The Look of Silence is up for a Best Documentary Oscar. Filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer will be at UCSD tonight and SDSU Tuesday night to talk about the film. KPBS film critic Beth Accomando says it was the best film of 2015. The Look of Silence rejects traditional documentary notions of objectivity and instead takes a subjective point of view in order to immerse the viewer in the perspective of someone who survived the Indonesian genocide. Filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer says it’s like wandering into Germany 40 years after the Holocaust and finding the Nazis still in power. JOSHUA OPPENHEIMER: What if this idea of the Nazis winning isn’t the exception but the rule, the pattern across much of the global south, what if this impunity is the story of our times… what does it do to human beings to live in such a society, what does half a century of fear and silence do to our humanity and that’s the Look of Silence. Oppenheimer wants to convey a moral perspective and in so doing he creates a documentary that fully engages and challenges the viewer. Beth Accomando, KPBS News.
You are listening to midday on KPBS. IM Tom Fudge. The look of silence is up for best documentary Oscar this year. Film screened twice this week on San Diego campuses were the benefits of student filmmakers. This movie looks to the indignation genocide of the 1960s in which an estimated half 1 million people were killed following an empty -- anti-Communist coup, the command of spoke with the director Joshua Oppenheimer about being up for an Oscar and on making a documentary. The challenges notions of what a documentary is. How does it feel to get an Oscar nomination for this? There is nothing like an Oscar nomination in the world to raise the profile of the difficult and small film. This is a film about a genocide that few people have heard of in another part of the world and we think of very infrequently. In a Academy award for the act of killing a no for the look of silence just really raises awareness for the film and we could use the spotlight on the film. To deepen the impact, we have been in Washington DC meeting with State Department and staff screening the film for policymakers at a screening much by organization much we are going back after the awards for more meetings. It's a chance to deepen the impact of the film. Similarly in Indonesia, the local silence is the first in the nation production to be nominated for an Oscar, the "The Act of Killing" we never had a producer . With "The Look of Silence", we felt it was safer. This is the first in the nation production nominated for an Oscar. It is distributed by the government of Indonesia , but it also also banned by the government of Indonesia it was banned from the cinema screen.@Of a dramatic and meaningful nomination for Indonesia. And Indonesians will be on the edge of their seat on Sunday night waiting to see what happens. Tell me about the interview that prompted both of these movies? How to take it to seven this path? In January 2004, I had been at the request of survivors at the center of the film. Everyone is boastful. Every perpetrator I met with equally tell me what they did and often want to take me to the places they killed and watch into spontaneous demonstrations of how they killed. But for safety reasons, I always felt them alone. If I push them together I felt that they could seat at they could near one another. And maybe they would feel that they should be doing this. I didn't want it to end until I had a good understanding of it. More than any forensic details that were being revealed by the perpetrators, testimony, I felt I had to understand the boasting. Had to understand that. So I eventually took the risk of bringing to perpetrators together and these are two men that didn't know each other. And they take me down to a clearing on snake River, a spot where 10,500 people were killed. And they take turns playing victim and perpetrator in the most outrageous and surreal way. I found immediately my goodness or even worse when they're together. Their reading from a shared script if there's insanity here its collective. If there is evil here it is political and collective. And they stopped, suddenly stop boasting, sunflowers caught their eyes. And in this quiet interlude of their frantic boasting, I have this moment to think. Actually I was very upset at that moment, I was shocked at what I was filming. I saw them as they helped each other down this handy in big. My goodness it's like I've wandered into Germany 40 years after the Holocaust to find the [ NULL ] still in file -- power. If the rest of the world had even celebrated or participated in the Holocaust and shared with an outsider, home at night and I noted there should be two films, one trying to understand the performative aspect of the boasting more like performance than testimony and performance is always intended for an audience. How do they want to be seen? How do they want to see themselves? How do they really see themselves? So that led to my first film, "The Act of Killing" . Were kind of regime when the perpetrators were free to make up stories and live with themselves what they've done. What happens with the -- when they impose a stories and everybody else. The second film, what is it like for ordinary people? Especially survivors to have to live in such a regime surrounded by the men who killed their loved one. And then I created "The Look of Silence" . A lot of memories the filmmaking aspect of them tends to be week while the content is very strong. You see a lot of thumbs were it's a lot of talking heads. But your film is so far -- powerful and two levels because the content is extremely powerful. Also, you have this really innovative and refreshing style of filmmaking. I was just curious if students who were there who are filmmakers were inspired to ask questions about your approach to making a documentary as opposed to just watching the film. Back absolutely. The students who come to see my work are always asking about the form of the film, the sound design, the use of close-ups and wife dialogues are following silences more than words. Normally a dialogue scene in a Hollywood film and an old most documentaries moving back and forth between two people speaking are following words. I felt the confrontation -- filmed them with two cameras I could focus on silence, embarrassment, silence and awkward moments were communication ends. The two most dangerous confrontations were confronting powerful politician and a paramilitary leader, a brought only one camera so we wouldn't these the dilemma if we had to run away, should we bring the second camera not? We just grab one camera. That meant when I had only one camera, I had to decide are we going to pin back and forth on the words are the silences. Some also trying to find new ways of looking. Specifically the when you enter a space in an Indonesian value knowledge where people are living in fear -- Indonesian village people are living in fear, I wanted to get capture it in the way that it was visible not just being seen from TV but we the way you would see it if you entered the village. I am trying to immerse you as if you were in the spaces in which the -- of being invisible. That is not the same issue see the world looking through the New York Times. Mention when you did more of these intense interviews, you are consciously thinking about the fact you might have to leave quickly. That seems like an added stress on a filmmaker. How difficult was it to work with those kind of conditions and still get what you wanted on film? Back it wasn't like I went to a porcelain and it was dangerous and I had run away. It was that I was together of victims of genocide for the perpetrators have been in power ever since. He decided he wanted to confront the man who killed his brother. We realize that once we found way of doing that safely, we realize that this would be an historic occasion. He would be breaking half a century of silence and showing the kind of dialogue that needs to happen if there is going to be healing and change in Indonesia. At the same time, it would be clear that he would get threatened and elicit anger that people would react angrily to coming. This could also be dangerous. But those threats, precisely the danger, is what -- interviewers could kill that feel why it's and about edible that when perpetrators when confronted and told to cut my brother, would feel the way. If we could make people feel this of the Safir that is dividing everybody, and if we could make visible the terrible way in which the pass is not passed its present, it's keeping people afraid. I say this because we had to create an application that would push us to the edge of danger. But it would've been an ultimate failure if violence had ever broken out. You mentioned that the people committed -- who committed these crimes are still in power, some of them. Has the thin-film been shown in Indonesia? Has it been any kind of impact? What kind of reactions are you getting? The film is disturbed by the national human rights part of the government. It opened a space for my prior film which had basically open dialogue about the way Indonesia talks but it's past. Since the "The Act of Killing" the media reports widely regularly and an investigative depth on the killings as a genocide as a crime against humanity and more importantly in a criminal regime in power ever since in that space. The national humans rights commission signed up to release the "The Look of Silence" in China. It screamed over -- screened over 6000 times. Sometimes it's screen multiple times on several campuses. Even in high schools, the alternative history curriculum so teachers run the country and say this is what we're supposed to teach you, and this is the truth. And that is inspired by my two films. Can you talk about the notion about the logic to that I of the filming format. A lot of people feel the documentary needs to be objective. I would oppose the distance of up to 70 with the intimacy of truth. In my work I tried to -- I don't think we perceive it here. If you just think of the movies you love how you experience them in your heart, your stomach, your body. You don't just take them in here when you are reading a news article. I try to bring you into spaces, into families, into characters lives in situations that are dramatic because we are creating realities that make visible the most important problems we are exploring whether it's the confrontations Council of silence, dramatizing the memories of what they've done in the act of killing and then realizing that they are lying to themselves. This work involves counterintuitively making the films bigger by narrowing your focus. In "The Look of Silence" I bring you into one family . So it becomes more personal.'s parents could be your parents and his grandparents could be your grandparents you feel what it's like to live in that family. When your whole come -- country has become an open-air prison, what does that do to you. And that experience is not objective. It's not from a remove. It's not from a distance. Its intimate. But it is that intimacy, that narrowness of focus that allows the film to become much bigger and to evoke universal truths. "The Look of Silence" is up for an award on Sunday when the Academy Awards take place. You can listen to cinema Chucky podcast with Joshua Oppenheimer at kpbs.org/cinema Chucky. "The Look of Silence" is streaming on Amazon and iTunes.
"The Look of Silence" is up for a Best Documentary Oscar. Filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer will be at UCSD Monday night and SDSU Tuesday evening to talk about the film, which was one of the best from last year.
"The Look of Silence" was designed as a companion piece to Oppenheimer's first documentary, "The Act of Killing."
Both films were inspired by an interview Oppenheimer shot regarding the Indonesian Genocide in which two men responsible for many killings, jovially recounted how they had killed some of their victims.
The interview prompted Oppenheimer to make two documentaries about the Indonesian Genocide but told from very different perspective and employing very different cinematic styles.
But both films were fueled but a desire to explore similar themes:
"It is as if I have wandered into Germany 40 years after the Holocaust only to find the Nazis still in power," Oppenheimer said.
"If the rest of the world had celebrated the Holocaust while it took place and I went home that evening very upset by what I had filmed that day and I put it in my diary, what if this idea of the Nazis winning isn’t the exception but the rule, the pattern across much of the global south, what if this impunity is the story of our times? And I decided I would make two films, one ['The Act of Killing'] about the lies, the stories, the fantasies the perpetrators tell in order to justify their actions so they can live with themselves and the terrible consequences for the whole society. And a second film, in a way the more important one, what does it do to human beings to live in such a society? What does half a century of fear and silence do to our humanity? And that’s 'The Look of Silence,'" he said.
But both "The Act of Killing" and "The Look of Silence" challenge conventional notions about documentaries needing to be objective.
"I think what’s normally described as objectivity in documentary is really a kind of distancing that serves above all to reassure the viewer, to keep the viewer at a comfortable remove and usually a position of moral superiority from the thing that is being explored. And that’s not objective, it’s playing into the subjective wishes of the viewer to be gratified, to be confirmed as someone good for taking the time to watch the film. And someone above the evils exposed by the film," Oppenheimer said. "What I think I try to do is not to have this objective distance but to immerse the viewer in the situation to make them feel the space, understand the space in which the film takes place. So in 'The Look of Silence' it’s the space of ghosts, the ghosts of the unburied dead, and fear and silence, and the dignity of survival. My goal is to immerse the viewer in that space, to give them no distance but to give them a moral perspective on that space in which they are immersed."
Oppenheimer wants to convey a moral perspective and in so doing he creates a documentary that fully engages and challenges the viewer.
Listen to my full interview with Oppenheimer on KPBS Cinema Junkie Podcast.
Oppenheimer will be at UCSD at 6 p.m., Monday, at CALIT2 Auditorium, School of Visual Arts for a screening and Q&A, and then screening the film and answering questions at SDSU 7:15 p.m., Tuesday, at Conrad Prebys Aztec Student Union Theatre.
Here is the trailer for "The Act of Killing," and the trailer for "The Look of Silence."
If you miss the screenings here in San Diego, you can watch "The Look of Silence" online.
