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Sculpting the Giant

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World Premiere

Directors Rheza Arden and Banu Wirandoko document a 28-year quest for glory in this engrossing film. Indonesian sculptor Nyoman Nuarta’s goal is to build the world’s largest brass and copper structure: the Garuda Wisnu Kencana statue. Featuring two Hindu gods, the statue is to be located in an abandoned limestone quarry in Bali, which Nyoman plans to turn into a park. To meet his objective, the artist will have to contend with public opposition, political turmoil, and many other obstacles… Using animation, archival footage, and time-lapse photography among other tools, Arden and Wirandoko paint a vivid picture of large-scale obsession. The footage of the GWK construction is often breathtaking, and in Nyoman, the filmmakers have a multifaceted subject to centre their film on — he is both businessman and artist, visionary and pragmatist, megalomaniac and humble family man. Fascinating, suspenseful, and marked by moments of vertiginous beauty, Sculpting the Giant is a truly remarkable documentary.

 

October 2 & 4: Q&A with co-director Rheza Arden Wiguna & crew

 

Presented by

Series Media Partner

Community Partner

Directors
Cast

Nyoman Nuarta, Cynthia Lakshmi Nuarta

Credits
Country of Origin

Indonesia

Year

2022

Series

Portraits

Language

In Bahasa Indonesia and English with English subtitles

Film Contact
Links
Content Warning

Graphic Violence

18+
87 min
Documentary

Book Tickets

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Credits

Executive Producer

Julian Grimmond, John Fitzgerald

Producer

Maulana Aziz

Screenwriter

Maulana Aziz, Sutansyah Marahakim

Cinematography

Dini Aristya Wulandari

Editor

Dini Aristya Wulandari

Original Music

Bintang Olii

Directors

Banu Wirandoko headshot
Rheza Arden Wiguna headshot

Banu Wirandoko & Rheza Arden Wiguna

With an educational background in Fine Arts, Banu Wirandoko and Rheza Arden Wiguna have developed a refined taste for visual arts. Both have been exploring audiovisual design techniques together since 2012 and fell in love with film and video as means of storytelling. Combining Rheza’s whimsical visual explorations with Banu’s astute musical sensibilities, they teamed up as first-time filmmakers in directing Sculpting The Giant.

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