Jakarta has its first annual international event of literary festival and it’s held at Taman Ismail Marzuki, Cikini, just a few minutes walk from our place. The event is initiated by the Literary Committee of Jakarta Arts Council (JAC) and intend to promote Indonesian literature in international literary platforms. JILF 2019 was opened Tuesday night (20 August 2019), which is took place in Teater Besar (big theater) and will end on Saturday, 24th of August, 2019. There is also a book bazaar on the Plaza Teater Besar by Patjar Merah.
JILF 2019 promotes "Pagar" (Fence) as the central theme to reflect the boundaries of a world that is getting dissolved. A fence that functions as a protector as well as a divider between the outside world and the serenity of the house is something that must be crossed if we want to get to know and be known by others. [Ref: https://tirto.id/festival-sastra-jilf-2019-kenalkan-karya-dari-negeri-selatan-egGj]
In colonial era, Indonesia has lots of literatures but didn’t get published by Balai Pustaka at that time because many of them didn’t use Indonesian language properly. As a colonial political tool designed to regulate the people’s reading material, Balai Pustaka was responsible to provide “good literature”. Anything the colonial government felt uncomfortable with, they discriminating those literatures by labelling “wild reading matter”/ Bacaan Liar, it has to be exterminated. Now, in JILF, in Teater Kecil to be precisely, you can enjoy those Bacaan Liar.
Below is a display of our classic literatures with its original cover.
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