STAND VAN DE STERREN

Stand van de Sterren is the concluding part of Leonard Retel Helmrich’s trilogy on Indonesia, which follows the Christian-Islamic Sjamsuddin family. Here, as in De stand van de Zon and Stand van de Maan, Helmrich uses the Single Shot Cinema technique, whose characteristic style – with long, uninterrupted shots and no interviews or voiceover – is closely related to cinema verité. The camera’s broad, intuitive movements are distinctive for these films: it is a fly in the air rather than a fly on the wall, roving among the various family members, including resolute grandmother Rumidjah, her son Bakti and her granddaughter Tari. The occasionally funny and moving everyday ups and downs of the family serve Retel Helmrich as an indirect channel for a portrait of modern Indonesia, with all its contrasts between urban and rural, wealth and poverty, and religion and globalization. (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)