Wood himself explained, “If you want to know me, see Glen or Glenda, that’s me, that’s my story. No question. But Plan 9 from Outer Space is my pride and joy.” But, for the business that hired Ed, Glen or Glenda was meant to be a sensationalist work of mild pornography. When the producer saw it, he was furious.

Three years later Ed Wood made the movie which discriminating film scholars regard as the pinnacle of his career: Plan 9 from Outer Space (shot in 1956, it was not released until 1959). The film was financed by the Baptist Church of Beverley Hills. Ed had convinced them that they should finance a film with the teenage appeal of the time, and that this film would then generate the money needed to make twelve films about the apostles of Christ – which were the movies that the Baptist Church of Beverley Hills really wanted to make. The cast included the best collection of Wood regulars that he ever assembled. The credits music, which develops into a theme as the film progresses, was Alexandr Mossolov’s Iron Foundry, a brilliant choice, full of menace and foreboding. The web site listed below states, “Iron Foundry enjoys an oddity reputation, and is rarely heard. Recordings have been few and far between.” Ed Wood was a classical music enthusiast, and any aficionado of Plan 9 would recognise the music at once.

‘Ed Wood won both the award for the worst director of all time and the award for the worst film of all time.’

It might be of interest to compare the real Ed Wood ‘stock company’ with the modern actors who portrayed them. Documentaries were made about Ed Wood’s life and career: Look Back in Angora, Flying Saucers over Hollywood, and one biography, Nightmare of Ecstasy. There has even been a rock video in the Ed Wood manner. But the zenith of the renewed interest in Ed Wood’s films was the superb biopic released in 1994, Ed Wood, directed by Tim Burton. It is an affectionate homage of notable accuracy, and was probably the best film made in the 1990s. At the time of writing, it is certainly the last great film made in gleaming black and white – a decision which Tim Burton fought hard for, but which was exactly right. Unfortunately, the use of black and white harmed the film at the box office. It made little money, because these days young filmgoers especially do not understand that black and white cinema has its own special beauty. But film critics and film magazines gave it the highest praise. It is a bitter-sweet fact that, even accounting for inflation, any fifteen minutes of Tim Burton’s film cost more to make than all the films Ed Wood made over a period of 25 years.

The casting of the film is exemplary. Lisa Marie is amazingly good as Vampira, and Jeffrey Jones is wonderful as Criswell. He brings a skein of warm comedy to the role which the real Criswell lacked. Johnny Depp in the title role projects Wood’s infectious enthusiasm and joi-de-vivre, and Bill Murray has fun as Bunny Breckenridge, although no mere actor could adequately display the real Bunny’s jaded, droll, contrived ennui. Martin Landau, such a wooden actor in so many films, won a well-deserved Oscar for his brilliant portrayal of Bela Lugosi in his final years. Edward D. Wood was unique. Is there any explanation for his strange life? Tim Burton, the director of the 1994 film, concluded that Ed had wanted to be a film producer and director ever since he was given a movie camera as a boy, and was bewitched from that moment on. When he was 17 years old, probably the most impressionable age in a person’s life, he saw Citizen Kane, when it was first released. (Ed was born October 10, 1924.) The youthful Ed Wood wanted to make films. But his idea of a film director was a cartoon idea. In cartoons the director habitually wears jodhpurs, shiny black boots, and carries a horsewhip. He sits in a simple canvas-backed chair, and shouts directions from an old-fashioned megaphone. He is frequently portrayed with a pencil-thin moustache, and sporting a beret.

While making his films Ed always used the megaphone, even though directors at the major studios had long abandoned its use. He never went for the jodhpurs or boots, or the horsewhip, but such affectations predated his memory: they had vanished at the end of the silent era (the earliest directors dressed this way as a protection against snakes and scorpions – in the silent days, films were usually shot on outdoor locations, and often in the desert). Tim Burton believes that this is the key to understanding Ed Wood’s style. Ed was in love with the idea of directing films…the romance, the persona of the admired but unpredictable martinet, and the artistic adventure. He enjoyed sitting in the canvas-backed chair, and shouting “Cut!” He wanted nothing to do with the tedious side of film directing: the careful attention to continuity (in his own films characters can drive away from a house in broad daylight and, after a trip of a mile or so, arrive in pitch-black, foggy night), the re-shooting of scenes in which bits of set protruded, or even fell over, the repetitive rehearsal of important scenes with the actors. In Ed’s films it was one take, or two at the most. He couldn’t wait to get on to the next scene, and play director again. The best answer to those who have nothing to offer the Ed Wood renaissance except derisive laughter, is the films themselves. Ed did try to get a job with the major studios, but none of them were interested. Anybody else would have gone home and taken a clerical job, but Ed went ahead and made his own films . . . shoestring budgets, fantastically strange actors, and technically inept . . . but they were made, and released.

And that was much harder to achieve fifty years ago than it is today. The major studios have lost their iron grip on Hollywood. Amazing sets and technical effects are just a software package away, and just about everybody in cinema boastfully announces themselves as an “independent”. One can glimpse behind those films a special mind of dark, surreal mysteries and obsessions. After all, there were other ultra-cheap directors in the 1950s and 1960s, but their films are about as interesting as the people next door’s home movies. In death, Ed Wood found the intellectual acclaim which had so painfully eluded him while he was alive and working. All of the chief members of his repertory are now dead, with the exception of Vampira. Maila Nurmi used to run a business preparing signed gravestone rubbings of Hollywood stars, but today she has time for little else except attending Ed Wood film festivals and special screenings. She speaks with heartfelt admiration of Ed’s kindness, and his brightening the last years of Bela Lugosi’s life, when the rest of Hollywood had turned their backs on him. Ed Wood died on December 10, 1978. He was not only kind; he was one of a kind.

Main Films
Glen or Glenda 1953
Jailbait 1954
Bride of the Monster 1955 (Bela Lugosi’s last film)
Plan 9 from Outer Space 1956
Final Curtain 1957
Night of the Ghouls 1958

This film was lost until 1983, because Ed Wood never had the money to pay the film developer’s bill. Finally recovered and released when the Ed Wood renaissance was well under way, it was immediately acclaimed an ‘Ed Wood masterpiece.’

The Sinister Urge 1960
Orgy of the Dead 1965
Take it out in Trade 1970

www.petticoated.com

This article is featured in Et Alors? Magazine 4.

Read the complete issue here.

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Erika Lust

door Fleur Pierets | dec 25, 2012 | Movies

Erika Lust

Text & photos JF. Pierets

Someone once told her that she must be the cutest porn director he ever met. She thought that was a good thing, because most people still think you have to be a freak to make this kind of movies. We’re in Barcelona, in a huge loft. During lunchtime we talk to the woman on top of Lust –productions. “I’m so normal it almost becomes controversial.” In conversation with Erika Lust.

We’re sitting amongst camera’s, a bed and a woman performing with all kinds of toys. What are you doing?
It’s quite a premiere you’re witnessing here. We are selling all different kinds of sex toys on our website but no one ever thought about the idea of showing all the different ways to use them. It’s strange when you start to think of it; all those toys, all those producers and not a single explicit educational movie on what you can do with it.

How did a sweet looking girl like you…?
It’s a long story so let’s try to make it a little short. I studied political science at the university in Sweden and during the summer I came to Barcelona to study Spanish. In 2000 I met my husband Pablo and decided to stay. It was almost impossible to get a job in political science because of the Catalan politics in Barcelona so I was looking for extra jobs. I had a friend who worked in the audiovisual sector; movies, television and advertising and I started doing the most basic jobs. I was driving actors from the airport, making coffee, you know the drill. Little by little I got better opportunities so I started as a production assistant, then a location manager and afterwards as a production manager. During this process I learned how to make movies. Film has always been my passion so it was quite natural that I started to take evening courses in directing actors, film technics and camerawork. And then….then I had the chance to make a short movie. During that process I came back to the idea I had many years ago in university. Ideas about pornography with the main question being: “Would it be possible to make a movie that was exciting but still had all my values?”. When I looked at porn I always found it physically intriguing because my body responded but my brain didn’t like it. I was quite mixed up because of this huge discrepancy between my body and my brain so I wanted to find a way to make this kind of movie but without losing my esthetics.

So what’s the big difference between male and female porn?
Male producers and directors are all alike. They’re mostly middle-aged straight white guys with a taste in big-breasted blonde airheads. It stands to reason that a homogeneous group is going to create a homogeneous product and that makes those movies very indistinguishable. Women care more about the story that is being told. And also “who” is telling the story? In this case it’s me as a woman, as a feminist, as a mother, as an entrepreneur. For decades men had a monopoly on defining what porn is and in this world of ours, whatever is male-oriented becomes the standard. So it’s time to stand up because it’s not healthy that the only people making pornography are men. Well, at least 99% of it.

And why is that?
It has to do with many things. Men had an easier time to take pleasure in sexuality. Ours has always been closely tied to reproduction. And not only that, mind you that even today there are cultures that are still using barbaric practices like clitoridectomy to nip female sexual desire in the bud. There’s also the structure of society; men go to work, make money, they explore different things. They got into audiovisuals long before women did. When you look at our female history, it’s not so many years ago since we got the right to vote or started to earn our own money. And isn’t that initially the base of independence? If you don’t earn your own money you can’t take a decision, that’s the way it is. There’s been a huge development regarding female sexuality since we started caring for our own pleasure and not only for anybody else’s. And also – and that’s a very important evolution – we are starting to become consumers of things that have to do with sex.

And when did all this change?
It started in the 60’s and the 70’s with the sexual revolution and the liberty to take the pill. But when we are talking about pornography, it’s quite recent. The first woman who started to make this kind of films is Candida Royalle and she started in ‘83 – ‘84. After her there came more and more female directors but still very very little. Maybe we can count 10 at the most. Yet we live in a world where there are thousands and thousands of male pornographers.

Why? Are women afraid to do so?
I think we are a little afraid in one way because it is difficult to stand in society and say: “Hey! I make porn.” You have to stand up against people attacking you from different corners; from feminists to pornographers to Catholics. So many different groups who don’t want us, women, to get involved in that kind of business. But this is where I stand up and say that it’s really important. You have to look at pornography as a discourse. It’s a discourse about sexuality, femininity, masculinity and women don’t participate in that debate because we don’t have anything to say. It’s like we don’t have a voice. So I want us – not only me – but women in general to get into this industry, taking power and starting to make our own movies. Telling the stories we want to be told. We have to express our own sexuality and the only way of doing this, is that a lot of women get into the pool. We have to become a critical mass to be able to change things. In politics we are talking about the 30% rule, meaning that when women are starting to take part of the governments and the parliaments, we have to be 30% of the group. That is when you’re starting to have some power, when your voices will be heard. So let’s work on that quota because otherwise, nothing is going to happen.

But you are pretty busy trying to change things.
I have to. Because I believe we can benefit from watching sexually explicit films. We’re very liberated these days and porn can help us spice up our fantasies and discover tastes we never even knew we had. Porn in and of itself is not a bad thing and believe me if I say that our tastes are as varied as men’s are. So hold the flowers and fireplaces, the candles and novels by Danielle Steele. We want sexually explicit images, but we want to call the shots when it comes to how they’re made.

In your book ‘A woman’s guide to good porn’ you have a chapter called ‘Indephony, predictable porn made by men’. I really laughed out loud reading Nr. 7: Beautiful young women just love to have good sex with fat ugly middle-aged men. Nr. 13: Asian men do not exist and Nr. 22: When a woman is sucking a man’s cock, it’s important for him to give her constant reminders about what to do: “Oh, yeah-suck it!”. Isn’t that too much of a cliché?
I don’t think it is. Young people learn about sexuality from porn. And there we have a problem. I don’t want Rocco Siffredi telling my girls how to have sex. I don’t want him involved in this. I want to have the chance to tell my vision on sexuality. And that doesn’t happen when we don’t participate. Then we will end up with all these porn studs, these macho porn guys, telling our children how to have sex. I want them to take away positive messages about sexuality. With feminist values and discourses. But don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I want to impose some kind of censorship, I just want diversity and the freedom to choose what suits you. The problem regarding young children is that the school education on sexuality is very bad or non-existent. In some countries it’s even called family planning. And what happens when education doesn’t take their responsibility and when still too many parents are afraid to speak to their kids about it? Then kids look at free porn on the internet. And what do they learn? An Italian macho fucks 10 Bulgarian girls in the butt and that’s normal. When you, as an adult, watch this movie, you will have some references. So if you want to see this kind of porn, please do and I hope you enjoy it. But children at that age are not so developed that they can think critically. I think it’s very important to inform and to teach young people how to be critical because it’s not only about porn, it’s also about the models, being really really slim, it’s about television series where we most of the time see men as main characters. We have to be critical towards fashion, photography, because all of it is fake. My point of view might sound quite heavy but it’s true and it’s important that we start to speak about this.

Your message is very clear, but why use porn as your outlet?
Because I love film and I have a base to stand on. I’m not only doing this because the fun or for the money but because I want to see good movie. And that’s another part of it, the esthetics. I find most porn very ugly. And because I like film and I like beautiful things, I want to see a beautiful movie that is well developed, a story that is interesting, characters I can identify with. I don’t want them to be stereotypes like the nightclub singer and the stripper, the babysitters and the desperate housewife. I’m not interested in seeing that kind of women. Neither am I interested in the mafia guy or the pizza delivery boy. Those stereotypes really set my nerves on edge.

‘Male directors are all alike. They’re mostly middle-aged white guys with a taste in big-breasted airheads.’

You’re not working with actors?
I want normal people to be in my movies so I try to use the less “pornified” looks that I can find. Making an adult movie is not very different than making regular cinema. The main thing with the actors, when they are professional adult performers, is to erase their porn attitude, and make them act and feel naturally. It’s not an impossible mission, it can be done if you treat them with respect and you teach them to relax and forget those strange positions and the athletic sex they do for a living. Nevertheless, I keep looking for the non-transformed bodies. For people who look good and feel fresh and natural. Lately I’ve been very lucky because as my name is kind of growing, people are coming to me. I don’t have to find them, they find me. All those people who were never involved in the adult filmmaking suddenly want to be in my movies. And that’s wonderful, but I also realize this comes with big responsibilities because those people are really having sex and they show every inch of their body in front of the camera. For me it’s very important to get to know the actors. Who are they, what do they like, why do they do this? I don’t want someone doing a scene just because they are in an economic crisis and they don’t have any other way to earn money. Nor do I work with 18 year olds because they cannot fully understand the consequences of what they are doing. I want people to enjoy being in front of a camera. Who are sex positive because believe me, there are a lot of people out there who like doing this.

Do you know your customers?
Yes I do because we have the Lust cinema and the Lust store online. Therefor we can see who’s buying and I can tell you it’s more or less 50/50. 50% men and 50% women. I’m very happy I don’t exclude men from our audience because that was never my intention.

Would you describe it as female porn, or femfriendly porn?
It’s really difficult to find a good word. Sometimes I call it porn, sometimes I call it erotic movies but also Adult independent film. It depends a little on the circumstances. The problem with the word porn is that it’s very ugly. When you say it and you close your eyes, you see something. Something very specific because the norm on what pornography is, is rooted into our minds. Therefor you see something that has nothing to do with my movies. When I use the term porn, you probably see something ugly, most of the time aggressive and violent male dominant. When I’m watching the scenes I shot, I see passion, intimacy. Sometimes I wish I could wash the word pornography. Putting it in the washing machine and take it out all fresh and removed from any negativity because I want to use that word. What else should I call it? Contemporary porn maybe, yet I don’t really think I belong in Tate modern. So yes, I must admit I’m a little lost when it comes to put a word on what I’m doing.

Are you a feminist?
Yes I am, but all too often I realize that a lot of people don’t know what feminism is. We live in a world where men and women don’t have the same possibilities, rights and opportunities. A world in which women as a group have less power than a group of men. Being a feminist means acknowledging this situation and believing it should change. And the only way we can change something is when we can be specific about what the differences actually are. We are modern women in a modern society and yet we are not represented in the mainstream pornography, we are not there. So let’s start making our own porn movies because if we do, we can start choosing what we like most.

How did you get so liberated?
Well, I’m not. I’m still struggling but I think all of us are. I’m a very normal person and I don’t have this super strong sexuality going. I’m quite down to earth and vanilla. But it helps that I’m Swedish. I had the opportunity to grow up in a country that is very liberated when you compare it to others. Sweden was also one of the first countries who started school sex education in 1952. When I talk to people I realize I am very privileged on the subject matter. When I was 12 we had sexologists coming to our school and talking about not only the technical stuff but they also spoke about feelings and butterflies. The good part of sexuality was explained to us as a part of your health and happiness. This kind of approach changes things, it opens up your mind.

Do you feel excepted?
It goes in two different directions. The male porn industry has a very difficult time right now, accepting that suddenly there are young women deciding that they want something else. Bottom-line is that I think a lot of men are afraid of losing their jobs. Regarding my own kind I can feel that the feminist movement starts to accept the idea of women getting into this. In the beginning they were quite chocked but now it’s getting better. They are clever enough to see why this is important.

And in your personal habitat?
Yes I do feel accepted. And that’s because I’m not ashamed of what I’m doing. If you’re ashamed you will have a problem explaining it. People should be ashamed when they are doing bad things, stealing money or dealing drugs. Not because they are making adult movies. For example my mother is 70 but she accepts it, understands it. We’ve been speaking a lot about the message behind it. But of course she would have been a lot happier if I would have become a lawyer or a teacher. Because yes, this is a little more complicated to tell your friends. Nevertheless, everybody responds really well to what I am doing. I can see that people feel the same way, that there is a need for this new niche. Also the parents at my girls’ school are great about it, they love what I do and they certainly don’t say that there kids can’t come to my house because I’m a pornographer. Acceptance lies with you. People understand what you communicate.

www.erikalust.com

This article is featured in Et Alors? Magazine 4.

Read the complete issue here.

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Children of Srikandi

door Fleur Pierets | jun 25, 2012 | Movies

Children of Srikandi

Text JF. Pierets Photos Courtesy of Laura Coppens

Children of Srikandi is the first film about queer women in Indonesia, the country with the worlds largest Muslim population. Eight authentic and poetic stories are interwoven with beautiful shadow theater scenes that tell the story of Srikandi, one of the characters of the Indian Mahabharata. This collective anthology transcends the borders between documentary, fiction and experimental film.

A little girl wants to be a boy. A bench becomes a home and a witness to life. A house does not feel like home anymore. A veil makes you reflect on religion and sexuality. A verse of a poem is like a day in your life. A love can be in between. A female stereotype can be deconstructed. A label can be changed. In Children of Srikandi, participants collectively worked as crew members or actresses in each other’s film, with individual stories ranging from observational documentary and concept art to personal essay. We see that change is possible on all levels of the film: personal, political and formal. Transformation is always inscribed in the narrative; form and identity are fluid; perspectives are shifted. The moving individual stories are interwoven with the tale of Srikandi, an ancient mythological character of the Mahabharata, a well-known Indian epic, which is still frequently used in the traditional Javanese shadow puppet theatre plays (wayangkulit) throughout Indonesia. Srikandi is neither man nor woman, moving fluidly between both genders. When she falls in love with a woman, she has to understand that the only way to survive is to become a “female warrior”. She is one of the few prominent wayang women figures, and while other women in the tales are devoted mothers and wives, Srikandi is the ultimate model of independent womanhood; strong and brave, heroic and active. She is a female warrior. This explains her popularity with many Indonesian queer and feminist women. The puppeteer Soleh gives his voice to Srikandi, while the singer Anik expresses the character’s emotions. As transgender queens they reinvent themselves within the classic Indonesian perception of women, while the short films deconstruct the classic picture. It is the opposed representation of gender that creates an impression of a fluid, oscillating advancement of the film. A spectacular linguistic and religious diversity is revealed: the original languages are Indonesian, Javanese, high-Javanese and Sundanese. The religions involved are Muslim, Christian and Buddhist. Children of Srikandi brings this tale back to the screen and reminds viewers that homosexuality and gender variety wasn’t imported from the West, but in fact forms a deep and ancient aspect of Indonesian society.

When did you come up with this idea?
Laura Coppens Since 5 years I am programming Indonesian films for film festivals and in that function John Badalu invited me to attend the Q! Film Festival – the Indonesian queer film festival – in 2009. I talked to many people there and especially to queer women. Many were complaining that there are not enough lesbian movies, especially no Indonesian productions. This gave me the idea to organize a film workshop and teach basic filmmaking skills, so they have the means to tell their own stories. But of course I could not do it on my own. I am not a trained filmmaker and I knew that I had to find professional help. This is when Angelika came into play. I asked her to join the project and from the start she was very engaged and did a wonderful job teaching others and editing the film. On the Indonesian part I approached in-docs, a Jakarta based organization that arranges documentary workshops to support the local film industry. They helped us to set up the workshop in Jakarta.
Angelika Levi At the beginning of 2010, Laura Coppens asked me if I would like to direct a film workshop for young Indonesian lesbians in Jakarta over the summer. Her idea was to make an omnibus film with six to ten women presenting their personal experiences by means of autobiographic short films. Our first joint meeting took place in Jakarta. Some of the women came from Yogyakarta or Bandung. All of them brought different social and religious backgrounds. Most of them had never met before. We spent the first weeks of the workshop watching hand-picked documentaries and short films. We discussed different topics: gender, ideology, religion, memory and class. The women began to develop their proper ideas. We worked on the dramaturgic emphasis and narrative style of each tale and developed different narrative strategies.

Why Indonesia?
Stea Lim There is not a lot of visibility of queer women. I feel that it’s a lot better than many years ago but there are still issues in this society when talking about LGBT, or overall sexuality actually. In recent years there have been some violent incidents from ‘religious’ mass organizations against the LGBT community. One of them attacked an LGBT conference and the Queer Film Festival in Jakarta, 2010.

Yulia Dwi Andriyanti Indonesia is a country that considers itself to be an archipelago consisting of different races, ethnicities, religions, social statuses and economic backgrounds, but sexual orientation and gender identity still hasn’t become part of its concern. After the Soeharto dictatorship collapsed, the political situation encouraged people to reclaim their rights and identities. It invoked a sexual identity movement that started with the health issue regarding HIV/AIDS, making gay, transgender and MSM become its main concern. However, it didn’t make queer women more visible within the movement itself. That’s why this film workshop became an opportunity for them to reclaim their voices as lesbian, bisexual, transgender and heterosexual alike. This film could contribute as a way to reconstruct women’s identities in Indonesia that tend to be perceived in a binary gender role and that are stereotyped within the social, economic, political and religious structures in society.

‘I think it’s both aesthetically engaging and politically empowering. Hopefully popular stereotypes about Muslims and LGBT-people are deconstructed and challenged.’

How do you see this film in the context of Indonesia as a country with high Muslim population?
Yulia Dwi Andriyanti I see it as an opportunity to challenge all the norms and the structure that has existed within the society, not only due to religious stereotypical thought on heterosexual and queer women, but also as a way to reflect the whole “inheritance” idea about faith identity so that people won’t put stereotype on faith that is often perceived as conservative.

Did it take a lot of conviction for the people to collaborate?
Angelika Levi No it didn’t. There was a huge interest in the workshop from the start, and after short time everyone wanted to tell a story. It was amazing for me to see social and religious boundaries vanish right from the beginning, while commitment and true interest in the other women’s experiences arose. Although most of them had never worked with film before, it was quite easy for everybody to get used to the technique, do the acting and transform personal experience into the medium. We developed a way of working which I had never experienced before and which you might call a non-hierarchical pulling-together beyond all difficulties.
Yulia Dwi Andriyanti I found that the film workshop process was a great way to hear and understand different experiences of diverse queer women. It stated that everyone’s story was very unique and showed the different layers on how queer women struggled for their identity and also its conflict towards society, not only in the level of state, friends, and families, but also inside the queer community itself. Those different experiences became the basic thing for me to collaborate with other queer women. It’s a learning process to hear, support and criticize both as a group and as a subculture.

What do you hope to achieve?
Stea Lim I really hope the film will help people, especially Indonesian women, to be inspired to make more films. We have such talented people here. Hopefully having this film play out in international festivals will inspire some people to go and do it too.
Laura Coppens When we started the workshop I did not have any expectations about the result. Most of the women had never worked with film before. It was an experiment and it also could have failed easily. But within a very short time the group developed a very amazing dynamic, even though most of them did not know each other before and came from very different religious and social backgrounds. Everybody was eager to learn the technique and they all helped each other, from the development of the script to the actual production of the film. So it is this collective effort that made our film possible despite many obstacles. This makes our film very special in a way. I think it’s both aesthetically engaging and politically empowering. Hopefully popular stereotypes about Muslims and LGBT-people are deconstructed and challenged.

CHILDREN OF SRIKANDI started with a workshop which lead to a collaborative film project reflecting the directors’ lived experiences as queer women in Indonesia and at the same time provides them with the means for filmic self-representation. Over a period of two years and under the guidance of filmmakers Angelika Levi and Laura Coppens, the filmmaking became a truly collective act.

Anak-AnakSrikandi | Indonesia/ Germany/ Switzerland 2012 | 73 min | 16:9 | HDCAM

www.childrenofsrikandi.com