Arief Budiman
Directing
Biography
Arief Budiman is an artist and filmmaker based in Yogyakarta. He often uses moving images and media art in his work. In recent years, Arief's artistic practice has been closely linked to the internet, archives, and collective memory related to the history of violence. According to him, archives and technology are some instruments that can open up other possibilities in reading past events. Through this instrument, Arief created an alternative history to the established narrative and created a counter-narrative through the memories of people who had been absent and taboo to talk about.
Known For
Set in a dystopian future, the film Primate Visions: Macaque Macabre (2024) opens with the fictional character Imago Organella, an experimental primatologist specializing in studying simians, apes and monkeys. Along with their companions, Xenomorphia and Madame Chauffeur, they free two yakis from captivity. Together, they embark on a surreal journey: they gather at a peculiar dinner where they eat a mysterious pudding elixir, visit an experimental biology facility, and explore each other’s subconscious as they traverse a prehistoric cave. Along the way, they celebrate the strange and unpredictable nature of evolution and knowledge, culminating in their return to Minahasa, where they face the reality of freedom.
Primate Visions; Macaque Macabre
This work tells the story of the daily lives of two ticketing cinema staff during two incidents that sparked the birth of democracy in Jakarta in 1998 and Gwangju in 1980. They never experienced it directly or went onto the streets to face the soldiers, yet the stories they heard and the voices that reached them felt like an endless war film replaying in their minds.
Last May in Theaters
Arief Budiman’s Missing scene from the mysterious shooter - draft #4 is premised on the Petrus killings that occurred in Indonesia in the mid-1980s, the term Petrus stemming from the Indonesian phrase, penembak misterius, or mysterious shooter. The murders were a series of executions that took place between 1982 and 1985, with hundreds or thousands of criminals - the exact death toll is disputed - shot by undercover death squads. Their bodies are left in public spaces as a warning to other criminal elements.
Missing Scene From Mysterious Shooter - #draft 4
The three-year history of past violence that changed the fate of thousands of Indonesian women forever through the ianfu system seems to have never been fully resolved. Instead, the gap in knowledge of history to the current generation seems to be widening.
Shadow of the Sakura
Two friends, one Papuan, one Javanese, make a film together. Going through the footage they shot, they end up discussing the conflicted relationship between Papua and the rest of Indonesia.
Golden Island
Through an encounter between modern technology and the rituals of the people in the central mountainous region of West Papua, Nikolas, Asep, and other youths transformed the local Papuan music Wisisi and Pesek into a popular electronic music offering with a rocking Aster shuffle. From self-distribution mode such as Bluetooth transfer, to YouTube algorithm recommendations, Wisisi is now a contemporary music that is not only loved in West Papua, but also by many in other parts of the world.
Our Wisisi Music
An exploration of the life story of the island people (Orang Pulo), who are absent from Indonesian historical records. It begins with the trade routes during the Dutch colonial era and extends to the tales of warriors who fought against pirates. These fragments of memory were collected from the past recollections of a woman whose presence is now considered a myth.