A REALLY CREEPY PLACE

Joko Anwar has been an important figure in modern Indonesian cinema ever since his debut feature JONI’S PROMISE from 2005. As he likes to point out, he has worked in many different genres. But his horror movies, like his loose remake SATAN’S SLAVES, are probably best known in the West. Phil van Tongeren talked to him via Zoom in April 2021. This talk was part of the special program on Indonesian fantastic cinema of the Imagine Film Festival.

How has the pandemic influenced your work as a filmmaker? 

Before the pandemic Indonesian film production was at the top of its game. In 2019 we sold the most movie tickets in all of Indonesian film history. We sold 52 million tickets that year and we release 129 films in theaters. We were the tenth largest film market in the world. The value of our film market is five-hundred million US dollars. During the pandemic we only released seven Indonesian films. So, we are down… a lot. Most production has stopped. I was supposed to have two films coming out, one in late 2020 and one in 2021. But it didn’t happen. I’m hoping we’ll do them later this year. But I am currently producing two movies in the Bumilangit Cinematic Universe, a superhero cinematic universe I started in 2019 with GUNDALA.  

Horror makes up about a third of the Indonesian film market, doesn't it?

Yes, about a third. In 2017 the highest grossing film was SATAN’S SLAVES. We sold 4,3 million tickets. It was the most successful R-rated movie in Indonesian film history. So, yeah. There are a lot of horror fans in Indonesia. It has been popular throughout history. 

The genre seems deeply rooted in traditional myth, religion and folklore. Can you explain why? 

Actually, our horror films are very rich in terms of themes. In Indonesia the genre goes way back to 1927. Yes, it was based on folklore, the story about a snake that can turn into a human and vice versa. But if you look at the whole of the genre in Indonesia, it’s much more than just ghost stories and folklore. For example, in the 1970’s the horror landscape in Indonesia was dominated by psychological horror movies. My last horror movie IMPETIGORE was actually a love letter to the films of that era.  

Now, the reason why we’re so rich in folklore and myth is that we have more than two-hundred ethnic groups in our country, from the very west to the very east. The country consists of 13.000 islands, many of which are very small. But these groups of people have been separated from each other by the sea and have developed their own folklore and ghost stories. When I was making a series on ghosts, for HBO Asia, back in 2015, I cataloged more than sixty types of ghosts in Indonesian folklore. Those don’t even include the revisions. These are just the big ones. So, that explains why they are so prevalent in our movies.

You use a shaman on all your film sets to ward off bad spirits and to protect the set from rain. I wondered if that was just a custom or if it was more than that. 

Well… at first I thought it was just a custom, or something to reassure the crew. But then I saw them in action. Our climate is very unpredictable. You can have a prediction of sunny skies and get heavy rains suddenly. That’s why you need to have a rain stopper on set. That is actually a profession in Indonesian film production. There are quite a lot of them. We had a huge rain cloud coming towards us, but we still had about ten shots to get before we could wrap. So, the rain stopper came over and we asked him to hold off the rain for an hour at least. He did his ritual. He cited his mantra. He burned some incense or something. And the cloud moved further away. It rained someplace else. You just have to thank them, right? 

Because we like to shoot on real locations in Indonesia, and not in studios, we looked for a real haunted house. A really creepy place. But we don’t believe in ghosts, right? So nothing can happen. And then strange things start happening! But luckily we have the shaman ready, because he’s part of the production, and he does his thing and it’s gone.  

More than once the films feature characters that return to an old, dilapidated house or institution, which turns out to be haunted. Some of these locations date back to colonial times. Do you think the memory of the Dutch occupation is still a source of inspiration for the genre? 

Not necessarily. Most Indonesian haunted house stories deal with secrets within the family. Especially in Asian families and especially back then, real communication between, let’s say parents and their children, did not happen. That has changed, of course. Now, children can speak freely to their elders, but not back then. I was not allowed to speak freely to my parents. There were norms and etiquettes that you had to follow. Suppressed communication creates suspicion among family members. Some things are not spoken about. That is usually the theme of haunted house movies in Indonesia.

You just mentioned your childhood. Do you remember when you were scared out of your wits by a film as a child? 

Yes, when I saw SATAN’S SLAVE. I was six or seven years old. I saw it alone, at a matinee show, at eleven A.M. I saw horror movies all the time, so I had no real expectation of being scared. But then SATAN’S SLAVE scared me really bad. When I came out of the cinema it was one PM. A really bright day, but I was already praying to God that night would never fall, because I was so frightened. That’s why I remade that film. To get it out of my system. And I did. [Laughs]

Is SATAN’S SLAVE also the film that made you want to become a filmmaker? 

That was probably part of it. You see, I found the joy of going to the cinema early on in life. I started frequenting the cinema by myself at five years old. I had to walk forty-five minutes from my house to the cinema, without my parents knowing it. If I had the money for it, I would buy the ticket and go in. If I couldn’t get the money, I would sneak a peek from the ventilation window, which was very low.

I didn’t like my family. I didn’t like the environment where I grew up. It was not a conducive place for a child. So, I found my escape in watching films. To see places where I wanted to go. To see families that were nicer than mine.  

You’ve called your version of SATAN’S SLAVES a remake, but also a prequel. Could you elaborate on that? 

If you’re a filmmaker and you want to remake a film that you love, you shouldn’t try to create something to replace the original. You should make something that is a companion piece to the film you love. That’s why I decided not to retell the original story per se, but to create this universe in which both stories – of the original SATAN’S SLAVE and my film – take place. So, in that sense it is not a remake.  

Are you thinking of adding stories to this universe of SATAN’S SLAVES? 

I have created the universe and the story arc and the characters for this universe, yes.

THE QUEEN OF BLACK MAGIC, which you wrote, is also a remake, in this case of a 1981 film. What did you to update the story in this case? 

The original QUEEN OF BLACK MAGIC was also one of these Indonesian horror films that really screwed me up as a kid. It really altered me when I saw it in the cinema. It was crazy. There had never been anything like it in my life before. It was very violent, very gory and at the same time it was fun! So, as with SATAN’S SLAVE I did not want to remake the original, but I did take the theme of the film and elaborated on it. It’s a story about female empowerment. I tried to infuse the story with something relevant. In SATAN’S SLAVES I infused the story with my ideas about people relying too much on religious leaders. In THE QUEEN OF BLACK MAGIC I talk about a theme that is prevalent in my work: a lack of figures to protect the weak in society, like children. In SATAN’S SLAVES there is also a lacking father figure. The father is gone as soon as problems arise. In THE QUEEN OF BLACK MAGIC the caretaker of the orphanage betrayed the trust that was given to him.

THE QUEEN OF BLACK MAGIC was directed by Kimo Stamboel. How did you collaborate with him?

I’ve written and directed eight films now, and I’ve written seven screenplays for other directors. But I only write for directors who I think can do my script justice. I decided to write for Kimo because I knew he would do my work justice. Our collaboration was really smooth. I wrote the script, he made some notes, we discussed them. We were really in sync, basically.  

It seems that both your and Kimo's films, but also those by Timo Tjahjanto, are very Indonesian and cultural specific on the one hand, but very accessible to western audiences on the other hand. Is that just a coincidence or are you very consciously reaching out to global audiences? 

I think it’s because we are of the generation of filmmakers that have access to films from all over the world. That’s why we can make films that can speak to a worldwide audience. I think that happened organically. We do not cater our films specifically to a certain audience. I don’t try to be internationally accessible. I just try to be clear in my storytelling. That’s it. 

Your favorite director is William Friedkin. I was wondering if that is because of THE EXORCIST specifically.  

No, I love all his films. He has this no-bullshit approach when it comes to filmmaking. I believe it’s a reflection of how he sees the world. That’s why he scares me sometimes. I watch all of his interviews and he scares me. I love his films, but I don’t know if I would want to meet him. [Laughs] But there’s such a boldness to his films. He is always exploring, even in his later films.

Your latest film, IMPETIGORE, was screened last year at the Rotterdam festival. It won a lot of awards in your own country and was the official Indonesian entry for the Oscars this year. It looks like horror has come a long way - from a genre that was despised once to a genre that has gained a lot in respectability. What's your explanation of that phenomenon? 

This is my personal mission. I love films and I watch all kinds of genres. If you consider yourself a film lover, you shouldn’t base your opinion of films on genre. Genres are just a way of cataloguing films. Good films are good films. I’m very glad that people are beginning to see it. They used to think that films that are entertaining are of a lower class, but they’re not. I have made serious dramas and I have made horror films. I’m the same filmmaker. I used the same camera. The same crews. The same amount of shooting days. It’s also not easier to make a horror film. If anything, it’s technically more difficult. You have to be really exact in how you compose your shots. It’s all about anticipating what people are thinking. People are now becoming more open minded about horror films and that is a good thing.  

Is there a type of censorship that you have to deal with in Indonesia when you make a horror film? 

Horror films have actually been our way to get around censorship for a lot of years. Because in the seventies and eighties it was not easy to speak up about the government or be critical of what was going on in society. Back then, a lot of horror directors would address these issues in their movies. A demon or monster could be a metaphor for the government. The censors would pass it, because they would think it was just a horror film. Now, we can speak about anything, basically. It’s still called the censorship board in Indonesia, but they are basically working as the American ratings board. You submit your film, and they will tell you: if you want this rating, you will have to make these cuts. It’s better now.

Related talks:

• William Friedkin

This talk was originally shown online at the Imagine Film Festival in Amsterdam. Above is the full transcription of the talk, edited only for clarity.