1.
Saratoga International Theater Institute
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Originally envisioned as a summer institute in Saratoga Springs, New York, SITI has expanded to encompass a year-round program based in New York City with a summer season in Saratoga. SITI is noted for combining the Viewpoints of Anne Bogart with the Suzuki Method of Actor Training of Tadashi Suzuki, both techniques are alternatives to the Stanislavski-based Method training which dominates the American stage and screen. Actors in the company regularly train together and use the training as part of their rehearsal, in creating and touring productions, SITI has developed ongoing relationships with theaters and arts centers in both the United States and abroad. The three most significant to SITIs history and development as a company are the Wexner Center for the Arts, the Actors Theatre of Louisville, and the City Theatre in Pittsburgh
2.
Garin Nugroho
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Garin Nugroho Riyanto, better known as Garin Nugroho, is an award-winning Indonesian film director. Nugroho was born in Yogyakarta, Special Region of Yogyakarta on 6 June 1961 and he was the fourth child of postal workers Soetjipto Amin and Mariah, who eventually had seven children. As a child, he attended an Islamic elementary school, later attending Catholic secondary schools and his father owned a lending library and enjoyed writing, leading Nugroho to start writing from a young age, he later quit writing because he felt his father to be too critical. After graduating from Kolese Loyola high school in 1981, Nugroho went to Jakarta to study filmmaking at the Jakarta Institute of Arts, as well as law, after studying under Teguh Karya, he graduated from the IKJ in 1985. He later graduated from UI in 1991, during his free time, Nugroho directed documentaries and short movies. Nugroho made his debut with 1991s Cinta dalam Sepotong Roti. Cinta dalam Sepontong Roti was selected as Best Film in that years Indonesian Film Festival, after his mothers death in 2005, Nugroho decided to make a film about Javanese culture. He was later commissioned by the government of Austria to make a film for the 250th anniversary of Mozarts birth, the result, Opera Jawa, was based on the Ramayana and produced by Simon Fields. In 2008 Nugroho returned to theatre with The Iron Bed, adapted from Opera Jawa, the play was shown at the Zürcher Theater Spektakel in Zurich, Switzerland. The Jakarta Post writes that Nugrohos films emphasize esthetics, but contain sociopolitical messages, among the issues he has discussed in his films are multiculturalism, politics, intercultural communication, and his vision for a New Indonesia. Joko Anwar, writing for The Jakarta Post, notes that dialogue written by Nugroho tends to lack believability, sylviana Hamdani of The Jakarta Globe describes his dialogue as poetic. Nugroho also mixes historical footage with staged scenes in several of his movies, including Surat Untuk Bidadari and his film Daun di Atas Bantal also won Tokyo International Film Festival, in 1998. Nugroho enjoys gardening and travelling, both in Indonesia and abroad
3.
Cinema of Indonesia
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Though the cinema of Indonesia has a long history, the industry is struggling and developing. Domestic production of documentaries had begun in 1911 but were unable to compete with imported works, by 1923 a local feature film production spearheaded by the Middle East Film Co. was announced, but the work was not completed. The first domestically produced film in the Indies was in 1926, Loetoeng Kasaroeng and this adaptation of the Sundanese legend was made with local actors by the NV Java Film Company in Bandung and premiered on 31 December 1926 at the Elite and Majestic Theatres in Bandung. The following year, G. Krugers – who had served as a technician and cinematographer for Loetoeng Kasaroeng – released his directorial debut, owing to Loetoeng Kasaroengs limited release, Kruger was able to advertise his film as the colonys first. A year later, the novel to be adapted to film in Indonesia. Although the Wongs went on hiatus, other ethnic Chinese became involved in film, several Chinese owned start-ups are recorded from 1929 on, including Nancing Film with Resia Boroboedoer and Tans Film with Njai Dasima. By the early 1930s Chinese-owned businesses were the force in the countrys film industry. As a result, cinemas in the colony mainly showed Hollywood productions, though the film, costing 20 times as much as most contemporary productions, was an ultimately failure, it affected The Teng Chuns directorial style, the latter took less traditional stories. Balinks next attempt, Terang Boelan, was released two years later, unlike Pareh, Terang Boelan was a marked commercial success, earning 200,000 Straits dollars in two months. These two films are, according to American visual anthropologist Karl G. Heider, Indonesias most important films of the 1930s, the triple successes of Terang Boelan, Fatima, and Alang-Alang revived the domestic film industry. Four new production houses were established in 1940, and actors and actresses previously attached to theatrical troupes entered the film industry, the new works, fourteen in 1940 and thirty in 1941, generally followed the formula established by Terang Boelan, songs, beautiful scenery and romance. Others, such as Asmara Moerni, attempted to reach the growing native intelligentsia by drawing journalists or figures from the growing nationalist movement into cinema. After its genesis during the Dutch colonial era, the Indonesian film industry was coopted by the Japanese occupiers during the Second World War as a propaganda tool, the first thing the Japanese did was to halt all film production in Indonesia. The majority of films made in Indonesia under the Japanese were educational films, the Jakarta branch was strategically placed at the extreme southern end of Japans empire and soon became a centre of newsreel production in that region. Popular news serials such as News from the South and Berita Film di Djawa were produced here, Japanese newsreels promoted such topics as conscripted romusha labourers, voluntary enlistment into the imperial Japanese Army, and Japanese language acquisition by Indonesian children. The great victory in Japans occupation of the Indonesian film industry did not lie in financial gain, local Japanese-sponsored film production remained essentially negligible and the domestic exhibition market was too underdeveloped to be financially viable. However, Nichieis occupation of the Indonesian film industry was a victory over the West, demonstrating that a non-Western Asian nation could displace Hollywood. Indonesia was one of the last areas in the empire to surrender, korean director Hae Yeong was one such person who migrated to Java from Korea in 1945 where he made the controversial documentary Calling Australia
4.
Cinema of Austria
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Cinema of Austria refers to the film industry based in Austria. Austria has had an active cinema industry since the early 20th century when it was the Austro-Hungarian Empire, producer Sascha Kolowrat-Krakowsky, producer-director-writer Luise Kolm and the Austro-Hungarian directors Michael Curtiz and Alexander Korda were among the pioneers of early Austrian cinema. Several Austrian directors pursued careers in Weimar Germany and later in the United States, among them Fritz Lang, G. W. Pabst, Josef von Sternberg, Billy Wilder, Fred Zinnemann, and Otto Preminger. Between the two World Wars, directors like E. W. Emo and Henry Koster - the latter of whom had emigrated from Austria, at the same time, Willi Forst and Walter Reisch founded the Wiener Film genre. After Austria had become a part of Nazi Germany in 1938, in the aftermath of World War II, Austrias film production soon restarted, partially supported by the Allied Forces. In the first decade of the 21st century, Austrian cinema found its long-delayed New Wave, between 1896 and about 1905 the only films produced in Austria were newsreels, mostly by French companies such as Pathé Frères and Gaumont. The first films by an Austrian filmmaker were a series of erotic movies such as Am Sklavenmarkt produced by the photographer Johann Schwarzer. Some of his productions have been found and restored in recent years by the Filmarchiv Austria, mainstream film production began in 1910 when the company Erste österreichische Kinofilms-Industrie, later Wiener Kunstfilm) was founded by Anton Kolm, his wife Luise Kolm, and Jacob Fleck. They started with newsreels but soon began to produce fiction films, in 1912 Count Sascha Kolowrat-Krakowsky, a wealthy nobleman from Bohemia, founded the Sascha-Film company. In the period before 1918 it grew into the largest production company in Austria, in the period 1914 to 1918, nearly 200 movies were produced in Austria - twice as many as in all the years before. Some Austrian filmmakers had already emigrated and begun careers in the United States by this time, Erich von Stroheim and Josef von Sternberg were just two of the natives of Austria who contributed to the early success of Hollywood. Lesser known filmmakers who began their career in the US were for example Henry Lehrman, the founder of Fox Film Corporation, William Fox and the first independent producer in Hollywood, Sam Spiegel, were also native Austrians, born as German speaking Jews in Austria-Hungary. The co-founder of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Marcus Loew, was born as son of Jewish emigrants of Austria-Hungary, after the end of World War I, film production continued to grow, because the then Austrian currency, the Krone, was very weak. As a result, Austrian films were cheaper than those other countries. In the years 1919 to 1922 Austrian film production reached its peak with a yearly output of 100 to 140 films. Many of the films produced in this period were of a lower quality than those of established film-producing nations like France, Great Britain, Denmark, Germany, but among the mass of low-grade productions there were also films by producers and directors who attached importance to quality. Consequently, the expressionist style of film-making had its beginnings not only in German but also in Austrian cinema, the script of one of the most important German expressionist films, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, was written by two Austrians, Carl Mayer and Hans Janowitz. They, along with Fritz Lang and Paul Czinner, also worked in Berlin at that time as Berlin was the centre of the German-language film industry
5.
Musical film
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The musical film is a film genre in which songs sung by the characters are interwoven into the narrative, sometimes accompanied by dancing. The songs usually advance the plot or develop the characters, though in some cases they serve merely as breaks in the storyline. The musical film was a development of the stage musical after the emergence of sound film technology. Typically, the biggest difference between film and stage musicals is the use of background scenery and locations that would be impractical in a theater. Musical films characteristically contain elements reminiscent of theater, performers often treat their song, in a sense, the viewer becomes the diegetic audience, as the performer looks directly into the camera and performs to it. The 1930s through the early 1950s are considered to be the age of the musical film. Musical short films were made by Lee de Forest in 1923–24, beginning in 1926, thousands of Vitaphone shorts were made, many featuring bands, vocalists and dancers. The Jazz Singer, released in 1927 by Warner Brothers, was the first to include a track including non-diegetic music and diegetic music. This feature-length film was also a musical, featuring Al Jolson singing Dirty Hands, Dirty Face, Toot, Toot, Tootsie, Blue Skies and My Mammy. Historian Scott Eyman wrote, As the film ended and applause grew with the houselights and she saw terror in all their faces, she said, as if they knew that the game they had been playing for years was finally over. Still, only isolated sequences featured live sound, most of the film had only a musical score. In 1928, Warner Brothers followed this up with another Jolson part-talkie, The Singing Fool, theaters scrambled to install the new sound equipment and to hire Broadway composers to write musicals for the screen. The first all-talking feature, Lights of New York, included a sequence in a night club. The enthusiasm of audiences was so great that in less than an all the major studios were making sound pictures exclusively. The Broadway Melody had a plot about two sisters competing for a charming song-and-dance man. Advertised by MGM as the first All-Talking, All-Singing, All-Dancing feature film, it was a hit, there was a rush by the studios to hire talent from the stage to star in lavishly filmed versions of Broadway hits. The Love Parade starred Maurice Chevalier and newcomer Jeanette MacDonald, written by Broadway veteran Guy Bolton, Warner Brothers produced the first screen operetta, The Desert Song in 1929. They spared no expense and photographed a large percentage of the film in Technicolor and this was followed by the first all-color, all-talking musical feature which was entitled On with the Show
6.
Java
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Java is an island of Indonesia. With a population of over 141 million or 145 million as of 2015 Census released in December 2015, the Indonesian capital city, Jakarta, is located on western Java. Much of Indonesian history took place on Java and it was the center of powerful Hindu-Buddhist empires, the Islamic sultanates, and the core of the colonial Dutch East Indies. Java was also the center of the Indonesian struggle for independence during the 1930s and 1940s, Java dominates Indonesia politically, economically and culturally. Formed mostly as the result of eruptions, Java is the 13th largest island in the world. A chain of mountains forms an east–west spine along the island. Three main languages are spoken on the island, Javanese, Sundanese, of these, Javanese is the dominant, it is the native language of about 60 million people in Indonesia, most of whom live on Java. Furthermore, most residents are bilingual, speaking Indonesian as their first or second language, while the majority of the people of Java are Muslim, Java has a diverse mixture of religious beliefs, ethnicities, and cultures. Java is divided into four provinces, West Java, Central Java, East Java, and Banten, the origins of the name Java are not clear. One possibility is that the island was named after the plant, which was said to be common in the island during the time. There are other sources, the word jaú and its variations mean beyond or distant. And, in Sanskrit yava means barley, a plant for which the island was famous, Yawadvipa is mentioned in Indias earliest epic, the Ramayana. Sugriva, the chief of Ramas army dispatched his men to Yawadvipa and it was hence referred to in India by the Sanskrit name yāvaka dvīpa. Java is mentioned in the ancient Tamil text Manimekalai by Chithalai Chathanar that states that Java had a kingdom with a capital called Nagapuram, another source states that the Java word is derived from a Proto-Austronesian root word, Iawa that meaning home. The great island of Iabadiu or Jabadiu was mentioned in Ptolemys Geographia composed around 150 CE Roman Empire, Iabadiu is said to mean barley island, to be rich in gold, and have a silver town called Argyra at the west end. The name indicate Java, and seems to be derived from Hindu name Java-dvipa, Java lies between Sumatra to the west and Bali to the east. Borneo lies to the north and Christmas Island is to the south and it is the worlds 13th largest island. Java is surrounded by the Java Sea to the north, Sunda Strait to the west, Java is almost entirely of volcanic origin, it contains thirty-eight mountains forming an east–west spine that have at one time or another been active volcanoes
7.
Music of Indonesia
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The music of Indonesia demonstrates its cultural diversity, the local musical creativity, as well as subsequent foreign musical influences that shaped contemporary music scenes of Indonesia. Nearly thousands of Indonesian islands having its own cultural and artistic history and this results in hundreds of different forms of music, which often accompanies by dance and theatre. The musics of Java, Sumatra, Bali, Flores and other islands have been documented and recorded, the music in Indonesia predates historical records, various Native Indonesian tribes often incorporate chants and songs accompanied with musics instruments in their rituals. Today the contemporary music of Indonesia is popular in the region, including neighbouring countries, Malaysia, Singapore, Traditional regional musics and songs of Indonesia natively compromises of strong beat and harmony type musics with strong influence of Indian and Malay classical music. The influence is visible in the traditional popular music genre of Dangdut. The musical identity of Indonesia as we know it began as the Bronze Age culture migrated to the Indonesian archipelago in the 2nd-3rd century BC. Traditional musics of Indonesian tribes often uses percussion instruments, especially gendang, similar ensembles are prevalent throughout Indonesia and Malaysia, however gamelan is originated from Java, Bali, and Lombok. In Central Java, gamelan is intricate and meticulously laid out, the central melody is played on a metallophone in the centre of the orchestra, while the front elaboration and ornamentation on the melody, and, at the back, the gongs slowly punctuate the music. Each gamelan is tuned to itself, and the intervals between notes on the scale vary between ensembles, the metallophones cover four octaves, eTemplate, Spelling inline types like the slenthem, demung, saron panerus and balungan. The soul of the gamelan is believed to reside in the large gong, other gongs are tuned to each note of the scale and include ketuk, kenong and kempul. The front section of the orchestra is diverse, and includes rebab, suling, siter, male choruses and female solo vocalists are common. With the arrival of the Dutch colonizers, a system called kepatihan was developed to record the music. Music and dance at the time was divided into several styles based on the courts in the area—Surakarta, Yogyakarta. Gamelan from eastern Java is less well-known than central or western parts of the island, perhaps most distinctive of the area is the extremely large gamyak drum. In West Java, formerly Sunda, has several types of gamelan, Gamelan Degung, gamelan salendro and tembang sunda are three primary types. Kecapi suling is a type of music that is highly improvisational. It is related to tembang sunda, angklung is a bamboo musical instrument native to Sundanese people of West Java. It is made out of tubes attached to a bamboo frame
8.
Dance in Indonesia
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Dance in Indonesia reflects the countrys diversity of ethnicities and cultures. Each ethnic group has their own dances, makes total dances in Indonesia are more than 3,000 Indonesian original dances. The old traditions of dance and drama are being preserved in the dance schools which flourish not only in the courts but also in the modern. For classification purpose, the dances of Indonesia can be divided according to several aspects, in historical aspect it can be divided into three eras, the prehistoric-tribal era, the Hindu-Buddhist era and the era of Islam. According to its patrons, it can be divided into two genres, court dance and folk dance, in its tradition, Indonesian dances can be divided into two types, traditional dance and contemporary dance. In Bali on 19 November 2011 UNESCO announced the traditional Saman dance from Aceh province as an intangible cultural heritage. Saman dance is unique due to the speed of movement and harmony between dancers, dances in Indonesia are believed by many scholars to have had their beginning in rituals and religious worship. Such dances are based on rituals, like the war dances, the dance of witch doctors. War dances such as cakalele of Maluku and kabasaran dance of Minahasa, others are inspired by nature, such as the Tari Merak of West Java. Ancient forms are characterised by repetitive movements like the Tor-Tor dance of the Batak people of. The dancing also is meant to let the humans inner spirit come out, some of the tribal dances involving trance mental condition which interpreted as channelling the spirits through the dancers body movements. Tari Sanghyang Dedari is a dance of Bali, in which the dancers are pre-pubescent girls in trance. The dance of kuda lumping and keris dance also involve trance, with the advent of Dharmic religions in Indonesia, Hinduism and Buddhism were celebrated in ritual and in art. Although the poem originates in India, Ramayana and Mahabharata epic has long been adopted by the Javanese people. Etchings of the story can be found on temples dating back to 10th century CE and they incorporated stories of the Ramayana, Mahabharata and also Panji cycles into dance-drama, which is called sendratari or sometimes simply translated as ballet. Highly stylised methods of dances were developed and are still nowadays, especially in the islands of Java. The Javanese wayang wong dance-drama took stories from the episodes of Ramayana or Mahabharata Hindu epic, however, the dances are distinct to those of Indian. While hand gestures are very important, Indonesian dancers do not have the Indian attention to mudra
