Tag Archive | "Batik"

Batik In The Movie

Batik is part of Indonesian culture that we should appreciate. It is now listed by the United Nations as the world heritage, making us even more proud of it. Speaking of which, there are a lot of Batik patterns in Indonesia. Batik Pekalongan is one of them. Well, I’m not giving you facts that you already knew. But I’m gonna inform you all about a movie that is being filmed right now. The story is focusing on Batik Pekalongan, and our country’s struggle to conserve Batik. Also, it will be shown internationally.

Interested? Check this out!

Jakarta. The city of Pekalongan, Central Java, takes its reputation as a renowned center for batik seriously, so much so that it has made learning how to make the cloth a compulsory requirement for students.

This move earned the town an award from Unesco in November 2009, the same time that Indonesian batik was officially included on Unesco’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

Part of Pekalongan’s award requires that a documentary film about batik-making in schools be produced. The film, which rolled into production this week, will be shown by Unesco worldwide as a shining example of how a country makes an effort to preserve its cultural heritage.

It is written and directed by Gaura Mancacaritadipura, a cultural enthusiast and consultant for various government institutions, including the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, as well as the Pekalongan Batik Museum Institution.

“The movie is made to show how the municipal government of Pekalongan is committed to preserve batik-making culture by introducing it to the young generation. This will set a very good example for other countries,” Gaura said.

“Pekalongan is the only place in the world that includes cultural preservation into its school curriculum and the students love it. Many of them show high craftmanship and produce beautiful batik made with patience and love,” he added.

According to Gaura, the movie is scheduled to finish post-production at the end of the year.

Born in Melbourne 57 years ago, Gaura left Australia to take up permanent residence in Indonesia in 1978.

Gaura

News Source: The Jakarta Globe

Photo Source: The Jakarta Globe

Thank you Mr. Ahmad Saiful Muhajir for the news tips!


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[Updated with more pictures] Batik Now Officially Belongs To Indonesia!

First, congratulation to Indonesia! And thanks to UNESCO for making this possible for the world to acknowledge a world’s heritage from Indonesia.

Long before the day of October 2, 2009 many people have actually known that Batik belongs and is part of Indonesian culture. And, this certification just made it even clearer. Not to mention the Batik fashion show held in Washington, D.C. (America) last August in memoriam of Ann Dunham, a person who was closely tied with Indonesian culture and a mother of one of the most powerful and important persons in the world President Barack Obama. It was titled A Lady Found a Culture in its Cloth: Barack Obama’s Mother and Indonesian Batiks.

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Maya Soetoro Ng and family (middle) as the main organizer of the event. Main picture: Ambassador of Indonesia, Mr Sudjanan Parnohadinigrat, and wife hosting the event.

That fashion show itself has shown how much Batik has gained international recognition by being showcased at the prestigious Textile Museum of Smithsonian Museum complex and was mainly organized by the Obama family. The Gala Dinner Fashion Show, Batik Enchanting Indonesia, was a very successful event, having two Indonesian top young Indonesian designers Priyo Octaviano and Sebastian Gunawan show off their latest collections.

Check out the pictures from the Gala Dinner Fashion Show below!

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Batik has just been officially announced to be a world’s heritage from Indonesia.

Vio

Vio, a graduate student in Public Policy, wore her Jogjanese Batik to work.

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Batik Day by Indonesian Student in Korea. Two from the most left: Dj Andy and Dj Hilmy of Radio PPI Dunia.

Stay tune for more pictures from the Batik Fashion Show in D.C. and Batik Day (October 2, 2009) around the world!

Many thanks to Daru for the pics!

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Batik Software Launched

When my grandmother passed away 2 years ago, there’s sadness among the family, of course, not only we’d just lost our beloved family member, but also she was a very good batik painter. She’d been a batik painter since before Indonesian independence, she knew how to paint this motive and that motive. She knew everything about batik. Losing her meant losing a true warrior of batik painter. Who will inherit the legacy? Who will paint batik when the painters are mostly old people, what if someday all’s gone? I kept on worrying about that actually. Not only that, batik was not really popular (only elder people wore batik) until only few years back, when our nationalism was poked.

Well, this is a good news, when seven young people from Bandung, West Java, grouped together as the Bluemoon Technology-Pixel People Project have introduced a potentially revolutionary innovation to the world of batik design in Indonesia with the launch of their Batik Fraktal V2 software, which enables batik to be designed without human intuition.

The software, development of which began in late 2007 with the support of the Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology, the Research and Technology Ministry and a grant from Senada-USAID, enables designs to be made by a computer, which processes traditional batik design patterns into millions of new motifs by using fractal mathematics formulas.

I think I should not worry anymore.

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