I arrived in the eleventh largest city in the world, Jakarta, early yesterday morning after a surprisingly comfortable 10h train ride. Tired and a bit overwhelmed by the vastness of the place I stumbled into the annual Turkish Film Festival. What a great find! I saw two really good films, Gunesi Gordum (I Saw The Sun) and Babam Ve Oglum (My Father and Son). Have a look on the previous post.
Jakarta is, apart from Turkish film festivals, a very interesting place. ‘It is a hard city to love’ someone said and I am beginning to understand what they mean. It is a city of great contrasts. You have got the very rich and, squeezed in next to the luxurious shopping complex on the sidewalk, you have got the very poor. In only three generations the population of Jakarta has exploded from 13 million people to 20 million people. One quarter on them live in poorer neighbourhoods called kampungs, another 5 percent live in illegal slum settlements scattered across the city next to the railway tracks and under highway overpasses. I haven’t been able to take my camera up yet, I think I have to feel the place in first. Going into poorer neighbourhoods can be very dangerous according to most of the people I’ve spoken to. Especially it you are 6ft 2in, blonde and only know how to say ‘Hi’ and ‘Thank you’ in Indonesian. I have therefore teamed up with a friendly local photographer and we are hopefully going out shooting on wednesday. Only time will tell what happens next.
