Experimenting with the essay form and wayang in contemporary Indonesian filmmaking : when shadows are grey

Abstract

The essay film has a long and diverse history with a literary heritage that of the essay form. The term ‘essay’ often signifies a range of different categories of writing – from the literary writings to the academic essay. The essay form is both flexible and wide-ranging making it challenging to define what constitutes the form. Essays are continuously going through the process of definition. The question of what an essay film is will be central to the written as well as the practical component of this dissertation. This inquiry is important for the creation of alternative forms of filmmaking. What are the elements of the essay form and can it be found in other cultural forms, for instance, the Javanese wayang or shadow puppet theatre? The similarities and the dissimilarities of the essayistic form and the wayang are many but the affiliation between them is that they share the inherent nature to find an ordering to the world through a disorder. Making sense of the structures of being is always also a matter of thinking about it. In the context of other performances and the essayistic form -- they are always something more, and something essentially different than mere reflections.