My Short Documentary Project -
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I made this crowdfunding for a small project I shot when I went back to Indonesia, in my hometown. A short documentary about transgenders working in a hair salon in a conservative Muslim small town in Indonesia. I want the project to have a proper post-production. Any help is appreciated.
The crowdfunding: https://gofund.me/95d87283
Also, it would be really nice if you could you help sharing the link, please, to your friends, or colleagues? Because I cannot share it on my social media, they (the trans in the film) don't want the film to be shown in Indonesia, they do not want troubles in my hometown, and there are people from Indonesia, even from my hometown, in my social media. Thank you so much.
Some raw screenshots from the film:
Hi, my name is Rio Johan. I was born and raised in a small conservative Muslim small town in Indonesia called Baturaja, South Sumatra.
I am a writer in Indonesia, I've published 6 books (in Indonesian). In France, I studied cinema at the École Supérieure de Réalisation Audiovisuelle (ESRA) in Paris. I took directing for my study. I completed my study last year, and now I'm trying to do my projects.
After 6 years of not setting my foot in my home country, I went back there in April, 2024, for the whole month. I visited my hometown. There, I grew up in a shop-house: there were two shops on the ground floor, and we lived on the upper stories. One of the shops has been rented by a hair salon, a transgender hair salon to be precise, since I was still in kindergarten, and it's still there the moment that I came back in April. In Indonesia, especially in the more conservative parts of the country such as my hometown, being transgenders is not really accepted by the society, except in a hair salon -- one of the very few places reserved for them, as well as one of the very few places in which society would find it ok for them to earn a living.
During my visit, I met the people in the hair salon, I talked to them -- now that I'd been more free and accepting of myself and my sexuality (I am gay), I also felt more at ease discussing important and deep topics with them, listening to their struggles in life, to how they survive day by day in an environment that does not always accept their identity, their dreams, their hopes, what they could have done and achieved in life had their surroundings been more accepting, as well as their friendships, their interactions with each other and also with people coming to the salon to get their hair cut...
And so I decided (and asked their permission) to record a short documentary of their life in the hair salon in one day.
As this documentary was done rather impromptu, and I didn't have much shooting equipment (there was no rental for shooting equipment in this small town), I decided to record it just using my iPhone 15 Pro Max, which I thought would be enough to capture good quality images.
