Many Chickens, Lots of Luck

Relevance as ethnographic cinema:
In the vein of Jean Rouch and Kidlat Tahmik, Banyak Ayam Banyak Rejeki blurs the boundaries between documenting and intervening in reality, reaching beyond the form- and genre-based assumptions that shape the aesthetic worlds of documentary realism. Set in Indonesia and based on long-term ethnographic and archival research on the politics of gender in Southeast Asian media, the film chronicles the rise and fall of an iconic street vendor and entrepreneur in Yogyakarata, spanning the changeover from analog to digital media. Building on other recent Southeast Asian “ethnofictions” (Karaoke Girl, Phantom of Illumination, Along the One Way), Banyak Ayam creatively deploys and combines fictionalized elements with non-fiction ones. The result is a critical, polyphonic engagement with the local practices of Islam, business and polygamy. Dealing with politically and culturally sensitive topics, the film's method allows for levels of intimacy, “truth” and satire that would be difficult, and potentially problematic, to capture through more traditional documentary techniques. Principal filming took place in 2008-2009, with additional filming over the following eleven years in parallel with the filmmakers' ongoing scholarship and fieldwork. While unusual, this lengthy period of production and editing allowed the film to engage and absorb the shifting sights, sounds, and ideas of Yogyakarta, Indonesia across an entire decade, effectively positioning the project as an "archive" Indeed, portions of the film’s narrative were reshaped in light of critical shifts in local social and political trends. Many of the concluding scenes, filmed over the last three years, address rapidly expanding Islamic conservatism and vigilantism, as well as the complex effects of social media on individual agency.

Statement on music: All contemporary music is used with the permission of the bands involved. The archival music used in the film, consisting of popular Indonesian songs from the 1950s-1970s, is taken from LP records found in flea markets or purchased from street sellers across Java. These markets are the main source for collectors of this vast body of music that has been largely forgotten by much of the Indonesian public and abandoned by mainstream media outlets. Because the labels on which this music was released are either no longer active or long since out of business, we use archival songs in the film only for festivals and other non-profit applications. We are working together with music collectors' associations in Indonesia to inform as many as possible of the remaining stakeholders in the songs used, and to discuss the possibility of a commercial release sometime in the future. As filmmakers and music collectors ourselves, we also use this music in solidarity with those who aim to raise public consciousness about the value of Indonesia's historical popular music. We do so in hopes that it can begin to be more thoroughly archived and restored, and made more easily available to the public.