60 YEARS OF PAK RADEN'S ART

It's a real pity that not many young Indonesians know about Pak Raden and the puppet show he once created called "Si Unyil".... As I was driving to the exhibition last Sunday portraying 60 years of dedication to art by Pak Raden (or Drs. Suyadi), I realized that my son knows only cartoons and sophisticated animations! It felt nice to introduce to him another type of "cartoon".

Pak Raden is a character created by an artist called Suyadi, who I just recently found out, spent 3 years studying animation in Paris! I knew him as the creator of a televised puppet show in the 1980s that was watched by almost all children in Indonesia. What I didn't know was that he was also a visual artist and animator... The exhibition I saw last Sunday was a real joy, especially for someone having lived in Paris, because he stereotypes french people and indonesians seeing France for the first time :)

Pak Raden teaching a song to the children who came to hear him tell a story.

Everyone wanted to be in the picture with Pak Raden.

An old lady's opinion of the wayang: "The anatomy is all wrong, and the proportions too.. my God!"

Better to make a woman blush, than to make her laugh. I myself prefer laughing but at jokes, not at the man :)

In any foreign country, it's easy to pretend to be someone we're not. Here the lady tells journalists she's the daughter of the future king of Java :)

If you want to know more about Pak Raden, you can see videos of him entitled "Terima kasih Pak Raden" on Youtube, visit his website, like his facebook page or read my friend Kyra's visit to see Pak Raden on her blog.

DAYAK CULTURE FESTIVAL

Not many people know about dayak culture and it was very refreshing when a "Dayak Culture Festival" was announced in Jakarta a few weeks ago. Since YUM has a working area in Central Kalimantan, we deal with dayak people every day, and some of our projects actually involves the preservation of the dayak culture. Unfortunately since it's still quite a remote area, not many people know about it, and the preservation projects are not as many as say in Bali or Java. As you'll see below, dayak art and handicrafts are actually quite beautiful:

One huge project that YUM is currently trying to find funding for is the construction of a Vocational Training Center not far from Palangka Raya. More than 90% of the population where our project area is situated lives below the poverty line, mainly because they lack the education and skills needed to find a decent job to feed their family and improve their lives. One of the skills we are hoping to teach involves dayak culture and handicrafts because a) there is hardly any dayak handicrafts sold in the area and b) to keep the dayak culture alive. If you want to know more about this project, you can see a video that we made: http://vimeo.com/40845388

TIM BURTON'S EXHIBITION IN PARIS

I can't believe my luck of being able to see the Tim Burton exhibition when I was in Paris. It had started 2 days before I arrived, and it will be the only one in the whole of Europe so it's going to be on until August 5th, 2012.

I've always thought of Tim Burton as being this quirky, weird, talented director but my respect for him has tripled after seeing this exhibition. He truly is a genius! And he's been so consistent with his art and just believes in it and dedicates himself. There are hundreds of paintings, sketches and drawings (even on tissue paper and newspaper!) which really emphasizes the fact that he lives and breathes his art.

the 2 photos above found via this site

Watch the trailer for the exposition, made by Tim Burton himself:

Exposition Tim Burton à la Cinémathèque... by lacinematheque