The Act of Killing director has returned to the scene of the crime, writes Helen Barlow
Softly-spoken Joshua Oppenheimer is hardly the gung-ho kind of film-maker we might expect to make a hard-hitting documentary about the Indonesian genocide of 1965-66 when more than a million people were slain in an anti-communist purge. In fact the 40-year-old studied philosophy before taking a degree in film-making at Harvard and it shows in his films.
But now he's made two.
His Oscar-nominated 2012 feature The Act of Killing, which also received the documentary prize in the British (Bafta) and European Film awards, was a poetic and blackly humorous account - from the perpetrator's point of view - of the mass killing.
Oppenheimer had always intended to make a film about Indonesian people living in the aftermath and has done so in his follow-up, The Look of Silence.
"I want you to pause and listen and look very, very closely at the silence that follows atrocity," Oppenheimer says.
While recounting some background from his previous film, he now focuses on a family still reeling from the murder of their son, Ramli. He takes the point of view of the younger son, Adi, a 45-year-old optometrist who uses his profession as a means to interview the perpetrators.
"I met Adi over a decade ago when his brother's death was synonymous in that village with virtually the entire genocide," Oppenheimer says . "Ramli's murder had witnesses, which was highly unusual. Adi was born after the killings and didn't have the same fear as he'd never experienced the trauma. But he would look at the footage I'd bring back and finally understand why his family was afraid. It was he who suggested, 'Let's meet the perpetrators rather than the survivors'."
Joshua Oppenheimer. Photo / Supplied
As with The Act of Killing, The Look of Silence has continued to win prizes after its Jury Prize and Critics Award in Venice last year. Only this time Indonesians are able to see the film. On November 10, 2000 people came to the official and public premiere of the film in Jakarta, and in December community screenings were held. The Act of Killing had been widely seen too, though by download.
"Initially, people watched it in secret and publicly an Indonesian version was available for free download," Oppenheimer says. "It's been downloaded millions of times. The Indonesian Government did everything they could to ignore the film until they finally felt they could no longer do so when it was nominated for an Academy Award. They said they know what happened in 1965, that it was wrong and that it was a crime against humanity and how we will have truth and reconciliation and justice, but they will deal with it in their own time.
"It was a reluctant admission that what happened was wrong and I cannot overstate how important that was, because until that time the Government maintained that the genocide was something to be celebrated as patriotic and heroic."
Cinema, Oppenheimer insists, can make a difference. Because of the sensitive nature of the material, The Look of Silence was filmed before The Act of Killing was released. "Once the film premiered then I would no longer be able to safely return," the director says.
Not that it was safe during filming either. In the credits the Indonesian crew remain anonymous, while sensitive scenes with Adi interviewing the perpetrators were filmed with only the Danish producer Signe Byrge Srensen and cinematographer Lars Skree.
"We'd only have a mobile phone with the numbers of our Danish and American embassies in case we needed help," Oppenheimer says. "We had two getaway cars so we could leave this location and change cars immediately. In some cases Adi's family were on standby at the airport to leave at a moment's notice. They have since been relocated to an undisclosed community thousands of kilometres away. At least his children have better schools now. It was a matter of making the best of a terrible situation."
He commends Adi for putting himself on the line. "The tightrope that the film walks is down to Adi's own decency, dignity, gentleness, patience and empathy. In the final confrontation of the film we're with a family I'd spent many months talking to about the dead husband's role in the massacres. It had never occurred to me that they might deny everything, that they might pretend they knew nothing about it in front of me.
"Adi went to do that scene knowing what they should admit as he was from the same village and the widow was in fact a teacher in his elementary school. He wanted to know how they would live together and build a life going forward, but the family denied everything.
"I pushed the family because I was profoundly shocked and disappointed and angry. I made them watch yet another clip, when Adi just said, 'Let it go'. I decided to leave that in the film even if it's peculiar to have this divergence so late in a film. It creates a mess but we felt it powerfully expressed the mess that is inevitable."
Who: Joshua Oppenheimer What:The Look of Silence, the sequel to The Act of Killing Where: New Zealand International Film Festival in Auckland and Wellington When: Auckland SkyCity Theatre - Wednesday July 22, 4.15pm and Sunday July 26, 3.45pm; Wellington Paramount - Thursday August 6, 8.45pm and Friday August 7, 1.30pm
