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"Cina, an 18 year-old college freshmen, was ready to conquer the world with a strong faith, yet naive, since it had never been tested by failure.Cin(T)a is an Indonesian indie movie directed by Sammaria Simajuntak. It was released for public viewing in 2009. With our movie industry that is being heavily saturated with cheap porn/horror movies, this movie is definitely a gem.
Annisa, is a 24 year-old college senior whose education was held back because of her career in the movie industry. Her fame and beauty left her so lonely that she drew a sad face on her finger as her companion. Until one day, another finger came and she was no longer lonely.
God (Tuhan), is the most unpredictable character. Everybody tries to describe Him. Everybody thought they knew Him. Every art tried to figure Him. But nothing is really like Him...or Her
Cina and Annisa love God
and God loves them both
But Cina and Annisa cannot love each other
because they call God by different names"
Technically, there are some flaws within this movie. There are a few confusing scenes and how the story flows in a rather unclear fashion. But what I really like from this movie is because it specifically brought up a topic that no other movie director has done: pluralism within Indonesian society.
Indonesia, located in Southeast Asia, is an archipelago country populated with more than 200 million people.Within those 200 million, 80% of held Islam as their religious belief. The rest of the population is either Christian, Catholic, Buddha, Hindu or Confucianism.
Religion is always a big part in our life. We studied it during 12-year compulsory education, and we also have to state our religion in our identification card. It was stated in our philosophical foundation, Pancasila, to hold belief in one and only God.
Other than religion, we are grouped into ethnical group too. There are foreign descent citizens, which mostly consist of Chinese descent people, and local born citizen. Local born citizen are divided into smaller ethnic group, such as Javanese, Bataknese, Ambonese, etc.
At most of the time, there are no conflicts or whatsoever within our society. We all live within the harmony, right next to others who belongs to different ethnic or religious group. But still, some people thought that it was necessary to bring up those differences and creates conflict based on it.
Both religious and ethnic war is something that we are familiar with, since it happens quite frequently. In 2000, several churches were bombed during Christmas eve. In 1999, a war between Moslems and Christians occurred in Ambon, and currently there is a conflict between ethnic groups in Ambon. These cases were the ones that are well known, but there were minor conflicts between groups too.
This movie shows how we live within all these religious and ethnic differences. There is consistent conflict between groups. These differences affects individuals that belong to those certain groups. It is not unusual that those differences created a rift that was large enough to separate individuals from another, especially between couples. The love that was being shared between them was not strong enough to support their relationship, and forced them to separate.
As we living our lives, we became completely used with the conflicts. As the result, we don't really make any effort to do something. We despise it, criticize it, yet we did nothing to bring changes to our society. It was commonly viewed as a endless cycle; as long as differences exist, then conflict will exist alongside with it.
This brought me to a question that always puzzled me: is it possible for us to cast aside our differences, and live in peace with others?
I would like to believe that we could. We were too immersed with our group that we stop being tolerant with those who belonged to other groups. We were too proud, because we were taught that our religion or ethnicity is way more superior than others. We were being selfish, and we no longer possess enough empathy for others. It's easier said than done, but it would be great if we just think about other people for a while, and stop being too selfish.
I believe that if we pass enough awareness regarding our differences, people will eventually understand that it is okay to be different. Just because we have different opinions regarding God and have different skin color, we can live without causing any conflict. Some people just couldn't grasp the concept of coexistence, but probably if we give them enough time, they will soften up.
It is definitely a long, difficult road to achieve complete coexistence within our society. But if we are being stubborn enough to raise awareness, and refuse to give up, it is not possible to bring changes in order to create a better future for our society.
"Why do God created us differently, if God only wants to be worshipped in one way?" "That's why God created love, so all the differences could be united."
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I really enjoyed how your brought an international perspective to the issue of race and identity. However, you need to work harder to create an argument in your blog instead of just relaying information about an issue or film.
ReplyDelete- Ruth
I liked how you tied in your opinion to the topic of religious differences across the world. I would've liked to hear reactions that audience members had after watching Cin(T)a in terms of if they were offended or thrilled by this controversial topic being in film.
ReplyDeleteSabrina Otness
I really enjoyed reading your blog, and reading about this perspective of race and religion and differences in general. I also appreciated how you pointed out the "endless cycle" since we are so used to constant conflict, and because we are numb to it we dont do anything about it. Ive never looked at it from that perspective.
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