SHAPE OF THE MOON

Filmmaker Leonard Retel Helmrich captures the drama of a family in the flux of religious conversion in Indonesia, home to the world's largest Muslim population--240 million people. Rumidja is a Christian widow raising her 11-year-old granddaughter Tari just outside of Jakarta. Her only son still at home, Bakti, is engaged to a Muslim woman. Rumidja is not bothered by his obligatory conversion, but by his lack of faith and refusal to adhere to some Muslim customs, including the prohibition on alcohol. For Rumidja, life is changing for the worse in this hectic city, which is becoming increasingly fundamentalist. She reluctantly decides that the best choice for her is to retire to the countryside where she was raised, but that means leaving her beloved granddaughter in the care of Bakti, a non-Christian, so the girl can receive a good education and hope for a better future.

Retel Helmrich's exquisite imagery quietly captures the moments that define the relationship between these three generations. Using a small, hand-held camera, he paints a colorful, intimate picture. Like the Sjamsuddin family, he tries to focus on the beauty of everyday life in Indonesia instead of getting caught up in the growing social chaos and escalating Muslim fundamentalism. But in the end, he finds it impossible to look anywhere and not see the changes that are occurring in the capital city of Indonesia and the world at large.

Mary Kerr

Leonard Retel Helmrich made his debut with the feature film THE PHOENIX MYSTERY in 1990. His documentary MOVING OBJECTS (1991) won several prizes at international film festivals. In recent years, Retel Helmrich has given workshops to lecture his "single-shot cinema" theory all over the world, from Kansas to Jakarta. He shot several short documentaries in Indonesia before, during and after the time when Suharto stepped down as president. With his feature DE STAND VAN DE ZON (THE EYE OF THE DAY), he became widely acclaimed in the documentary film world.

Print Source:
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Friday 6/17 at 4:45 p.m.

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