INASCIFI BLOG

Hi all!

Before I start getting into reviews, info or any other topics related to science fiction, let me first apologize for the lack of updates in this blog for the past few months.

Anyway, I’m happy to report about my recent experience attending a local Indonesian fan community celebrating their 6th Anniversary. Yes, The Indonesian Star Trek Community has turned six years old this year, and 2009 has been a very wonderful year for them. Aside the new movie that came out last May (or June in Indonesia), the community have received lots of support (including from PT Indosat, one of Indonesia’s local telecommunications provider) and had a wonderful birthday party at Pisa Kafe Mahakam (near Blok M, Jakarta Selatan).

I wish I could post pictures and stuff like that, but unfortunately my camera never left my bag. Well, I’ll post some pics from the Indo Star Trek’s facebook page.

Qa’pla! (Success in Klingonese)

Inascifi’s creation was based on the founder (I myself) frustration toward the Indonesian paradigm and view toward the science fiction genre.

I myself felt benefit by the genre in many aspects.

Reading the novel Starship Troopers (by Robert A. Heinlein) helped me understand civics, the nature of human spirit and violent tendency, and the necessity to sacrifice one’s own self for the benefit of others.

The Star Trek franchise gave me a good idea what a brighter and better future would be for mankind once we eliminate poverty and starvation through economic abundance.

The Star Wars saga gave a good story regarding good vs evil and the power of love and redemption.

The Bicentennial Man (based on the novella of the same title written by Isaac Asimov) helped me realize the value of human life, the simple biological processes we experience daily that we’ve often take for granted. The film also conveyed a wonderful message of love between a man and woman, though certain religious folks will find the concept very offensive.

The Stargate franchise, provoked the idea what if aliens who are so technological advanced came down to Earth in 6,000 BC and enslaved the human race. With their advanced technology, they build the Pyramids as their ships’ landing sites, and put themselves as gods upon the primitive humanity.

Quantum Leap, has a story of an altruistic scientist who want to do good in a world so filled with tears and sadness, and through time travel he disguised himself as an ordinary person who happen to be at the right place and right time, and changed history to the better and touch many lives in the process.

These stories… are quite complex and requires a good deal of intelligence to understand, and apparently not many Indonesians seem to appreciate this. Perhaps they do, but just never found the right channel to access news and information regarding ’science fiction’.

In the beginning,

there was ina_sci-fi.

Like many small electronic groups that formed in the virtual world, the community grew and shrank, and almost collapsed.

Then, the founder came up with the idea to shorten the name, to Inascifi.

The idea was to reduced the task of typing underscores ( _ ) and dashes ( - ) signs each time he sent an email to the group, and it worked.

The suddenly! Without warning, the founder’s father found himself being billed a good amount of American Dollars on his credit card. The founder bought the domain, inascifi.com .

It was a blessing in disguised. The Yahoo! provider allowed inascifi.com become a small business website, with many tools and emails and bandwidth space. But the main issue was not with the tools.

It was the tool user. He need time and concentration a large amount of fun in developing the website and community. Added with the burden as a research executive in a marketing research company, reduced his free time and creativity.

The science fiction community’s future was threaten.

< to be continued >

GUYS…

Indonesian Star Trek Community

these Indonesian Star Trek fellows are impressive.

This year they had a gathering in Bandung, another gathering in Jakarta, and many other gatherings before that.

Still, as much I am a Trekker, I still love Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Firefly and other science fiction related literature/media.

I know there are two Star Wars groups in Indonesia (one dedicated to Jedi, the other to the Sith).

Where are they now?

We’re happy to say that something will happen soon.

Stay in touch!

And unfortunately, the reviews I’m hearing is not very good.

You can check the trailer.

Now I’m having doubts, whether I’m going to watch this or not.

We dedicate our first review to Mr. David Poernomo, a filmmaker and brother of Jose Poernomo who is currently making The Glitch. Interview source here.

In this time where most Indonesians are either (low key) humor or (uneducating) horror films, Poernomo is creating this, which is meant to educate its audience and an alternative for the smart moviegoers who are sick of the other genres.

“Saya mau bikin film yang selangkah lebih maju, ngga mau takabur sih, tapi pertama kali rasanya sebuah film sci-fi drama yang lebih pintar untuk penonton Indonesia,” Poernomo said in a recent interview.

Coincidently, the number of Indonesian scifi films are very limited compared to the other genres.

“Inilah movie yang kita persembahkan untuk mereka yang tertarik dengan genre lain.”

said David Poernomo.

Anyway, here’s the basic premise: Recent analysis of the 2004 tsunami disaster (which afflicted Aceh, Thailand and others) the Earth’s rotation stopped for 3 milliseconds. These three milliseconds might not seem much, but was enough to cause time-spatial anomalies that screws up the characters’ lives.

As with most Indonesian productions, here are some challenges they will face:
Acting talent, visual effects and the script.
Those three are all connected and SIGNIFICANTLY important.

If either one of them fails, I see no hope for this movie to succeed.

One more thing, David Poernomo is the director of the (ugh) Pocong vs Kuntilanak.