'The Look of Silence' is able to have a wide public release, although still not in cinemas. It's distributed by two government bodies, the National Human Rights Commission and the Jakarta Arts Council.
Yes, it was difficult - making 'The Act of Killing' in particular was a very lonely process. No one really believed in it until very close to the end. But it was also a sanctuary. I was working in obscurity.
I'm a big admirer of S21, and I really also like Rithy Panh's work in general.
I think it's a great pity in the Anglophone world that we conflate cinema verite and Direct Cinema; they're, in fact, ontological opposites. In Direct Cinema, we create a fictional reality with characters and pretend we're not that.
I don't think there's a morally perfect way to do anything in life, but I'm not a filmmaker who tries to hide my mess.
I think Direct Cinema's trying to be insightful by looking at reality in a very close way while, in fact, much more is staged than we like to think. In cinema verite, it's about trying to make something invisible visible - the role of fantasy and imagination in everyday life.
From 2005 to 2010, I was exclusively shooting 'The Act of Killing' and then editing it.
In terms of so-called fly-on-the-wall documentaries, there's a claim that the camera is a transparent window into a pre-existing reality. What really is happening is that the film crew and the subjects are collaborating to simulate a reality in which they pretend the camera is not present.
Once you recognize that all documentaries are performance, it's not a matter of 'if' they should be performance. They are performance, and they are performance precisely where people are playing themselves.
I first went to Indonesia in 2001 for six months. I was to help a community of plantation workers to make a film documenting and dramatizing the struggle to organize a union in the aftermath of the Suharto dictatorship.
To put it crudely, 'The Act of Killing' would blast open the space for the more delicate film, 'The Look of Silence,' to do its work.
I wanted to resist in 'The Look of Silence' making a film that ends with any kind of positive hope I feel in human rights documentaries dealing with human survivors.
Films can't change the society; they can simply open the space for the discussion which can lead to social change and can start new forms of social activism.
I still receive very regular death threats that make it impossible for me to return to Indonesia. I think I could get in, but I don't think I could get out again.
I came across the Indonesian genocide in 2001, when I found myself making a film in a community of survivors. They were plantation workers, and it turned out they were struggling to organize a union.
My background is in filmmaking, and my mentor is Dusan Makavejev, who combined fiction and documentary.
What I've always been most interested in is exposing the way stories and fantasies reconstitute our everyday reality. What appears to be non-fiction is not only totally mysterious, unfathomable, and strange when you really look at what it is.
My first memory of cinema is my mother taking me to see 'Silkwood,' which is about a whistleblower at a nuclear power plant.
I'm against escapist entertainment.
I don't like to eat when I watch films because it distracts me. Anything crunchy or in a wrapper is terrible.
