JAKARTA SCREAMS: HORROR & EXPLOITATION CINEMA OF INDONESIA

During the 1980’s the field of Indonesian cinema was undergoing significant changes that would pave the way for what is now known as the golden age of Indonesian exploitation cinema. After the brutal anti-communist purges of the 1960’s under the iron-fist of the archipelago’s strongman and dictator Suharto, the Indonesian working class and blue-collar laborers sought an escape from an oppressive reality.

In JAKARTA SCREAMS we will review the new Indonesian escapist cinema that ultimately delivered them from their authoritarian reality. This new style of regional filmmaking provided the high adrenaline violence and sexuality of Western cinema hybridized with the region’s traditional folkloric and mythological stories, archetypes and themes resulting in a form of cinema unlike any other in Southeast Asia or the globe. While some theorists claimed this form of filmmaking was only a bread and circus to maintain the control held by Suharto’s political regime, others claimed that the filmmakers exercised subversive symbolism, depicting government figures as the criminals and villains ultimately punished and destroyed in these epics for the small cinemas of villages and small towns.

This prolific period is the largest footprint Indonesian filmmakers have made to this day in the course of film history. Its surrealist fantastical horror films populated with shape-shifting martial arts warriors, demon-sorceresses and serpent-women invite the viewer the explore the depths of its sensual, absurd, tropical cinema.

MYSTICS IN BALI
1981, Dir. H. Tut Djalil
Indonesia. 86 min.

SUNDAY, AUGUST 2 – 5PM
THURSDAY, AUGUST 6 – 10PM
TUESDAY, AUGUST 18 – 10PM
SATURDAY, AUGUST 29 – 7:30PM

In H. Tut Djalil’s Indonesian horror-exploitation classic MYSTICS OF BALI, American anthropologist Catherine Keene seeks out training in the ways of the leyak, a cult of demonic Balinese sorceresses imbued with powerful and ancient magic. Having been seduced by the promise of mastery in the ancient tradition of leyak sorcery however, Cathy becomes trapped in the form of a penangalan, a floating disembodied vampiric head, spine and entrails with a fondness for devouring pregnant women and fetuses. With Cathy in the thrall of the leyak queen and unable to return to human form her lover Mahendra consults a local shaman to undo the leyak’s subversion and restore Cathy to her human form.

Djalil’s MYSTICS OF BALI,results in a compelling hybrid of Western cinematic style and the impromptu style of Indonesian cinema. Using non-actors and unconventional narrative structure, maestro of the Indonesian horror canon H. Tjut Djalil brings a campy fusion of American-style b-movie horror and action and Indonesian folktale to the screen resulting in a cannibalistic jaunt through the mountains of rural Bali.

LADY TERMINATOR
1989, Dir. H. Tjut Djalil
Indonesia. 82 min.

MONDAY, AUGUST 3 – 10PM
SUNDAY, AUGUST 9 – 7:30PM
SUNDAY, AUGUST 23 – 7:30PM
FRIDAY, AUGUST 28 – 7:30PM

H. Tjut Djalil’s LADY TERMINATOR is based on the Javanese legend of Nyai Roro Kidul or the South Sea Queen, an enchanting siren-like figure that was said to be not only a powerful courtesan to the sultans of the islands but also a naga spirit, a Southeast Asian snake nymph, imbued with powerful and deadly magic.

Upon a research gathering assignment on a remote Indonesian island an American anthropological student becomes possessed by the spirit of the South Sea Queen, a long deceased witch with a powerful sexual endowment fatal to the men she seduces. Determined to rise again and seek revenge against the great grand-daughter of the man who stole her serpentine magic and return to her former power, the South Sea Queen seizes the body of this unsuspecting tourist in a strange land as her new host and begins wreaking chaos throughout the urban landscape of Jakarta. Leaving a trail of male bodies in her wake she is unstoppable until she meets local police detective Max McNeil.

In Djalil’s LADY TERMINATOR the classic myth of the South Sea Queen is brought into the context of the exploitation cinema genre’s that animated cinema and filmmaking in 1980’s Indonesia. Djalil’s twisted mash-up of American action and adventure films, LADY TERMINATOR, Indonesian folktale and martial arts b-movie genres results in something familiar and yet altogether unique, wonderful and strange.

THE WARRIOR
1981, Dir. Sisworo Gautama Putra
Indonesia. 92 min.

SUNDAY, AUGUST 2 – 7:30PM
SATURDAY, AUGUST 15 – 10PM
MONDAY, AUGUST 24 – 10PM
TUESDAY, AUGUST 25 – 7:30PM

In Sisworo Gautama Putra’s THE WARRIOR, Jaka Sembung is the champion of the province of Kandanghaur against the colonial oppression of the Dutch imperial machine in the Indonesian archipelago. Played with swagger and conviction by Barry Prima, after the title character Jaka Sembung leads a small uprising against a forced labor edict by the Dutch imperial forces, a local Dutch commander seeks to quell the rebellion through challenging Jaka Sembung to a contest of strength. Jaka Sembung overcomes this and a great many other challenges through the aid of traditional folk magic and his will to resist, including treacherous villagers, spies and the soldiers of the Dutch imperial army. After facing brutal torture and near defeat Jaka Sembung is transformed by his master into a boar to escape his captors and so he may hide before he leads his final assault against their imperial overlords.

Sisworo Gautama Putra’s THE WARRIOR is a notable masterpiece of Indonesian exploitation cinema particularly in that it is one of only a few films to address the brutality and trauma of Dutch occupation, albeit with a light heart and a great deal of homage in equal measure both to Indonesian folk tradition and to the martial arts films of Bruce Lee.

Akounak Tedalat Taha Tazoughai
AKA Rain the Color of Blue with a little Red in it
Dir. Christopher Kirkley
Niger/United States
2015, 75 min
In Tamashek with English subtitles

SATURDAY, AUGUST 8 – 7:30PM
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 12 – 10PM
THURSDAY, AUGUST 20 – 7:30PM
SATURDAY, AUGUST 29 – 10PM

In 1979 Roger Corman wanted a disco movie, so his staff made sure that he was the only one on the production with a script that said “Disco High School.” Two weeks before shooting, director Allan Arkush broke it to his producer that everyone else’s scripts were called Rock ‘n’ Roll High School, and the Ramones were a punk band. “Why can’t they be disco,” Corman asked. Arkush responded, “You can’t blow up a high school to disco music.”

Since at least 1956, when Bill Haley & His Comets starred in Rock Around the Clock, the musician-centered rock drama has been one of the most versatile vehicles for pop proselytizing. There have been many tweaks to the Rock Around the Clock formula—musical genres, locales, vérité aesthetics—and Prince‘s Purple Rain might be called the capitalist variant. In 1975 the New York Time’s Vincent Canby famously asked, “What is Jaws but a big-budget Roger Corman film,” and by 1984 Corman’s operation had effectively been steamrolled by appropriation of exploitation formula’s amid Hollywood’s economies of scale. Purple Rain is also a big-budget Corman film, but despite its unabashedly generic construction it towers above other rock dramas as a true watershed: the genre’s first steroidally capitalistic Hollywood blockbuster.

So, it’s at least patently funny that the first fiction feature ever produced in the Tuareg language, which is spoken by about 1 million people in parts of Algeria, Libya, Mali, and Niger, is nominally a remake of Purple Rain. Or, sort of: there is no Tuareg word for “purple,” so Akounak Tedalat Taha Tazoughai actually translates to “rain the color of blue with a little red in it.” Constructed around the personality of naturally charismatic lead Mduo Moctar and set in the world of Tuareg guitar music in Agadez, Niger—most internationally recognized for the work of Bombino (who is, come to think of it, signed to a subsidiary of Prince’s former record label)—Akounak gushes with pure, earnest enthusiasm for its sweded source material. Shrouded in mystery and kicking up desert sands on his purple motorcycle while riding between home recording studios and guitar parties, Moctar is a brilliant and even more likable analog to Prince’s “The Kid.” Whereas Purple Rain is premised about calculated obfuscation of ostensibly autobiographical detail—I learned as much about Minneapolis and Prince from Purple Rain as I did string theory—Akounak‘s filmmakers take a Rouch-lite approach to their collaboratively produced riff on social mores, religiosity, and third world distribution models.

Make no mistake: Akounak Tedalat Taha Tazoughai works as blissful, effervescent entertainment, and it’s beautifully shot and edited like a fiction film even as its DIY production and documentary ethos shine through. Like the conglomerate clockwork strategies underpinning Purple Rain, it will make you a believer and a fan. —Jon Dieringer (Screen Slate)

In the 1980s, Sweden’s youth culture was carried away by Bruce Lee, THE KARATE KID, and hip-hop, ushering a new wave of counter-culture and youth rebellion. Combined with Sweden’s own version of the “video nasties,” which elevated otherwise rote actioners to must-see status (among them Mats Helge Olsson’s essential, homegrown breakout VHS hit NINJA MISSION), delinquency was on the rise. And just as it swept midwestern American mini-malls, taekwondo made the juvenile offenders’ feet their weapons of choice.

The new subculture, known as “kickers,” was immortalized in the most unlikely of fashions: STOCKHOLMSNATT, a highly polished feature docudrama financed by Sweden’s state-owned telephone company and made for compulsory viewing to discourage payphone sabotage. This was a big mistake: a trend that most people weren’t even aware of went national, and the young hood stars, who played fictionalized versions of themselves, became icons. Years later, in 1993, SÖKARNA, featuring similar cast members, extended the core essence of STOCKHOLMSNATT into a more mature, sex, drugs, and violence-fueled portrait of Stockholm on the brink of full-on social collapse.

While one might be tempted to imagine Sweden as a bunch of blonde haired, blue eyed babes in a cultural bubble, the kicker films are unique in their frank acknowledgement of social problems, racial tensions, immigration and transatlantic cultural (re-)reappropriation. They’re a thrilling window into an obscure international subculture and, at the very least, unbelievably entertaining—if not always intentionally. And as Swedish Sensationsfilms author Daniel Eckeford argues, they represent the culmination of decades of violence and smut in Swedish films before relaxed censorship and the floodgates of the internet gave young punks less to kick back against.

STOCKHOLMSNATT
aka STOCKHOLM NIGHT/THE KING OF KUNGSAN
Dir. Staffan Hildebrand, 1987
Sweden, 45 min.
In Swedish with English subtitles

FRIDAY, AUGUST 7 – 10:00 PM
MONDAY, AUGUST 10 – 10:00 PM
SATURDAY, AUGUST 22 – 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, AUGUST 27 – 7:30 PM

STOCKHOLMSNATT is a true gem: a super stylized, state-supported 1987 quasi-docu-drama made for compulsory viewing in Swedish schools and designed to wean teens off a generally non-pervasive wave of random jumpkicking crimes—a non-trend that the movie then inadvertently popularized, making unlikely folk heroes out of its juvenile delinquent stars and christening Sweden’s “kicker” subculture.

Martial arts outlaw Paolo Roberti, already a notorious youth criminal, was hired to play himself as a young Italian Swede struggling with identity and feelings otherness. And like a lot of lost teens, he works this out through delinquency and violence, uniquely in this case by jumpkicking stuff like windows, people, and payphones, and really I guess just anything he can ram his foot into. His best friend, Quincy Delight Jones III (Quincy Delight Jones III, son of Quincy Jones and Swedish supermodel Ulla Andersson), tries to steer him on the right course, partially through the power of righteous positive synth jams. Parties, beatdowns, smash-n-grabs, teen romance, and a whole lotta jumpkicking ensue. Will any lessons be learned? Yes: jumpkicking stuff is awesome.

Transcending national borders, STOCKHOLMSNATT is the most overwhelmingly 80’s object ever made. It’s seriously like if Billys Idol and Squier had a jumpkicking movie baby. The music and fashion is so incredibly on-point, and it’s the kind of movie where when something sad happens there’s an epic guitar wail and suddenly Paolo is standing in a stairwell in the Kungsträdgården metro station while his long beautiful hair is backlit by neon and random fog rolls down the stairs (cue progressive baby-to-troubled-teen photo montage). It’s like this gritty glossy punchdance-fueled neon-neo-realism aesthetic filtered through badly failed corporate anti-vandalism propaganda. There’s even Swedish beatboxing and rapping. If anything, the seamless synthesizing of hair metal, synth pop, and hip-hop is a major feat in itself. Actually, maybe this is just a feature-length expansion of the Aerosmith/Run-DMC “Walk This Way” video, only mixed with the Michael Jackson video where he transforms from panther form and smashes a car.

I don’t want to spoil anything but I seriously have to tell you about this one part where Paolo and his hoodrat friends smash a window to steal a diamond-studded jean jacket with tiger-print lapels and when they’re running down the street and the cops try to stop them Paolo just JUMP KICKS one. Hahahahahahaha. AND THE COP DOESN’T EVEN TRY TO REACT. He’s just as stunned as we are that this curly haired punk is ramming his foot into his chest. Hahahaha. This movie makes jumpkicking look seriously fucking cool.

SÖKARNA
Dir. Daniel Fridell & Peter Cartriers, 1993
Sweden, 108 min.
In Swedish with English subtitles

FRIDAY, AUGUST 7 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, AUGUST 16 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 19 – 10:00 PM
SATURDAY, AUGUST 22 – 10:00 PM

Set in the world of teen delinquency, crime, drug addiction, race conflict, and violence, SÖKARNA (literally “The Searchers” or “The Seekers”) follows a couple of low-rent hoods weaned on nascent Swedish hip-hop and Taekwondo whose sole virtue is that they enjoy beating the shit out of skinheads. Existence is bleak: but after leader Jocke is sentenced to jail time for a violent mugging, life goes off the rails when he reenters society with some new friends. Jocke plunges into a world of high-stakes robberies, violent shakedowns and mob deals while smoking, snorting, shooting, and freebasing his way straight to Hell.

SÖKARNA is considered by author Daniel Ekeroth to be the explosive culmination of the trajectory of Swedish “sensationsfilms” that began in the early 1950s. At once horrifyingly disturbing and giddily cheesy, the film is a wickedly warped portrait of society on the brink set to an awesome/awful backdrop of Neneh Cherry-style Euro R&B. (Although controversial Swedish G-Funk classic “Shoot the Racist” by Infinite Mass is actually pretty hardcore. Appropriately, the movie does begin with Jocke throwing a neo-Nazi under a subway train.) SÖKARNA is further noted for its unique tone that elevates urban realism into something slightly suggesting dystopian science fiction: it’s like the Swedish BASKETBALL DIARIES with a tincture of CLASS OF 1984.

Adding to the film’s legend is the incredible fact that in 1996, nearly three years after it’s release, amateur leading man Liam Norberg—who also has a small role in STOCKHOLMSNATT and had run a Taekwondo shop with star Paolo Roberti—was convicted of of the largest cash heist in Swedish history, which had taken place in 1991. (There are undeniable shades of Scorsese’s GOODFELLAS in both this historic real-life crime and the Lucchese/Lufthansa heist as well as the films’ aesthetic exuberance.) In fact, alongside unbelievable state subsidies, Norberg’s stolen money had partially financed SÖKARNA’s production. For his role in this legendary heist, Norberg and his collaborator received whopping five year prison sentences. The third accomplice, Dragomir Mršić, recently consulted and provided his voice and likeness to the popular video Swedish video game PAYDAY 2 and even had a decent sized role in Doug Liman’s EDGE OF TOMORROW. Way to keep it real, Sweden. Norberg, meanwhile, is back in the national spotlight as an outspoken born-again Christian.