Coming to iTunes today, Tuesday, July 5: JALANAN
Daniel Ziv’s portrait of Indonesian amateur musicians premiered at Busan in 2013, where it won best documentary. Other fest berths have included DocAviv, Biografilm, Melbourne, Vancouver, Reykjavik, Zanzibar, Margaret Mead, ZagrebDox, and DOK Leipzig. The doc was released on VOD via Vimeo last Fall and now expands to iTunes.
Over the course of five years, Ziv profiles three impoverished young buskers on the buses of Jakarta, subsisting through their music while trying to deal with a rapidly developing city. When not riding the buses, Boni is a tunnel dweller, but a city beautification and infrastructure improvement project threatens his makeshift home. Ho, whose dreadlocks announce his rebel status, is a politically-minded womanizer who runs afoul of the police. Young mother Titi can’t afford to care for her three children, leaving them with relatives as she tries to complete her education. Weaving these three stories together – with the first two offering the more compelling arcs – Ziv offers a street-level look at modern Indonesia through the lenses of class, politics, education, and, of course, music.
what (not) to doc 