Dyah Ayu Pitaloka, Malang, East Java – Military officials in Malang have blocked public screenings of the documentary "The Look of Silence" by award-winning filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer, on the grounds that the subject matter – the 1965-66 purge of some half a million suspected communist sympathizers – could provoke unrest.

Andry Juni, the coordinator of the Bhinneka Foundation, which planned to show the film in seven locations across Malang on Wednesday night, said the organizers received a visit from the military on Tuesday and were "intimidated."

Two of the locations, Brawijaya University and Warung Unyil, a restaurant, opted not to show the film, while another restaurant, Warung Kelir, insisted it would proceed, albeit with uniformed soldiers in attendance.

Andry said he was disappointed that officials at Brawijaya, the biggest university in Malang, bowed down to the military's demands. The smaller Machung University was still set to show the documentary, said university lecturer Daniel Stephanus.

"The organizers at the university were approached by military officers, but they're going to go ahead with the screening," he said.

Lt. Col. Gunawan Wijaya, the head of the local military command, confirmed that officers had visited the organizers, and said they had warned them against showing any films that would "cause friction in society."

He said he did not know what the documentary was about, but that he couldn't allow any screening of films that "spread forbidden ideologies."

"Communist thinking can't be allowed to live in this country. But I don't hate the descendants [of suspected communists]," Gunawan said.

Communism is indeed banned in Indonesia, but is not the subject of the documentary by the Oscar-nominated Oppenheimer, which focuses instead on the victims of the military-led massacre of up to half a million Indonesians suspected of being members or sympathizers of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI).

Oppenheimer's previous documentary, "The Act of Killing," which won awards the world over, including at the Berlin Film Festival, looks at the purge through the eyes of one of the murderers as he re-enacts his atrocities. "The Look of Silence" takes the opposite view, seen from the side of the brother of one of the victims.

Source: http://thejakartaglobe.beritasatu.com/news/military-cracks-local-screenings-look-silence/