Forum Lenteng
Ciné Lecture by
Otty Widasari’s ciné lecture reflects on Forum Lenteng’s 21-year journey within Indonesia’s post-Reformation context, shaped by lingering media oligarchy and Cold War-era disruptions in cultural production. Through citizen performativity with media technology, location-based knowledge production and internationalism, Widasari explores how the collective reconnected cinema to societal engagement. By addressing years of militaristic regime and limited access to cinematic languages, Forum Lenteng’s members bridge gaps in understanding, moving from apolitical art to critical visual experimentation. This lecture highlights their role in fostering media literacy, community empowerment, and global-local discourse in Indonesia’s evolving media landscape.
After this ciné lecture, Otty Widasari and other members of Forum Lenteng will go into conversation with Mohanad Yaqubi of Subversive Film..
Forum Lenteng is an egalitarian non-profit organization based in Jakarta, dedicated to developing social and cultural studies. Founded in 2003 by communication students, artists, researchers, and cultural observers, the forum focuses on expanding its members' knowledge of media and art through production, documentation, research, and open distribution. This knowledge serves as a foundation for community discussions on social issues through the lens of art and media. Over more than a decade, Forum Lenteng has grown significantly, developing numerous programs in collaboration with various institutions and communities across Indonesia and internationally. As a dynamic collective, Forum Lenteng addresses film and moving images as processes of collective research, creation, and viewing. They facilitate workshops, film screenings (both open and closed sessions), writing initiatives, and other activities to explore image-making as a form of social practice.
Subversive Film is a cinema research and production collective that aims to cast new light upon historical works related to Palestine and the region, to engender support for film preservation, and to investigate archival practices. Their long-term and ongoing projects explore this cine-historic field including digitally reissuing previously overlooked films, curating rare film screening cycles, subtitling rediscovered films, producing publications, and devising other forms of interventions. Formed in 2011, Subversive Film is based between Brussels and Ramallah.
