Making film as an ethical practice: the case of the traditionalist Islamic boarding school students in Indonesia

Until recently, discussions about the rising popularity over the past decade of Islamic-themed films and film-making practices among Muslims in Indonesia have tended to dismiss the phenomenon as a shallow commercialization of the religion, overlooking the significance of what it actually means for the Muslims themselves and how it has impacted their religious experiences. This article aims to examine the adoption of film media among young Muslim students (santri) of a traditionalist Islamic boarding school (pesantren) in West Java by focusing on its mediation practices. That is, how film adoption among them has shaped and been shaped by their Islamic discourses of becoming good Muslim subjects. In doing so, it considers the social contexts around their filmic practices, distinct topics and narrative styles of their films, and the Islamic discourses that have molded their current attitudes toward film-making practices. The article argues that film media for these Muslim students is no different from the classical texts of Islam, which they have learned for centuries in the pesantren as the source of their religious knowledge, in a sense that the former is capable of rendering tangible the ethical and spiritual elements of the latter. In turn, this has led them to perceive their films and film-making practices as a modality of learning, one that is imbued with authoritative power just as the sacred texts, with which they perfect themselves to become meaningful Muslims, an ethical value rooted deeply in the Islamic tradition.