My First Award As The Professional Filmmaker

This was a quite surprising ! When "Suatu Hari di Ranca Kelapa" was awarded as The 5th winner (Juara Harapan 2) for Lomba Cipta Film Pemuda Tingkat Nasional held by Ministry of Sport and Youth, my mind went away to a rainy afternoon, when I arranged the dubbing session for this film.

At that time, we rent a studio near Rawasari and invited 5 dubbers (some of them are professional). We dubbed for two movies from same material, but I figured out that we could come out with 2 version of them. First version is convensional and informative, dubbed by 1 dubber, and second version was more experimental due to my interpretation of the factual event occurred in the documentary movie. I wrote the subtitles with more contemplative ways resulting poetical ambience of the movie.

Our second version is titled "China Benteng: A Poetry", performing 4 segments of cultural events in Tangerang, Banten. The duration of the original version is nearly 22 minutes.

However, when I found out about the film competition above, I try to figure out how to edit the film into 15 minutes to meet the requirements. I re-watched it, contemplating, and finally came up with only segment 2 and segment 3 from its original version. This resulted on a shorter version, titled "Suatu Hari Di Ranca Kelapa".

This is the excerpt of the narration:

"... Dear Gio, this is my last letter to you... Today is the last day of mine as a single. When my parents accompany me through their prayers, before I become someone’s spouse, but not yours.

...And finally I have to choose. Not for the first love, but to celebrate the second chances... "

I would like to dedicate this movie to all anak wayang in Tangerang, to the cultural activist of china benteng, to all musician of gambang kromong, and to all the community who preserved the cultural richness in Tangerang.

Hope you guys enjoy it. Thanks!