Brilio.net - Arif Prasetyo, or often called Tupis by his friends, was born to a blind disabled couple. Arif has been blind since birth and has received educational scholarships since elementary school. Currently, Arif is studying for a master's degree at UIN Sunan Kalijaga Yogyakarta majoring in Islamic Education Management through the LPDP scholarship program.
photo: Instagram/arifreal35
Aspiring to be a film actor and often underestimated because he is blind, Arif has a strong determination to make his dream come true. Because of his strong enthusiasm and determination, Arif is now not only a film actor, he even now has the title of first blind director in Indonesia.
photo: Instagram/@arifreal35
His love for the world of film began in high school. He once felt discouraged because his friends never invited him to watch a film in the cinema. Finally, he tried watching films, finding out about films, starting from reading various synopses of the latest films, to finding out about film production. He watches films by experiencing them through audio dialogue and sound effects which help him understand the storyline of the film.
In order to properly understand the contents of the film, he often comes to the cinema accompanied by a friend who will help him translate several non-verbal scenes which will add to his interpretation of the film. His interest in the world of films grew and he began to have big dreams of entering the world of films.
At first, he only acted as an extra. But in the end I took a directing class, a film class, a cameraman class, and a screenwriting class. There I thought, why not continue? "Finally, my friends and I decided to make a film," said Arif to the brilio.net team recently.
Making Hanung Bramantyo one of his favorite directors makes Arif even more enthusiastic about his work. He wants people to understand that films made by people with disabilities are not just limited to providing a perspective of being 'pityed' but are proof that people with disabilities can work in the world of film in their own way. This is proven by the several films he has worked on. Every film screening is always packed to capacity in various communities and campuses. Not only did he screen a film once, he also attended various events as a speaker for film reviews.
photo: Instagram/@uinsk
The response from the public was very enthusiastic in welcoming his works. Of course, this makes Arif very happy because in the end people are able to see the work of people with disabilities and enjoy it with a different breath. Instead of looking at his work with a view of 'pity' and thick with discrimination, but seeing the films he has worked on is something to be very proud of.
The success of his work after becoming a blind director certainly did not escape the various challenges and difficulties he faced. "In my opinion, the first challenge as a director must be to be able to change the mindset of the majority of people who still believe that the blind are not capable of enjoying films," said Arif to the brilio.net team.
Apart from that, an important challenge is innovation because this is something new and requires a lot of adjustments. A blind director needs to understand and master field things such as visuals, actors' expressions, and supervising campers and several other jobdesks at the shooting location. "I want to find innovation and creativity to do all of that so that in the future if there are other blind people who want to learn to be directors, all they have to do is copy and paste what I have done, one of which is by making a guidebook for making films that is inclusive of diversity in cinema," said Arif .
He is currently working on the book and is entering the printing press to be published soon. He hopes that the book he wrote can become a reference for filmmakers with disabilities who want to follow in his footsteps to dive deeper and become experts in the world of film.
The thing that Arif really pays attention to when making his films is a team that is able to work together well, namely an inclusive production team. The crew in making the film they are working on must understand and understand people with disabilities so that they are able to collaborate well when in the field so that there is no discontinuity in communication and are able to direct each other easily, whether they are disabled or not. One of them is how his role as a director is assisted by the presence of an assistant director who cannot be blind. This is of course to help visual corrections for blind directors to enrich their knowledge in the field.
For Arif, the visual constraints of a blind director make this a challenge in itself. As a result, outside of the shooting process, he diligently reads novels to enrich his description and knowledge of place settings, expressions and body language images. Reading novels helps him have a good imagination of the visuals that will be displayed in the film. Apart from that, he also provided visual suggestions from the production team so that the results were optimal.
A big challenge for blind people with disabilities is to show good expressions. However, unfortunately this is still a difficult task to realize perfectly because there is no technology that can properly support blind people with disabilities in understanding expressions. However, several methods can be done and tricked by touching the face or mask with various expressions and imagining what kind of expression is being demonstrated.
photo: brilio.net/Himmatul Ahsana
Despite the various challenges that occurred during the filmmaking process, Arif still felt happy going through the various processes from start to finish. Shooting must be tiring, especially when it involves disabled and non-disabled people. "However, after being received by the public with a positive response, they were finally happy and felt that their efforts had paid off," said Arif to brilio.net .
As the first blind director in Indonesia, Arif was offered several times to play films with big characters and even offered his films to be shown on online film streaming platforms. However, Arif refused because he believed that his journey was still at the beginning and he needed a lot of other experiences to get to that stage. He didn't want to be complacent and immediately skyrocketed. His big hope is that he wants to continue working slowly but surely.
Winning people's hearts through the films he makes is now his main goal. Apart from that, he wants to feature more veteran film actors in his films. Working together and building relationships with great people and gaining knowledge is something he wants to continue to do so that his films can develop and be able to present better works.
He hopes that in the future society will be more friendly towards people with disabilities who are involved in the world of film and will be able to provide cinemas that are friendly to people with disabilities. According to him, by presenting people with disabilities in film production, it will initiate inclusiveness in the world of film in Indonesia.
Don't be afraid to work. "It's okay to fail at first, but just believe that there will come a time when your work will be accepted in the way that He wants," Arif's message to disabled people who want to work in the world of film was conveyed to the brilio.net team.
Intern: Himmatul Ahsana