My Current Media Project

It's been a year since I posted something in this blog. I currently working on my thesis which is not far from television; film. Actuality, film is not my most passionate subject to study. But having written my undergraduate thesis, I fall in love with semiotics and representation. In such cryptic's Da Vince Code kind-of-way, that is the best part of moving image I think; images deconstruction and analysis on spectator's reception.

The film that I have chosen for my research subject is Blind Pig Who Wants to Fly. Reason? Daring surrealist film which was first produced in independent way. Then again, the issue this film brings is sensitive and is personal which I admired.

Below is my research proposal:
Before studying in Master of Media Culture, film was always my second interest after television. There is nothing interesting about the industry which for me is very predictable, dividing their typicality between the mainstream and the art house production. The mainstream one always-become commercial success, and the art house production only find its small number of audience in alternative spaces.

The condition of art house films in Indonesia is no different than the typicality of global film industry itself. Other than the awards they won, the alternative art house films mostly failed reaching audience due to the failure to communicate with audience.

However, the release of Blind Pig Who Wants to Fly in 2008 was a different story. The film that first was financed independently from 2006 has long been anticipated by Indonesia’s cultural workers-and online community forum members. It is the feature debut from Indonesia’s respected short film director that won his reputation after his film; Kara Daughter of a Tree was admitted to Cannes Film Festival in 2005.

Blind Pig Who Wants to Fly is not only the Indonesia’s famous short film director first feature film. In many occasions he also admitted that the film is his most personal film. It is the film that tells the conflict of being Chinese minority in Indonesia. Some scenes in the film were the director’s childhood experience and draw the very sensitive question to Indonesia’s racist community; how it feels if you are being hated for things that you cannot change about yourself? The shape of your eyes and the red-dish skin that make you look so similar with pig?

In order to introduce his film, the director, Edwin without last name, used many spaces that the world of computer mediated communication has offers. He opened MySpace account for Blind Pig Who Wants to Fly, he used YouTube to feature his trailer of Blind Pig Who Wants to Fly, and Indonesia’s most popular online community forum, Kaskus.com, to spread the news on his film.

Nevertheless, despite the various ways Edwin used to promote his independent feature film, he has stated in various occasions that Blind Pig Who Wants to Fly is his personal project. He did not expect the movie to be shown in major theater network and watched by million viewers. He realized that he put many sensitive subjects that most Indonesians avoid to discuss.

Blind Pig Who Wants to Fly is Edwin much anticipated debut, yet despite that it might have been the first Indonesian indie film which previewed in a theater full of audience, most of the audiences including Edwin’s circuit of friends; the Indonesia’s filmmakers, cultural workers and activists, claimed that the film is slow paced and difficult to understand.

Despite the not so impressive feedbacks, Blind Pig Who Wants to Fly continued to write his story; the film won the Critics Award at the 2009 Rotterdam International Film Festival in January, and in the falls 2009, Blind Pig Who Wants to Fly was shown in the Museum of Modern Arts, New York. No less than New York Time’s film critic, Mike Hale, praised the movie for its courage telling the minority side of story.

I would first approach the narrative of the film through Saussurian-structuralist framework. Reflecting from the semiotics analysis, I will draw the lines to get to the conclusion on Blind Pig Who Wants to Fly miscommunication. Is the poor acceptance coming from the film’s content on minority issue or simply because the screenwriter/director’s lack of narrative skill?

If semiotics is the language of representation for visual communication (Barthes, 1957), I am hopeful from the anlysis I will able to answer on; why the film that won international attention could not won praises from its own people? Does the film can be considered a communication failure, and why?