The Sky Roared in Busan - Blog

11 May The Sky Roared in Busan

Posted at 12:09h in Our Story by Studio Antelope 0 Comments

Hello! We are just coming back from South Korea for Busan International Short Film Festival. As we announced before, our short film ‘The Day The Sky Roared’ is selected in Landscape of Asian Short section. We have two screenings during the festival. Unfortunately we could only come to the second screening, because we are also participating in British Council Script Room programme in Jakarta days before.

The questions and answers (they called it guest visit) session is so nice and warm. In 10 minutes, Jason Iskandar, the director of the film, answering three questions from the audience. And as the translator said to Jason during the session, we’ve got a lot of intelligent audience that night. Here are the questions that were asked by the audience.

Audience 1: Your film is very interesting. It is very intriguing to see the film divided into two parts. The first part was in black and white, and the second part was in colour. What kind of statement you are trying to make?

Jason Iskandar: In Indonesia, we are divided into two period of time: new order era before 1998 and post new order era after 1998. In new order era, we live under authoritarian President Soeharto and we don’t have freedom in many aspects. After the riot and the downfall of Soeharto, we suddenly get the democratic freedom. But the problem is, we only pretend that we have the freedom. Actually we are not going anywhere. It is true that we are moving forward, but we are facing the same problem. We only pretending to be colorful. That’s why I put a giant wall at the end of the film. And that’s also why I divide the film into black and white & color.

Audience 2: I would like to ask about the structure of your film. Your film focuses more on mood & atmosphere, but I could see there is almost no structured story in your film. Why did you choose this kind of structure?

Jason Iskandar: This is a film about memories. I remember a lot of things when facing the riot, but it’s just a small moments and they are all scattered. That’s how I remember the event, unstructured and scattered. Therefore, I think the film has to be unstructured and non-linear, because that’s how memories work, right?

Audience 3: I can see there are some elements from genre film in your short film, like thriller and science fiction. Why do you put that kind of genre element in your film?

Jason Iskandar: Like I said before, this is a film about memory. I was just 7 years old at that time. As a 7 years old boy, the riot feels like very strange. It is feels like a science fiction, but in the same time you also realize that the event is actually happening. So somehow it feels like a combination between science fiction and realism. That’s why I put that kind of element into this film.

Here are some pics from the awarding ceremony: