@ SANUR BEACH HOTEL
WITH BALI 12/10 DOCUMENTARY FILM SHOWCASE

the 2nd Bali International Film Festival 2004 (2nd BIFFest 2004)
closed up with a bang in Sanur Beach Hotel, with the impromptu visit from the ambassador of Iran, Slovakia and India. This annual film festival starts last year with 2800 audience from all over Bali and this year, they receive even a bigger attention.

Despite the fact that Bali has a lack of Movie Theater, you might wonder why this festival started in the first place. It was born as a pure idealistic dream from Bali’s youth generation that looks forward to put Bali as one of the hosts to world-scale film festival. Ambitious? For sure. Possible? Let’s be confident. To encourage Bali to become one of the activity centers for Indonesia’s and international film industry is worth trying. From now on, Bali will give easy access for foreign movie industry to shoot in Bali and already last week a German film company chooses Bali as one of their shooting location for their movie “Raum Hotel”.

The closing ceremony of 2nd BIFFest 2004 at the Grand Ballroom of Sanur Beach Hotel also features the Sarasvati Award announcement. The evening starts with a short movie from Norwegia and an Indian video clip from Indian women singer Jai Ganesh. This event also reflects the effort from Indonesian people to recover from the ongoing crisis in the past few years after the horrible event on October 12 and for that reason, this closing night features Canada’s documentary film on October 12, 2002 bombing. The film, made by Jane Walters, had won Best Foreign Documentary Award 2004 in New York Film Festival and it tells a story about the aftermath of the bombing; about Zero to One foundation, a non governmental organization (NGO) founded to assist children and families of the Bali bombing victims.

Bali International Film Festival Committee is committed to establish this film festival and students video competition as an annual event, with the hope that in the future the event can be viewed in the same level as other prestigious international class film festivals. /MK