B3W Video and DVD Catalogue
Indonesian Films
- Ada Apa Dengan Cinta? (What's Up with Love?)
- We are now able to offer a DVD of the celebrated and highly popular Indonesian teen movie Ada Apa Dengan Cinta? (What's Up with Love?), released in Indonesia in 2001 by Miles Productions and starring Dian Sastrowardoyo and Nicholas Saputra. Our version has a new set of English subtitles and it is issued complete with a Study Guide, which analyses the film, and provides information about its context of production, cultural allusions, and its uses of Indonesian teen languages, together with a set of questions that may be used in class.
- Dongeng Dari Dirah (The Sorceress of Dirah)
- The Sorceress of Dirah is an experimental performance event based on Balinese dances and legends, and developed by the Javanese performance artist and choreographer, Sardono W. Kusuma, working with a group in the village of Teges in Bali. Restaged widely in Europe and the USA in the mid-1970s, this film version was produced in Bali in 1992. ... more...
- Harimau Tjampa (The Tiger from Tjampa)
- Filmed largely on location in 1953 in villages in West Sumatra (the region of the matrilineal Minangkabau people), Djayakusuma's The Tiger from Tjampa - about a young man learning 'pencak silat' (a local form of self defence) - is still highly regarded today in Indonesia as an early fine portrayal in a fiction film of aspects of a traditional regional culture....more...
- Ibunda (Mother)
- Set in contemporary Jakarta, Ibunda (Mother) interweaves two separate problems a widow is facing with her family. The film uses a conventional melodramatic plot to raise, more or less directly, the question of racial prejudice by Javanese towards people from Irian Jaya. ...more...
- Kadarwati (Five Faces of Kadarwati)
- Kadarwati is the name of a young idealistic Javanese woman who during World War Two decides to take advantage of a educational schemes offered by the occupying Japanese administration in Java to go to Singapore to study medicine so that she can help her fellow countrymen. ...more...
- Langitku Rumahku (My Sky, My Home)
- Slamet Rahardjo Djarot's celebrated and controversial film about the friendship between two boys, one living in a luxury home in an elite suburb of Jakarta, the other in a shanty town on the edge of the city, had its distribution suppressed in Indonesia during the Suharto era, but has been widely seen outside Indonesia for its insight into the widening class differences, and its appeal for both children and adults. ...more...
- November 1828
- November 1828 is set during the Java war (1825-1830), a war which partly arose from internal intrigue in the Yogyakarta court, but also as a central Javanese reaction to attempts by the Dutch to impose upon the Javanese a modern colonial bureaucratic state, built around tax collection. This war is regarded by historians as one of the most important attempts to resist the imposition of Dutch colonialism in Java. ...more...
- Raden Ajeng Kartini
- R.A. Kartini is a film biography of the Javanese women's emancipationist and educator, Kartini, who founded schools for women in North Central Java at the end of the nineteenth century. ...more...
- Roro Mendut (The Rebellious Woman)
- This exquisitely designed and photographed film is set in the 17th century kingdom of Mataram in Central Java. It is based on a popular legend of passion and love, with subtle references to cultural contradictions in Indonesia....more...
- Secangkir Kopi Pahit (Bitter Coffee)
- Telling the story of young man from a rural area the film is raising the problems of the drift to the cities in the developing countries, and the pressures endured by those who try their fortunes in this way, particularly those who still retain some idealism. ...more...
- Short Films and Animation Work by Gotot Prakosa
- Nine short films - originally produced on 16mm film, some of them animations, - and two short videos, all by Gotot Prakosa, are supplied on one compilation video with a running time of about 105 minutes. Gotot Prakosa is Indonesia's leading experimental short filmmaker. Most of the collection here is work done between 1974 and 1987 at the time he was a student and young teacher in the Faculty of Cinematography at the Jakarta Institute of the Arts....more...
- Tamu Agung (Exalted Guest)
- Produced in 1955, Exalted Guest, about how a pedlar of herbal medicines is mistaken for a leading politician from Jakarta, is a satire on President Sukarno and the increasing prevalence of charismatic political leadership in Indonesia. A classic of early Indonesian cinema, Usmar Ismail's film shows that Indonesians do sometimes criticise their leaders! ...more...
- Three Documentaries about Aceh by Aryo Danusir
- These three films about pre Tsunami Aceh by the young independent filmmaker, and former student of anthropology at the University of Indonesia, Aryo Danusiri, are among the most interesting of political documentary films by young filmmakers to emerge in Indonesia since the fall of Suharto in 1998. Between Three Worlds Video and DVD are releasing them together on one DVD or as one VHS tape. ... more...
- Wadjah Seorang Laki-laki (Ballad of a Young Man)
- Wadjah Seorang Laki-Laki (literally 'The Face of a Man') is set in villages on the edge of Batavia in the early 1840s - in a community of families of Portuguese descent - and in Batavia itself, at the time of the full implementation of the Dutch colonial state and of its policies for systematically exploiting the indigenous population via the plantation system of forced labour. At the core of this film is a drama of a son (Amallo) rebelling against his father. This rebellion is kindled by the father's treatment of Amallo's mother, and further fired by the father's involvement with the Dutch. ...more...
- Tjoet Nja' Dhien
- One of the most famous films ever made in Indonesia, Tjoet Nja' Dhien tells the epic story of the Indonesian national heroine, Tjoet Nja' Dhien, who led a band of guerrillas fighting against Dutch colonial forces in the mountains of Aceh in Sumatra in the early twentieth century. Despite a series of besetting intrigues caused by changing loyalties among Acehnese chiefs, some of whom were persuaded to side with the colonisers, for six years Tjoet and her group evaded and harassed Dutch forces sent out to capture them, her charismatic presence and her powers of survival stirring the local people to continue opposition to the Dutch. ...more...
Thai Films
- Butterflies and Flowers
- Euthana Mukdasnit's renowned film about young teenagers in Southern Thailand leaving the security of their school to encounter the challenges posed by finding employment in a largely undeveloped rural community, where many other young people face the same challenges, with limited guidance. ...more...
- Muen and Rid
- Directed by Cherd Songsri, one of the finest craftsmen in Thai cinema,Muen and Rid tells the story of Muen, a peasant woman in mid 19th century Thailand, who rejects an arranged marriage and seeks help from a Buddhist monk, the two eventually bringing her case before the Thai king....more...
Other Thai films, though usually without English subtitles, can be obtained from Five Star Productions in Bangkok.
Bangladeshi Films
- The Unknown Bard ('Achin Pakhi') Bangladesh 1996
- This visually remarkable documentary, a portrait of the 19th century Baul singer Lalon Fakir and his followers, is a study of religious teachers (and of their music) in 19th century Bengal and in twentieth century Bangladesh, religious singers and teachers who have attempted to bridge the gap between Hindu and Muslim religions and communities. ...more ...