Filmmaker, producer and teacher Nan Triveni Achnas helped pave the way for women filmmakers to tell their own stories in the Indonesian film industry, from directing and producing short films with other women filmmakers in the 1980s to co-founding the independent filmmaking collective I-Sinema in the 1990s. Her 2007 feature The Photograph, the story of the unlikely connection between a struggling young prostitute and a dying photographer looking for an apprentice, builds on that legacy. Achnas wrote the original screenplay, financed the picture with international funds and produced it with a team of women. “I love the beautiful process of making films,” she shared in a 2010 interview.
Before enrolling in film school, Achnas was a reporter at The Jakarta Post, where she collided with government censorship that stopped her from reporting on certain stories. As a filmmaker, she challenged those restrictions, and after the downfall of the authoritarian New Order regime she turned to making movies about the experiences of women, something largely absent in Indonesian cinema. The Photograph takes audiences into the slums of an unidentified Indonesian city and brutal culture of the sex industry.
The Photograph won awards in film festivals around the world, including the Special Jury Prize at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival and the NETPAC Award at the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival 2008. Reviewing the film for The New York Times, Jeannette Catsoulis called it "haunting and haunted" and "beautifully acted," and Variety film critic Russell Edwards praised filmmaker Achnas, "whose keen eye and quality lensing provide a visually luxuriant film experience."
Achnas has also been helping the next generation of Indonesian filmmakers as a professor of film at the Jakarta Institute of the Arts. As she tells her students, “You must be responsible filmmakers.” She leads by example.
by Sean Axmaker
Sources:
"Pictures More Influential Than Words," Jeannette Catsoulis. The New York Times, January 20, 2009.
"The Photograph," Russell Edwards. Variety, October 4, 2007.
"Film Revolution?," Krishna Sen, Inside Indonesia, v. 83, July-September 2005.
"Nan Achnas: A life immersed in cinema," Cynthia Webb. Jakarta Post, November 26, 2010.
