BISSFF2025 | Correspondence 通信计划056：birth date 生日 SANG NYIT

BISFF Correspondence 通信计划

This program involves conducting brief email interviews with the directors of the international films featured in the festival, in lieu of the traditional Q&A session that follows the screenings. Through this program, we hope to provide a platform for filmmakers to discuss their work and share their insights with our audience in China.

为了跨越种种障碍，开辟更多交流空间，我们设置了“BISFF Correspondence 通信计划”，对部分国际单元的参展作者进行系列访谈，这些访谈将在作品放映后发布在联展各个媒体平台。

birth date｜生日 SANG NYIT

Janssen Ewaldo 黄林辉

2025｜0:15:27｜Indonesia｜English, Indonesian, Chinese Dialect｜International Premiere

Director: Janssen Ewaldo

Interviewer & Translator: Derek Zou

Coordinator & Editor: Suliko

导演：黄林辉

采访、翻译：邹迪阳

统筹、编辑：苏丽珂

Q1: I’d like to begin with the film’s English title. There seems to be a wordplay between “birthday” and “birth date.” The film starts from the humorous idea of mixing up the lunar calendar with the Gregorian one, yet it gradually unfolds into reflections on identity, memory, and cultural belonging. Was this conceptual layer already present before you started shooting?

A1: Particularly in this film "Birth Date", I had an approach to revisit my own vlog footages 4 years ago. And from there, I found a folder called Mom's Birthday or something. When I try to watch it in the end of last year, I laughed and felt embrassed by the fact that I used English language for almost 90% of the moment but at the same time I'm celebrating my mom's birthday on the Gregorian calendar instead of Lunar calendar. When I wrap up watching the whole raw footages, I felt this whole moment had a resonance of me reasking my identity as a Chinese-Indonesian and with this idea, I started to assemble it on editing.

Q2: Forgetting lunar dates and becoming “disconnected” from certain traditional customs is now quite common among young people in China. This can be shaped by many cultural and social factors. Based on your observations, how do your Indonesian peers approach these traditions—such as seasonal festivals, feng shui, or old crafts? Do they feel distant from them, or do they maintain these practices in their own ways?

A2: Thanks for the fact that you gave me about how young generation in China also had a disconnection on tradition and lunar dates itself. I thought this phenomenon only occur on Chinese diaspora like us.

First of all, I would say it depends on across territory in Indonesia. But in my place, Pontianak City, we still celebrate Chinese New Year, Qing Ming Festival, Duanwu Festival, Hungry Ghost Festival, Dongzhi Festival but this may vary in the other cities in another island like Medan & Manado who also had a strong Chinese community. For example, on celebrating Hungry Ghost Festival in Pontianak, we still burn Wangkang ship but we didn't include burning King of Hell like in Manado and Medan. Aside of seasonal festivals, other Chinese traditional culture like Shamanism still had its belief on my parents and grandparents but majority of younger generation like me didn't really believe on it anymore. But overall, what I saw in young generation of Chinese-Indonesian especially in Pontianak is they tend to chasing their "hype" and this influenced by their media consumption and most of them come from Western culture. Maybe because of that drive, slowly they kind of losing their own identity, including myself.

Q3: The film features many recognizable Chinese symbols—fortune gods, ‘fu’ characters, lanterns—yet the handwritten text that appears twice hints at another reality: many Indonesian Chinese cannot read Chinese. This contrast is striking. What kind of cultural gap were you hoping to explore through this juxtaposition? And for those who no longer use the Chinese language, what does the question “Are we still Chinese?” mean to you?

A3: Thanks for recognizing those clues because I really hope someone asking about those things that I put on the film.

By what I meant "We're Chinese-Indonesian but we don't understand Chinese language." is in a general Chinese-Indonesian across Indonesia especially on Java Island where they have the longest generations and most of them are Hokkien or maybe even they don't know which subgroup are they anymore. But in my family term, is my younger sisters and probably the next generation and so on. The fortune gods, the "fu" character and lanterns are those Chinese symbols which represent the old generation that maybe hoping to inherit it through its meaning but me and probably the other younger generation just saw it as old heritage decoration for celebrating big event like Chinese New Year. And maybe it's not only cultural gap that I trying to convey but also generational gap between the young and old generation who still understand the Chinese tradition.

"Chinese people turn into Indonesian" or the Hakka sentence goes like "Thong pien fan". This is a funny joke where my grandpa always use this term when I can't understand a few Hakka words. So the question that I find heavy to ask especially us, the younger generation, are "Are we still Chinese?" Personally, its mean a lot to me because I still think we the younger generation is the product of New Order era where Mr. President Soeharto made us the Chinese assimilated to Indonesian and the effect of that cause is we're the younger generation.

birth date, Janssen Ewaldo, 2025

Q4: Aside from the ending credits, the visual style resembles static collage or even a visual novel (VNG), as if the story were told through frozen moments rather than traditional moving images. Why did you choose this aesthetic approach, and what role does it play in shaping the film’s narrative or emotional tone?

A4: The style that I chose for this films come from this two shorts, La Jetée (1962) and Indonesia Bukan Negara Islam (2009). But why I applied to this film is because I want to hide our faces because people tend to judge our races through our faces. And this approach resonance with my intention to talks about identity. And the other reason is, I want people to had the emotional rollercoaster also imagining the whole event through audio instead of the visual which talks more of the serious things on our identity.

Q5: Throughout the film, you employ several memorable visual transitions—for example, the opening shift from the calendar to the sky, or the use of cropping, zooming, grain, and overlays to create a dreamlike texture. How did you achieve these effects during the editing process? And did you incorporate any AI tools along the way?

A5: I use Lightroom mobile to create the grain on all of the pictures and also play with the color. And for the calendar floating to the sky, I use mask tool in Adobe Premiere Pro to cut only the calendar and change the blending mode from Normal to Luminosity have a kind of transparent or blend with the texture on the picture of the sky. For the zooming effect, I only use keyframes on scale. And for overlays, I also changing the blending mode from Normal to Exclusion. And the whole process of the film I didn't use any AI tools to support any visual or audio material.

Q1：我想从短片的译名说起，这里好像有个文字的双关（birthday-birth date），整部短片基于“搞混母亲的生日日期”这个有趣的小切口，传递了对于身份、记忆与文化的思考和困惑，这个构想是您在拍摄前就有的吗？

A1：我最初创作这部短片的起点，是在重新翻看、整理四年前自己拍摄的vlog素材时，发现了一个名为“妈妈生日”之类的文件夹。去年年底，我在看视频时，一边觉得好笑一边又有些尴尬，因为整段记录里，我几乎90%的时间都在说英语，却是在为妈妈庆祝一个“公历生日”而不是农历生日。看完全部素材后，我突然意识到：这个场景本身就折射出我作为华裔印尼人对自身身份的再次追问。于是，我从这一点出发，开始了对影片的重新剪辑。

Q2：记不住农历等和传统文化习俗“脱节”的现象，如今在中国的年轻人中也很普遍，影响元素是多方面的。根据你平时的经验和观察，生活在印尼的同龄人们，面对这类传统（节气、风水、老手艺……）的态度通常是怎样的？

A2：谢谢你提到中国的年轻人也在逐渐与传统节庆、农历体系脱节。我原以为这种现象只会发生在我们这样的华人侨民当中。

其实，这在印尼不同地区的情况也有所差别。以我所在的坤甸市（Pontianak）为例，我们保留了庆祝农历新年、清明、端午、中元、冬至等节日的习惯；但在其他岛屿上的城市——如华人文化同样浓厚的棉兰和万鸦老，习俗又有不同。比如坤甸在中元节仍会举行焚烧“王舡”（Wangkang）的仪式，但不像棉兰与万鸦老会焚烧“鬼王”。节庆之外，一些巫师（Shaman）等传统的华人信仰，在我父母和祖辈那一代仍然存在，但我们这代年轻人已基本不再相信。

总体来说，我观察到坤甸的华裔年轻人常被当下的“潮流”吸引，而这些潮流多数源于他们在媒体平台上接触到的西方文化。也许正因如此，我们在追随新鲜感的过程中，渐渐丧失了与自身文化根脉的联结感——包括我自己。

Q3：片中出现了财神、福字、灯笼等典型华人元素，但两次出现的手写字，又点出了许多印尼华裔其实并不懂中文，这种强烈的反差很有戏剧性。您在这样安排时，希望讨论的是一种怎样的文化落差？对于很多已经不再使用中文的华裔来说，“我们还是华裔吗？”这一提问在您看来意味着什么？

A3: 谢谢你注意到我埋在片子里的细节，我特别希望有人能提到这些问题。

当我说“我们是印尼华人，但我们不会中文”时，我其实描述的是印尼华裔整体的情况，尤其是存在世代最久远的爪哇岛——那里许多人原本属于闽南语系，但很多人现在连自己来自哪个方言族群都搞不清了。就我们家来说，这种断层在我妹妹们这代已经出现，在未来的下一辈身上可能会更明显。

片中的财神、福字、灯笼等符号，对上一代而言承载着文化意义，他们也许希望我们能理解并延续这些寄托。但在我和许多年轻人眼里，它们往往只是逢年过节才会出现的传统装饰品。我在这里想表达的，或许不仅是文化上的断裂，更是两代人对于中华传统理解的代沟。

“华人变印尼人”（客家话 Thong pien fan）是我外公常开玩笑的话。我每次听不懂客家话，他就会这样说。但这句调侃背后，其实藏着我们这一代难以启齿的问题：我们还算是华人吗？

对我来说，这个问题意义重大。我始终觉得，我们这代人正是苏哈托“新秩序”时期同化政策的产物——那时华人被官方要求全面“印尼化”，而这段历史深刻影响了我们的身份认同。

birth date, Janssen Ewaldo, 2025

Q4：影片除了结尾字幕的部分，整体视觉风格都带着一种“静态剪贴画”或“视觉小说（VNG）”的质感，看起来更像是被定格的瞬间，而不是传统的动态影像。您为什么会选择这种风格？它在叙事或情绪营造上，对您来说起到了什么作用？

A4：本片的风格受到两部短片的启发——《堤》（La Jetée，1962）与《印度尼西亚不是一个伊斯兰国家》（Indonesia Bukan Negara Islam，2009）。之所以在这部影片中采用类似的手法，是因为我希望把我们的脸藏起来：观众总会从面孔去判断一个人的种族，而这正与我想探讨的“身份”主题相呼应。

另外，我也希望观众能通过声音来体验情绪的起伏，在有限的视觉信息下，自行想象和脑补出整个事件，而画面部分则用来承担对身份议题更“严肃”的思考。

Q5：在画面的处理和衔接上，您使用了不少令人印象深刻的手法，例如开头从日历切换到天空的过渡，通过裁切与放大制造的节奏感，以及颗粒、叠印等带来的梦幻效果。这些是您通过怎样的剪辑方式完成的？在过程中是否借助了AI工具的帮忙？

A5：画面处理上，我用Lightroom Mobile给所有照片加上胶片颗粒，也调了颜色。日历飘上天空的效果，是在Premiere Pro里用遮罩把日历抠出来，再把混合模式从 Normal改成Luminosity，让它能透出天空的纹理。画面的推进、拉远，就是用Scale的关键帧完成的；叠加画面时，我用了Exclusion模式。整部片的视觉和声音制作，我都没有依赖任何AI工具。

About the Artist 艺术家简介

Janssen Ewaldo is a director, screenwriter, and editor from Pontianak, Indonesia. His short film, Once Upon A Cloudy Day, was an official selection at the UI Film Festival and Taylor’s University Film Festival. His follow-up film, Birth Date, was officially selected by the Hasanuddin Film Festival, Airlangga Cinema Festival and Beijing International Short Film Festival. His work often explores themes of cultural identity as a Chinese-Indonesian. He views film as a powerful medium for sharing diverse human perspectives, fostering understanding, and encouraging reflection on our own lives.

黄林辉是来自印度尼西亚坤甸的导演、编剧兼剪辑师。其短片《云天有故》入选印度尼西亚大学电影节与泰莱大学电影节官方展映单元。其后续作品《生日》获哈山努丁电影节及北京国际短片联展官方入选。作为印尼华裔，他的创作常探讨印尼华裔文化认同主题。他视电影为传递多元人类视角、促进理解、激发生活反思的强大媒介。

About the Author 作者简介

Derek Zou. Former media grunt, now an amateur cinephile, cultural omnivore, and Sichuan–Chongqing trickster with a love for awful puns. Craving a spiritual grand tour in this trash-heap of an age.

邹迪阳，（前）媒体民工，业余影迷，文化杂食者，本体是爱讲烂梗的川渝谐星。想要在这个垃圾时代，依然拥有精神上壮游的冲动。

▌more information: https://www.bisff.co/selection/birth-date