Debates in the Muslim world regarding the LBGT community are rare, if not non-existent. However, Indonesia’s community has been raising its profile lately. With a legal system that does not criminalize homosexuality, the LBGT community may seem to face fewer challenges than communities in other countries. However, even with the only Gay film festival in […]

Yesterday, we examined “the convert” and “the reformer,” two types of female characters in film religi. Today, we’ll examine three more: The ideal Who: Aisha, the niqabi with beautiful eyes in Ayat-ayat cinta (2008) and Anna Althafunnisa, the studious Al-Azhar graduate in Ketika cinta bertasbih (When love is an act of devotion, 2009). In most […]

Film religi is an Indonesian cultural phenomenon quite unlike any other in Southeast Asia. It is a film genre that is focused on religion (mainly Islam) and its attendant hot issues like polygamy, deviant prophets, interfaith relations, and global ‘terrorism’. Riding on the popularity of the hugely successful Ayat-ayat Cinta (Verses of Love, 2008), a […]

The Big Picture usually does an excellent job compiling a diverse set of photos. So it’s especially hard to believe that the blog couldn’t apply that diversity to the gender of its subjects. Women are in only four of 32 photos — that’s 12.5 percent. At the same time, there are multiple pictures of elephants and orangutans. And many, many photos of men. One would think that only men represent the world’s most populous Muslim country.

CBC radio’s weekly documentary program, Dispatches, recently ran a documentary by Natasha Fatah on Nia Dinata, one of Indonesia’s best known film directors. In the documentary, entitled Cinema, censorship and sex, Fatah speaks with the internationally acclaimed director about her latest film, Chants of Lotus, as well as her experiences with film making in Indonesia. […]