13 May 2014
Indonesian Film Festival Starting at Bahrain National Museum
An Indonesian film festival will be held at the Bahrain National Museum next week.Three movies are expected to be screened over three days, from Tuesday to Thursday at 7pm. Entrance is free and the films will be subtitled in English.
On Tuesday, May 13th a screening of Habibie and Ainun will be held – a biopic of Indonesia’s third president Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie and his devotion to his wife. The film is based on a book of the same title. This is a biographical movie telling the love story of the former Indonesian president, B. J. Habibie and his one and only wife, the late Hasri Ainun Besari (later Ainun Habibie) watched by more than 4.7 million viewers. Adapted from a book with the same title, written by Habibie himself, this movie takes the audience into a roller-coaster of emotion revolving around their life. Going back to the days when they were together in high school, the movie portrays further their life onwards up to the day Ainun passed away, which means this include the day they got married, moved to Germany, and then went back to Indonesia and the day Habibie became the vice president and later, the 3rd president of Indonesia.
The following day Wednesday May 14th Kaskar Pelangi (Rainbow Troops) will be shown which is adapted from the popular novel by Andrea Hirata, and is set in Belitung.
Indeed, 'Laskar Pelangi': The audacity of hopeLaskar Pelangi (The Rainbow Troops) is a 2008 Indonesian film adapted from the popular Indonesian novel by Andrea Hirata. The movie follows a group of 10 schoolboys and their two inspirational teachers as they struggle with poverty and develop hopes for the future in Gantong Village on the farming and tin mining island of Belitung off the east coast of Sumatra. The film is the highest grossing in Indonesian box office history, and won a number of local and international awards. The Rainbow Troops was a 2008 Indonesian film adapted from the popular Indonesian novel by Andrea Hirata. The movie is about an inspiring teacher and her 10 students in the poverty-stricken Kampung Gantong in Belitong. The poor condition of their school building does not dampen their high spirits and hopes for a better future
Finally, on Thursday May 15th, film lovers can watch Pengejar Angin (The Wind Chaser) which revolves around Dapunta, an 18-year-old boy who is locally renowned for his running ability and wants to attend university.Pengejar Angin (The Wind Chaser) is a 2011 film by Indonesian director Hanung Bramantyo and starring Qausar Harta Yudana, Mathias Muchus, and Lukman Sardi. It tells of a young man's efforts to be able to attend university through becoming an athlete at the 2011 SEA Games. Funded in part by the government of South Sumatra, where the Games were held, the film raised criticism for its use as an advertisement.
The Indonesian film festival is part of the Kingdom’s of Bahrain celebrations of Manama as Asian Tourism City 2014, and the strenuous efforts deployed by the Ministry of Culture to support and promote artistic life in the Asian countries. Bahrain has succeeded to find the necessary means of fostering efforts to enhance close interaction and concrete cooperation between Asian countries in the context of the bilateral interfaith and intercultural dialogues at the government and civil society level for the furtherance of peace, tolerance, and respect for religious and cultural diversity.
