Profile

I am passionate about researching and teaching subjects in film/cinema, screen, and visual culture studies. My research areas include film and audiovisual media aesthetics, cinematography, production design, the cinemas and production cultures of the Global South (Southeast Asian cinema and East African cinema particularly), race/ethnicity in transnational cinema, film & media education, screen media storytelling and sustainable development, and topics related to diversity, equity, and inclusivity in the below-the-line creative sector of the transnational screen industries. I also engage in filmmaking practice, embrace the scholar-practitioner hybridity in the film and screen media domain, and believe in the significance of theory-practice interaction in the cinematic arts.

My first book, Film Style in Indonesian Cinema, 1998-2018: Lighting, Production Design and Camera Movement (Edinburgh University Press, 2023), offers a visual aesthetic analysis of contemporary Indonesian films through the lens of cinematography and production design theories. Simultaneously, it  provides a stylistic history of Indonesian cinema by tracing the evolution of lighting, camera movement, and production design in Indonesian cinema—from the colonial era to the post-Suharto/post-Reformasi era—to examine the continuities and changes of Indonesian cinematic visual style and the aesthetic transformation that has occurred in the 2000s and 2010s. The book ultimately seeks to understand the rebirth of Indonesian cinema in the decades after the fall of  Suharto's authoritarian regime in 1998. 

I am currently developing my second book on the poetics and politics of interracial romance and sexuality in transnational film and audiovisual media.