5 Islands / 5 Villages
10 Filmmakers
10 realities far off Indonesia’s and Germany’s urban centers
Comprising more than 16,000 islands, the Indonesian archipelago extends some 5,000 km from east to west. Accepting an invitation from the Goethe-Institut Indonesia, young filmmakers from the University of Fine Arts Hamburg (HFBK) immersed themselves in life on five of these very different islands in March 2016. They were accompanied by young cultural anthropologists from Universitas Indonesia. During their stay, they made films based on their individual observations and personal encounters – films that are as diverse as their own views of the islands, and indeed as diverse as the islands themselves. The filmmakers get up close and personal, take their time, trust their own eyes and truly engage with the situations, people and images they depict. The result is a panorama of synchrony and diversity.
The 5 Islands were developed in cooperation with Universitas Indonesia as part of the project 5 Islands / 5 Villages of the Goethe-Institut and the University of Fine Arts Hamburg. The project explores different ways of viewing periphery and distance, time and temporality through the medium of documentary filmmaking.
During the second phase of the project, the 5 Villages, Goethe-Institut and HFBK together with In-Docs are inviting five Indonesian filmmakers to spend a short time living and working in various villages in Germany. Pepe Danquart, filmmaker and professor of documentary film at the University of Fine Arts Hamburg and Bernd Schoch, filmmaker and former artistic assistant at the University of Fine Arts Hamburg, supervise and provide artistic support to all the filmmakers of the 5 Islands / 5 Villages project during the development of their films.
