Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara (ANTARA News) - Jatropha curcas linn trees raised in East Nusatenggara have a big potential causing an Israeli investor Merhavv Group to decide to invest US$700 million in the province, an Indonesian entrepreneur said.
“East Nusatenggara is suitable for the raising of jatropha curcas linn so that Merhavv Group is ready to make a big-scale investment in biofuel producing plantations,” Indonesian private firm PT Mahattan director Sudiro Andiwiguna said here Sunday.
Merhavv Group is prepared for a project to develop jatropha curcas into biofuel in Sulamu in Kupang district, he said after visiting the area.
Sudiro and Merhavv Group director Gideon Weinstein and two other Israeli businessmen, namely Jacgues Eshel and Yosef Ziv visited the jatropha curcas linn plantation in Sulamu on Friday.
The Merhavv Group representatives met with Kupang district head Ibrahim A. Medah also on Friday to discuss the plan.
The Kupang district administration has developed a biofuel plantation on 50,000 ha of land in Sulamu since 2006.
Sudiro said the investment of $700 million would also be used to manage 100,000 ha of jatropha curcas linn plantation in East Sumba district.
PT Manhattan Capital has told the agriculture minister and the energy and mineral resources minister about the program, he said adding that it will also work together with state agro firm PT Rajawali Nusantara Indonesia (RNI) to develop the jatropha curcas linn plant into biofuel in East Nusatenggara.
Meanwhile, Merhavv Group director Gideon Weinstein said his part certainly needed a large port for smooth investment.
In the meeting with Kupang district head Ibrahim A. Medah, Weinstein said his company needed a port which would be built on five hectares of land.
Ibrahim said the Kupang district administration would hold a meeting with the relevant agencies building the port in Sulamu area. (*)
Source: http://www.antara.co.id/en/
September 3rd, 2007
Peter Sellars explains why the future of film lies in Java. With the passing of artists like Bergman and Antonioni, who will be among the great names of world cinema for a new generation? Garin Nugroho is a name that is definitely going to be on that list. His are works that, like Bergman’s and Antonioni’s, are made in the spirit of the artist, with no apologies; taking the highest that art has to offer, and in so doing transforming the language of cinema itself.
Nugroho is Indonesia’s leading film-maker, creating a new level of artistic and political interest in Indonesian film. We in New Crowned Hope (the arts festival celebrating Mozart’s 250th birthday) were looking for film-makers who could make films that were content-rich and at the same time were real works of art. Garin Nugroho seemed the obvious artist to make a film for New Crowned Hope, and Opera Jawa is that film.
What we felt was important to realise - and you come across this when you travel, whether to central London or to downtown Jakarta - is that we are now in the presence of simultaneous cultures, simultaneous rhythms, simultaneous worldviews and simultaneous approaches to what it means to be alive. It’s precisely the prolixity of all these possibilities and all of these multiple realities and multiple cultures which is essential for democracy.
So Opera Jawa simultaneously gives us the world of Miss Indonesia (and everything that includes: power, glamour, beauty) alongside the refinement of Javanese classical dance, as well as a soundtrack that is constantly moving back and forth from sophisticated electronics to gamelan. We are also taken to the interiors of magnificent palaces (many of which no longer exist, having been destroyed in an earthquake last year - so this is the last film record of these extraordinary sites in central Java) and then onto a completely new set designed and created by a new generation of visual artists. All of these things sometimes exist within a single frame of the movie.
Garin’s engagement with major dance artists is key to Opera Jawa. Martinus Miroto is the greatest, most refined male dancer in Java, at the very height of a regal art form that comes from a tradition of the court of the sultans, with a very carefully cultivated, richly nuanced, sense of high art. Eko Supriyanto, who comes from Kalimantan (the Indonesian part of Borneo), has a dangerous, wild, almost tribal energy surging through his body. Alongside these artists is the musical maestro Rahayu Supanggah and a group of musicians who composed and arranged all the elements of sound for Opera Jawa using a gamelan orchestra and tembang; and a former Miss Indonesia, Artika Sari Devi, who, aside from being magnificent to behold, is the representative of a whole generation of young Indonesians who intend to take on the issues facing the country.
Garin also invited a number of brilliant and well-known Indonesian installation artists to create the sets and imagery for the film. All of this means Opera Jawa creates a unique visual universe that at once defines the cinematic possibilities and at the same time redefines them.
But arguably the most extraordinary thing about Opera Jawa is that it is part of a culture where the epics are told and taught in an oral, not written, form. This “aurality” is experienced viscerally, inside the body; this experience itself is how literature is absorbed and transmitted. So many of the art forms here have no written tradition, and Opera Jawa is inviting master artists to record and thus preserve several lifetimes of learning and insight, experience and virtuosity, while they are still with us.
In Opera Jawa, film can be understood as an epic form again. The vocabulary and resources for this epic come from centuries of tradition - the Mahabharata and the Ramayana ask the same question of tradition: how do you tell a story? In Indonesia, it’s a centuries-old tradition with shadow puppets - cinema before cinema if you will. Opera Jawa takes this ancient cinema and fast-forwards it into an amazing future.
ยท Opera Jawa is released on September 7
Source: http://arts.guardian.co.uk/
September 3rd, 2007