Sinematek Indonesia, Film archive in Jakarta, Indonesia
Sinematek Indonesia is a film archive in Jakarta that holds a large collection of Indonesian films and related materials such as scripts, documents, and historical film equipment. The facility includes screening rooms where visitors can watch films from the collection.
Misbach Yusa Biran and Asrul Sani founded the archive on 20 October 1975, after Biran set up a documentation centre at the Jakarta Art Institute in 1970. Jakarta governor Ali Sadikin backed the project and helped secure funding from the Ministry of Information. It joined the International Federation of Film Archives in 1977 and became part of the Usmar Ismail Foundation in 1995.
The name comes from the Cinémathèque Française in Paris, while the building model was copied from archives Biran had seen in the Netherlands. Since July 2019, under head Akhlis Suryapati, a gallery displays painted film posters and infographics on cinema history, cinema data and film production over the decades.
The archive is located in a building in South Jakarta and is open to visitors who want to watch films or research materials from the collection. It helps to check in advance what is being shown and how you can access the archives for viewing or study.
The archive holds 84 black-and-white and 548 colour film negatives, plus thousands of reels in analogue tape and digital formats. Its restoration of Usmar Ismail's 1954 Lewat Djam Malam, cleaned of noise and discolouration, was funded and carried out entirely by foreign institutions, as was the restoration of his 1958 Tiga Dara in the Netherlands.
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