Documentary and Web Series Panel

Exploring women filmmakers in documentaries and web series

The percentages of women working in Indonesia as directors on documentary films reached historic highs in 2017-2019. Women working in this role on the lists of Indonesian Oscars (Festival Film Indonesia) experienced a tremendous increase from on the average 1 director in 2007-2016 to 5 directors in 2017- 2019. It indicates that 2017-2019 were years of change for female directors. Despite these gains, it is important to note that documentary film production employed more than twice as many men as women (64,86% vs. 23,5%) in key directing roles. This study provides employment figures for feature-length as well as short documentary film competitions from 2006 through 2019 at Indonesian Oscars. Data collection in this research was carried out through archive studies, observations, and interviews.
The results of this study indicate that the gap is based on various factors for instance, the domination of patriarchal stereotypes; lack of networking which affects access and employment opportunities; competitive struggle to secure funding up to other economic factors; unlimited work space and work time; women’s commitment towards family and work; work safety factor; film release and publicity issues; and fewer interest in film production; thus making Indonesian women reluctant or more difficult to enter the documentary film industry. Women were most prominent in producer and director role, but concluded that the vast majority of key production personnel in the Indonesian documentary film industry are remain men. Overall, while it is clear that there has been some progress for female directors recently, it is imperative that some actions can be develop to increase the number.

Keywords: Women and Film, Documentary, Indonesian Film

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This paper intends to see women in documentary filmmaking in Indonesia. The scope of this paper is filmmaking on post-1998 era, where the situation of filmmaking has changed due to easing in filmmaking license requirements in Indonesia that came with political changes in 1998.
I acquired the data in this paper from a research for the doctoral thesis in the Department of Film Studies, King’s College London. In that research, I explored documentary film culture in Indonesia after 1998. The doctoral research was focused on three non-profit institutions engaged in documentary film in Indonesia, namely the Indonesian Documentary Film Center (In-docs), Yogyakarta Documentary Film Festival (FFD) and Watchdoc Documentary Makers. The method I use is observation of some of the activities of these organizations over a period of time, and interviews with some of the organizers of these institutions and their filmmakers.

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In 2020, the Asosiasi Dokumentaris Nusantara (Archipelago Documentary Association) is running the Recording Pandemic Program, a movement of 300 documentary filmmaker documenting the significant social and cultural changes of the Indonesian people in the face of a pandemic. Tonny Trimarsanto, chairman of the Association, said that this program at least represented an audio-visual way of speaking which is very rich in Indonesian culture. Interestingly, the works of female filmmakers who took part in the program show their closeness to their themes, regions and the potential to generate achievements. The number of female filmmakers participating in the Pandemic Record program is still very limited, but this has not dampened their desire to work. The selection of female filmmakers in the TVRI Pandemic Record Omnibus program is an evidence of the achievements and potential of female filmmakers. These potentials include “multitasking”, having a more feminist point of view, feeling and instinct, as well as being close to the themes raised.

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One of the new and popular formats for Indonesian directors in the last decade is webseries, or webisodes. By focusing on two webisodes directed by Sammaria Simanjuntak, an Indonesian female director, in this paper I intend to discuss the significance of free webisodes and digital platforms for Indonesian female directors. This paper will also discuss some examples of the Sammaria webisodes. At the end I will also try to give a small conclusion about the existence and visibility of female directors on the YouTube digital platform in relation to their career progression in the Indonesian film industry. YouTube as a space for digital video has grown from being a grassroots platform for independent, low-cost and themed films, to becoming one of the main channels of distribution and experimentation space for short films. With the increasing internet access for communication service users in Indonesia, YouTube is still a popular platform today.