Film screening Istirahatlah Kata-Kata (Solo, Solitude)

Director: Yosep Anggi Noen, color, 105 min., 2016

July 1996, riots break out in Jakarta, the Indonesian capital. Wiji Thukul, a well-known poet, is designated as a suspect activist. With the police looking for him, Wiji is forced to leave Solo for Borneo, thousands of kilometers away. Now a fugitive, Wiji starts his exile in fear. Helped, protected and fed by fellow activists along his journey, he ends up in a small town where he slowly finds a certain peace. But his mind and heart remains with his wife and children who are living under surveillance in Solo. What is life if you can't be with the ones you love?
 

Director Yosep Anggi Noen’s Statement

Istirahatlah Kata-Kata (Solo, Solitude) is a film, based on the life of a major Indonesian poet, Wiji Thukul. Reading the poetry of Wiji Thukul is to read a daily journal of a simple house the rice and bread they couldn't afford, and the neighbors' daily conversations.
 
Wiji shows us that poetry could be constructed from daily toils, not just flowery words. Wiji serves all that in a very direct, almost naive, kind of poetry that is highly effective in capturing history and telling truth against power.
 
I see that Wiji Thukul still exists from the things that remained: the sharp gazes of his skeptical son; the strong voice of Wani, his first daughter, who to this day still writes poetry and believes in the power of her words; the efforts of Sipon to remain independent by offering merchandise with her husband's poems on it, to keep the memory alive. I also see Wiji Thukul from his less known poems, not just the popular ones, as a way to understand Wiji thoroughly, Wiji as a contemplative soul.
 

YOSEP ANGGI NOEN

Yosep Anggi Noen studied Communications at the Social-Politics Faculty of Yogyakarta's Gadjah Mada University. His first feature Peculiar Vacation and Other Illnesses premiered in Locarno International Film Festival 2012. It won a special mention Dragon and Tiger Award for Young Cinema, at Vancouver IFF and received two awards from Ministry of Education and Culture Indonesia. His short film A Lady Caddy Who Never Saw a Hole in One was elected the best short film at Busan IFF 2013 and the Grand Prix of Tokyo Short Short FF 2014. Solo, Solitude, his second feature, was premiered in the Concorso Cineasti del presente competition in Locarno film festival 2016.

   
 

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