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Bara (The Flame) Review – Cinemags

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It can be said that starting from 2000, oil palm seems to be a new potential for business owners, promising extraordinary profits. This then moved many entrepreneurs who started thinking about investing or opening a factory that focused on processing palm oil. As for land, it is widely available in islands scattered throughout Indonesia, whether it is private land, state land or customary land.

Talking about customary land, referring to the laws in force in Indonesia, the rights to customary land are recognized, but the abstract characteristics in its definition give rise to many new derivative regulations that are still abstract, or contradict each other. If the rules made are contradictory, automatically the one with the higher hierarchy is stronger. At least that’s the theory, until the film Bara (The Flame) also tells a different story from a different point of view Iber Djamal as a native of Kalimantan who has risked his whole life to get his customary forest inheritance rights.

Also read: Documentary Film “The Flame” Reveals the Story of the Struggle of Older Men Who Try to Protect Indigenous Forests in Kalimantan

Bara The Flame

This documentary film invites the audience to be present into the indigenous people of Kalimantan who are closely related to nature. They are said to live with nature, earn a source of income by cultivating the surrounding forest and understand that balance must be considered.

However, living in Indonesia, the problem of obtaining land certificates can be said to be smooth or complicated. Smooth if the plot of land is intended for residential areas, government centers and businesses. But it’s complicated if you look at the vast and “no man’s land” land.

Without intending to corner the national land agency, it seems that on all fronts there will be elements playing in this uncertainty. This is what is implied by Iber Djamal’s dialogue with the community, as well as related elements.

Iber Djamal struggles in the midst of the ignorance of the people around him, to get attention for the customary land rights that he fights for. The motto is if this customary land is taken, where will the people who have used this forest for years get the necessities to stay alive? Don’t they coexist with nature?

Modernization is also seen to have entered into Iber Djamal’s environment, this has also caused a shift in the order of life. However, the figure of Iber Djamal who continues to struggle to defend this customary land is a lamp for the surrounding environment.

In the end, after getting help from NGO friends, trying to understand the abstraction of the law by elaborating it into something more concrete, Iber Djamal’s efforts paid off. But it was all, not without sacrifice, Iber Djamal lost some of his own land.

In this victory mixed with pain, the figure of Iber Djamal voiced, “It’s okay if I lose my land, as long as the customary land can be useful for the community and the surrounding environment”.

But doesn’t this come back as striking for people who still have a conscience? Should a person’s struggle for the benefit of the people be reduced to mere business interests? And doesn’t this give a sense of shame to people who seem indifferent, indifferent to these things?

All of these struggles can be seen in the film Bara or also called The Flame, but first check the trailer first

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