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Political Documentaries about Aceh by Aryo Danusiri:

Between Anthropology and Current Affairs
With the fall of President Suharto and his New Order regime in Jakarta in May 1998, it
became possible for films dealing openly and directly with controversial political issues to be
made in Indonesia and to be more openly screened. In the latter years of the New Order period in
Indonesia, the main filmmaker making documentaries that had any kind of political focus was
Garin Nugroho, who was also the only director regularly making features during the 1990s.
Since the fall of Suharto, some independent filmmakers with political concerns have emerged:
for example Lexy Junior Rambadeta, who has made films about the killings of communists in
1965, and on people who disappeared in the latter years of Suhartos New Order regime; and
Tino Saroengallo who produced a compilation documentary on the student movement in
Indonesia that helped bring Suharto down. The political work of these two directors appeared in
2002. Among the new independent filmmakers, the most effective and daring, and the first to
embark on making a major political film on a highly controversial and ongoing contemporary
issue in the post-Suharto period, has been Aryo Danusiri, who began this work in mid 1999.
Like Nugroho, who produced a feature in West Papua in 2002, Aryo Danusiri has made
films about troubled regions within Indonesia; but the area of focus of his three films has been
the strife torn province of Aceh, where a separatist struggle, led by GAM (Gerakan Aceh
Merdeka - The Aceh Freedom Movement, founded in December 1976) has been in action
intermittently since the late 1970s. A former student of anthropology at the University of
Indonesia, and for some years an associate of Nugroho at the SET workshop, Aryo Danusiri has
also worked with Nugroho in West Papua. Danusiris films on Aceh show both political and
anthropological concerns, and the directness and immediate contemporary relevance of two of
them are reminiscent of television current affairs programs, though current affairs programs,
which report critically on situations as controversial as Aceh, are generally not shown on
Indonesian television.
Danusiris first major work, The Village Goat Takes the Beating (Kameng Gampoeng
Nyang Keunong Geulawa, 1999), investigates human rights abuses perpetrated by the
Indonesian army during the DOM (Daerah Operasi Militer Area of Military Operations) period
of the 1990s, a period when the Suharto government put the army into Aceh to suppress GAM.
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The full meaning of the title is expressed by the Acehnese saying the mountain goat eats the
corn, the village goat takes the beating, for it is claimed that the killings and torture by the army
were frequently perpetrated on the villagers, rather than on GAM members.
The film was shot over month in late September and early October 1999, a little more
than a year after the end of the DOM period (DOM ended officially on 31 August 1998, about 3
months after President Suharto was forced to resign as President of Indonesia). Although 650
troops were withdrawn from Aceh at the end of DOM, shortly afterwards 300 were put back into
Aceh due to civil unrest, and by November 1998 clashes between GAM and the army were
occurring regularly.
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By mid 1999, GAM had control of a greater proportion of the countryside
than ever before. President Habibies offer of a popular referendum to the people of East Timor,
made in January 1999, only increased the demand for independence in Aceh. Students in Banda
Aceh formed the Aceh Referendum Information Centre (Sentral Informasi Referendum Aceh -
SIRA). The governor of Aceh responded by calling for a federal system in Indonesia and the
implementation of Islamic law in Aceh. On 8 November 1999, a massive protest demanding a
referendum in Aceh was held by SIRA, with over 1.5 million Acehnese coming to Banda Aceh
to express their political views. The Village Goat Takes the Beating was filmed in Aceh, just
months before this event.
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In the film, Acehnese people speak openly on camera, at length, about massacres
involving their own family members during the DOM period (a widow describes in a quite
harrowing way the execution of her husband and three sons), and of torture perpetrated on they
themselves by members of the Indonesian army (a young woman speaks of systematic torture
perpetrated on her over a period of time). Such a film could not possibly have been made during
the DOM period, and nor could such a film be made now, for since the return of the army in May
2003, the region is closed to all but embedded war correspondents. Indeed this kind of political
cinema has rarely been seen in Indonesia. Many believe that the main reason for growing support
in the late 1990s for GAMs demand for independence from Indonesia, is simply the presence of
the Indonesian army in Aceh and particularly the atrocities they have perpetrated there,
attempting to suppress GAM.
The Village Goat Takes the Beating was largely shot in the sub-district of Tiro, close to a
mountainous area where GAM members are hiding out and from where they conducted
operations. Villagers claim that they are victimized by the army not only for the actions of GAM
but because the sub-district has a name similar to that of the founder of GAM, Hasan Tiro (who
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has lived in exile in Sweden since 1983). The film contains plenty of evidence that the actions of
the army are alienating many people who may otherwise have remained neutral and would not
have supported a separatist cause.
The Village Goat Takes the Beating was financed and produced by a Jakarta based NGO,
ELSAM (Lembaga Studi dan Advokasi Masyarakat Organisation for Research and Peoples
Advocacy).
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An account of the making of the film has been provided by Aryo Danusiri in an
email to the author of this article, in response to various questions put to him:
The idea to make this documentary came at the end of 1998. I met Ifdhal Kasim
(Head of ELSAM) in connection with the commissioning of a book about
indigenous land rights. I also proposed to him to do a media campaign using a
video documentary because ELSAM had already done media campaigns using
books and newsletters. He said Would it be expensive? I explained to him that
there was a new technologydigital videowhich allowed you to achieve good
pictures with a low budget. I suggested to him that I make a film about the
horizontal and vertical conflict in Indonesia. He was interested but he said that he
would need time to find some funding for it.
One year later, around mid 1999, Ifdhal called me again and said that he
wanted me to make documentary about the conflict in Aceh. I was so happy. He
explained that he had a lot of footage of the Aceh conflict from TV, and my
project would be to edit this footage.
I suggested an alternative approach, that with almost the same low budget,
I should go to Aceh and get the point of view of the victims. I got this concept
from my knowledge of approaches taken in anthropology. He agreed and I set out
to make a documentary with the participation of the victims in Aceh, rather than
using the media reports of others.
First I wanted to make a documentary about the Village of Widows in
Aceh. but it was not possible to do that. I changed my focus and made a film
about human rights violations in Tiro. The situation in Aceh was more open than
before because at that moment the position of the military was weak.
In Tiro, I was interrogated by local police and by military at the military
station (Kodim) at the end of the period of shooting (I was there around a month).
It was a relaxed interrogation. I identified myself as a journalist from the ELSAM
newsletter, who was doing an examination of economic problem in the region
during the post-DOM era. I got assistance from a local NGO, named Koalisi NGO
HAM (NGO Coalition on Human Rights). In the films credits you can see their
name. They accompanied me for the whole period of the production of the
documentary in Aceh. We met in Banda Aceh and travelled together to Tiro in
Pidie and also to Beureunun.
I designed this documentary mainly for the campaign before the Aceh
Peoples Congress which was to be held around the end of November 1999. Also
for human rights day, which was 1 December 1999.
In December 1999 there were two public screenings: at the CCF in Jakarta
(French Cultural Centre) and in Gedung Joang in Menteng. The screening at the
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French Cultural Centre was in fact the premiere of the film. The screening in
Gedung Joang was organized by the Tim Relawan untuk Kemanusiaan (TKR)
(Volunteers for Humanity). On that occasion there was another film screened a
documentary about TKR activity. And this use of documentary for political
purposes was a real development in Indonesiaeven then it was very rare that
NGOs would use a documentary as part of their media campaign.
4
.
It is worth reiterating that while The Village Goat Takes the Beating was screened in the
independent film sector in Indonesia, and at film festivals and conferences abroad (it was
prominently featured at the Amnesty Film Festival in Amsterdam in 2001), and is well known
amongst Indonesian independent filmmakers and non-government organizations in Indonesia, it
has never been shown on Indonesian television.
Danusiris next film, Poet of the Linge Homeland (Penyair Negeri Linge, 2000), is a
documentary on Ibrahim Kabir, a didong poet from the Gayo Highlands in the central mountains
of Aceh. Didong is a dynamic oral cultural form specific to the Gayo Highlands of Central Aceh.
It involves the competitive performance of poetry between two groups. Rather than simply being
a recitation, a Didong performance includes group chanting and singing of poetry and group
movement and dance.
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Ibrahim Kabir is probably best known in Indonesia for his portrayal, in Eros Djarots film
Tjoet Nja Dhien (1988), of the eccentric and charismatic poet (addressed only as Penyair, i.e.
Poet) who is the confidant of Tjoet Nja (played by Christine Hakim), the leader of the guerilla
band fighting Dutch colonial forces in the mountains of central Aceh in the first years of the
twentieth century. But Kabir has also appeared in an important recent film, Garin Nugrohos
feature, Puisi Tak Terkuburkan (Poetry Cannot Be Concealed, 2000). This film, a dramatized
documentary reconstruction, shot in a studio in Jakarta, records Kabirs experiences as a young
man and a devout Muslim in Takengon, when, in October 1965, he was mistakenly imprisoned
as a communist along with numerous Takengon communists, both men and women, and how he
witnessed, each night over a three week period, groups of communists being taken away for
execution by Suhartos forces. The highly lyrical and poetic Puisi Tak Terkuburkan is itself a
kind of rite of mourning, and was the first major Indonesian film in the 35 years since the killing
of the communists in 1965-66 to directly address this issue of their disappearance, and to mourn
these events of October 1965 and their aftermath.
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Made shortly after Nugrohos feature, Danusiris short succinct portrait of Kabir explores
his life within its context in the lake town of Takengon: the evolution of his poetry from the
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period of his childhood; its relation to his sense of nature; the role of Didong performances and
competitions within Takengon society; the repressive political atmosphere of the period of his
youth; and particularly the importance to Kabir of the preservation of indigenous performance
forms, oral culture and rituals specific to Takengon and of the dangers confronting the survival
of such performance skills in a period where there is so much competition from technologically
and electronically reproduced media.
These two first films on Aceh by Aryo Danusiri were screened at the Margaret Mead
Festival of Film and Video in New York in November 2001, where they were introduced by
Sidney Jones of the International Crisis Group Indonesia office. In Australia they were screened
at the St Kilda Film Festival, Melbourne, in May 2001, introduced by Aryo Danusiri. Poet of the
Linge Homeland was also invited for presentation at the Royal Anthropological Institute Film
Festival held in 2000.
Aryo Danusiris most recent film, Abracadabra! (2003), was shot in Aceh between
December 2002 and March 2003, and in its immediacy and contemporary relevance is another
step towards current affairs television, although it contains elements that would interest a
documentary film-maker with an interest in anthropology, rather than a current affairs reporter,
notably its portrait of an itinerant seller of herbal medicines, who journeys in his van around
Aceh now that some peace has been temporarily restored. The film examines the situation in
Aceh that followed upon the signing of the Cessation of Hostilities Agreement between GAM
and the Indonesian army on 9 December 2002. In particular it investigates the effectiveness of
measures put in place by this agreement: the establishment in all districts of Joint Security
Committees (JSC)consisting of representatives of both the Indonesian army and of GAMto
set up of Zones of Peace and to investigate infringements to the peace agreement. Interviews
show that people living in outlying areas, where there are no public phones, are frightened to
communicate with these committees, for they have no anonymity in making these reports.
Students on a hunger strike in the capital, Banda Aceh, argue that the cessation of hostilities is
only an agreement between the army and GAM, and that the civilians, the most frequent victims
of hostilities, are not represented in this agreement. The film shows that by March 2003 the
peace agreement was breaking down. The JSC office in Takengon was burned, and refugees who
sought shelter in a mosque in Takengon describe how men (unidentified) in army fatigues
attempted to intimidate them. The film includes interviews with representatives of both the army
and GAM. It ends with the statement that on May 19, 2003, a presidential decree announced a
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military emergency in Aceh, which ended the cessation of hostilities and ordered the army to
reoccupy Aceh.
Abracadabra! has not been shown on Indonesian television, but it is a rare example of a
documentary made in Indonesia which provides alternative views on a political situation, and
questions government policy, the task of current affairs reporting. It is to be hoped that greater
openness in Indonesian society in the future might enable such films as Abracadabra! and The
Village Goat Takes the Beating to be shown on television and so to communicate suppressed
facts and alternative perspectives to a wider Indonesian public than is found only in the
alternative exhibition networks found in many places in Indonesia.
As I write, in mid June 2005, a new round of peace talks is about to begin in Helsinki
between representatives of GAM and representatives of the Indonesian government. The peace
talks are hosted by representatives from the Finnish conflict resolution group, the Crisis
Management Initiative, headed by former Finnish president, Martti Ahtisaari. The success of
these talks has become all the more urgent given the unprecedented scale of the disaster that
beset Aceh with the tsunami of 26 December 2004.

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A chronology of events in Aceh, relevant to this conflict, is found on the website of the
Australian Broadcasting Corporations television program Four Corners. Available from the
World Wide Web: < http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2003/transcripts/s936216.htm>.
Here it is also reported that in the 15 months subsequent to the end of DOM on 31 August 1998,
447 civilians and 84 members of the security forces were killed, with another 144 missing. A
transcript of the related Four Corners program on Aceh by Chris Masters (broadcast on 1
September 1903, three months after the Indonesian army returned to Aceh) is available from the
World Wide Web: <http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2003/transcripts/s936353.htm>,
accessed 3 June 2005.
2
Numerous documents of relevance to the ongoing situation in Aceh are to be found on the web.
Among these one would include Edward Aspinall and Harold Crouch, "The Aceh Peace Process:
Why It Failed; Human Rights Watch, Indonesia: the War in Aceh; and the reports on Aceh
by the International Crisis Group (see bibliography and further reading for details for all these).
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The address of ELSAM on the World Wide Web is: <http: //www.elsam.or.id>
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personal communication to the author, 20 February 2004.
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. See M. Junus Melalatoa, Didong, Pentas Kreativitas Gayo (Jakarta: Yayasan Obor Indonesia,
2001) and John R. Bowen, Sumatran Politics and Poetics: Gayo History, 1900-1989 (New
Haven and London: Yale University Press (1991).
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Puisi Tak Terkuburkan is discussed in some detail in Anne Rutherford, "Poetics and Politics in
Garin Nugroho's The Poet," Senses of Cinema [online], no. 17, Nov-Dec (2001). Available from
World Wide Web: <http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/01/17/poet.html> accessed 30
June 2005
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Bibliography and Further Reading
On Aceh
Aspinall, Edward, and Harold Crouch. The Aceh Peace Process: Why It Failed. Policy Studies
series. Washington D.C.: East-West Center Washington, 2003. Available from the World
Wide Web: <http://www.indonesia-house.org/focus/aceh/2003/12/EWC_Aceh_peace_
process_why_it_failed.pdf>, accessed 17 June 2005.
Kell, Tim. The Roots of the Acehnese Rebellion 1989-1992, Cornell: Modern Indonesia Project.
Ithaca, 1995.
Australian Broadcasting Corporation (Four Corners): "Aceh Chronology." Available from the
World Wide Web: <http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2003/transcripts/
s936216.htm>, accessed 3 June 2005.
Human Rights Watch. Indonesia: The War in Aceh. New York: Human Rights Watch, 2001.
Available from the World Wide Web: <http://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/aceh/>,
accessed 2 June 2005.
International Crisis Group (ICG) reports on Indonesia. Available from the World Wide Web:
<http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=2959&l=1>, accessed 17 June 2005.
Sukma, Rizal. Security Operations in Aceh: Goals, Consequences and Lessons. Policy Studies
series. Washington, D.C.: East-West Center, 2004. Available from the World Wide Web:
<http://www.indonesia-house.org/focus/aceh/2003/12/EWC_Aceh_peace_process
_why_it_failed.pdf>, accessed 10 June 2005.
On Traditional Performance in Aceh
Bowen, John R. Sumatran Politics and Poetics: Gayo History, 1900-1989. New Haven and
London: Yale University Press, 1991.
Melalatoa, M. Junus. Didong, Pentas Kreativitas Gayo. Jakarta: Yayasan Obor Indonesia, 2001.
On Related Films
Hanan, David. "Political Documentaries and Essay Films by Garin Nugroho in Late New Order
and Post Suharto 'Reformasi' Indonesia." Spectator: The University of Southern
California Journal of Film and Television Criticism 24: 2 Screening South East Asia
Edition (2004).
Rutherford, Anne. "Poetics and Politics in Garin Nugroho's The Poet." Senses of Cinema, no. 17,
Nov-Dec (2001). Available from the World Wide Web: http://www.sensesofcinema.com/
contents/ 01/17/ poet.html>, accessed 3 June 2005.
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Filmography of Aryo Danusiri Films about Aceh
The Village Goat Takes the Beating (Kameng Gampoeng Nyang Keunong Geulawa, 1999),
produced by ELSAM; Official Selection Amnesty Film Festival, Amsterdam 2001, and
for the Margaret Mead Festival of Film and Video, New York, November 2001.
The Poet of the Linge Homeland (Penyair Negeri Linge, 2000), produced by the SET Film
Workshop; Official Selection Royal Anthropological Institute Film Festival 2000.
Abrakadabra! (2003), produced by the Tifa Foundation; Nomination for best documentary at the
Jakarta International Film Festival, 2003, and the Indonesian Film Festival, 2004.
For a more complete and regularly dated filmography, and a screenings track, please visit:
www.ragam.org