A Critical Examination of Punitive Damage

ANNIE GOLDSON

Helen Todd in court.

Punitive Damage is a seventy-seven minute The documentary then picks up Helen feature documentary, which follows the story Todd’s story, tracing her legal battle to obtain of Helen Todd, a New Zealand woman who accountability for her son’s murder. The  lm “successfully” sued an Indonesian general in ends with Todd’s provisional victory. a Boston court after her son, Kamal Bamadhaj, was killed in the Dili massacre in East Timor Historical Background in 1991.1 Nearly 300 young Timorese were also slaughtered during this incident because When I began the  lm in 1996, the furor they had dared to stage a peaceful protest. A generated by the international broadcast handful of Westerners were present and one— of Stahl’s footage had died down. Most Max Stahl—was able to  lm the carnage.2 As Western nations—including the United a consequence, the Dili massacre became States, Australia and to a lesser extent, New a turning point in East Timor’s history; Zealand—eyed Indonesia’s large population the existence of Stahl’s images proving the with interest and concern, drawn by its brutality of the Indonesian occupation during trade potential while remaining fearful of its which one-third of the population of East instability. By the time I began fundraising Timor were killed or died. in earnest for Punitive Damage in 1996,  ve Punitive Damage interweaves the personal years after the massacre, the world took stories of Kamal and Helen with the history of a “constructive engagement” line with East Timor. It begins with the trajectory of the the giant nation, ignoring the widespread young man’s life, following his upbringing abuses that continued not only in East Timor, between New Zealand and Malaysia (his but in other regions also. However, as the mother is a Kiwi, his father, Malaysian),  lm neared completion, the circumstances his school years, his growing politicization surrounding East Timor changed radically as a university student in Australia, and and I experienced one of those rare moments  nally, his death in Timor at age twenty. in history when politics becomes intertwined

50 Screening Southeast Asia Sophia Siddique Harvey, editor, Spectator 24:2 (Fall 2004): 50-60. ANNIE GOLDSON with, and overtakes, a documentary project. as Indonesia went on their pre-referendum By May 1998, the Indonesian economy campaign, organized from the safety of West collapsed, its infrastructure crippled Timor, a former Dutch colony that remained by cronyist corruption. Sensing future under Indonesian rule. Reliable sources and chaos, General Suharto’s “friends” in the eyewitnesses reported that branches of the multinational community, who had pro ted Indonesian military armed, trained and paid from the quiescent workforce under his paramilitary forces called “militias.” rule, disappeared overnight. The student Despite this campaign, the Timorese voted democracy movement, led by friends of overwhelmingly in favor of independence. Kamal’s (he saw himself as a young pan- After the result was announced, there was a Asian activist as he had spent time in brief pause. Then—enraged—the Indonesian Indonesia) seized the day. Suharto’s military military went on the rampage, their response forces opened  re on a protest, and  ve vengeful in the extreme. In the chaos that students were killed, a number of them from followed after the ballot, ordinary people prominent, even military, families. Facing were attacked and murdered at random. mounting public anger, and seen as a liability, 250,000 were forcibly relocated to West Timor, Suharto was forced from power, handing the while hundreds of thousands  ed to the reigns over to his deputy, Jusuf Habibie. hills where many died of malnutrition and Meanwhile, the East Timorese leadership, exposure. Dili and surrounding villages and taking advantage of the regional volatility, towns were also looted and burned. placed pressure on the United Nations Much of the world watched the graphic, (UN), which in fact had never recognized grainy television trans xed. Eyes turned to Indonesian rule in Timor as legitimate. The the United States, the world’s superpower UN in its turn pressured Habibie. Despite and the only country with the economic and being a Suharto ally, he decided to respond military muscle to enforce the referendum and in January 1999 announced there result. But given the fact that the United would be a referendum on the future of States had supported and funded the Suharto the country. The East Timorese would be military regime, how would it now treat allowed to choose between “autonomy”— its former ally? And if there were Western that is, some freedoms under continuing intervention, what would Indonesia do? Indonesian rule—and total independence. What were its forces capable of? Just as The referendum would be supervised by important, what would China, a sometime the UN, but Indonesian forces would retain ally of Indonesia, do? Habibie, under pressure control of “security.” This stipulation proved from the United States,  nally agreed to let a in fact to be the downfall of the process. The peacekeeping force in, blaming the carnage Indonesian military were, and are, a powerful on the Timorese militia. He ordered many of force with vested political and economic the Indonesian military units to leave, which interests in most territories within the they did, razing Timor to the ground in the Republic, including East Timor. Signi cant process. Australia then led an international military leaders saw Habibie’s concession “peace-making” contingent, with a large New as a betrayal and in an attempt to sabotage Zealand force accompanying them. This was the referendum, initiated an underhanded a tense moment also in Australasia. Would campaign of violent intimidation against the the domestic populations accept their young East Timorese people. people being sent to a war zone? The announcement of the pending vote had Punitive Damage premiered at the Hotdocs been made just as we entered the editing room. International Documentary Festival in As cutting continued, we watched events Toronto, Canada in early May 1999; opened unfold. The UN observers, with no brief to in New Zealand cinemas in July 1999, just enforce peace, watched relatively helplessly after the referendum was announced; in

SCREENING SOUTHEAST ASIA 51 PUNITIVE DAMAGE

Kamal Bamadhaj. Australian cinemas in August 1999, literally a sense of witnessing to “uncover hidden the time of the referendum and the resulting or suppressed histories.”3 Yet as a work carnage; and in United States theatres that intended  rst for a theatrical release, it was September. The timing of the  lm’s release consciously given a strong narrative shape, was fortuitous. Audiences had been watching replicating many of the story beats of the television news, which, with its emphasis classical drama. on daily developments, failed to give much The  rst narrative thread of the  lm, background information. Clearly, many in the which traces Bamadhaj’s early life and Australasian audience were shocked at what the circumstances leading up to his death, was unfolding in their backyard, and craved is carried by Helen Todd’s “oral history” more information. The announcement that interview, and supplemented by interviews troops from Australia and New Zealand were with others - his sister, Nadiah Bamadhaj, to provide a major peacekeeping contingent and his friends Alison Murray and Bibi appeared to be widely accepted. Whether Langker. All three identi ed Bamadhaj as the  lm played a part in that acceptance is a young student activist, deeply disturbed dif cult to ascertain. by the fate of the Timorese, but knew him also as a brother, a friend, and a boyfriend Formal Structure respectively. Because of the documentary’s strongly narrative shape and its emotional Punitive Damage combines interviews, archives character, I had decided to dispense with the (moving image, stills, letters and documents), more expositional technique of interviewing and experimental “reconstructions” of the traditional experts. This decision was made court case. The  lm is most closely aligned easier because the cast of “characters” that with Nichols’ interactive, or participatory, surrounded Kamal were all highly informed mode of documentary that often draws on about the politics of East Timor 52 FALL 2004 ANNIE GOLDSON

To enhance Kamal’s presence, I used a 1970s, and the invasion and occupation by its number of items from his personal archives powerful neighbor in 1975: including photographs and excerpts from his writings. Kamal’s letters to Bibi Langker, They swept into the city, they dragged for example, written from East Timor and people out of their homes, brought them Indonesia, depict an affectionate young man, down to the harbor and the beach, executed outraged by the political conditions of East them with newly supplied US machine guns and M16s. Then they set  re to the houses Timor, but who retains his sense of humor. of the city. They later swept into the interior, When presented in close-up, his words, some massacring village after village as they misspelled, some crossed-out, exude the went. visceral living quality of handwriting. And he also kept a detailed diary that culminated Nairn’s testimony is sparsely illustrated in an entry written several days before he was by archival material, the little that is, killed. The diary documents the mounting that survived the invasion of 1975.5 I tension in East Timor and his own sense of supplemented this with Max Stahl’s footage anxiety and foreboding. Read out in the  lm from 1991, particularly that which indicated by his sister, Nadiah, the diary entries ful ll the consequences, rather than the actuality, of a narrative function as well as re ecting the the invasion and occupation such as the large writer’s political maturity. One of the last family gravesites that dot East Timor. statements Kamal wrote, in fact, included in The second court sequence is shaped the  lm shortly before the massacre sequence, around the testimony of Constancio Pinto, functions as something of a clarion call: a young Timorese leader in exile, who had organized the memorial march that turned Whether total genocide occurs in East Timor into the massacre. A Timorese activist who or not depends not only on the remarkably powerful will of the East Timorese people, had escaped to the hills as a small boy during but also on the will of humanity, of us all. the invasion where he lived amongst the guerilla  ghters,6 Pinto was later captured, As with the earlier intertitles, this quote imprisoned, and tortured. He eventually addresses viewers directly and implicates us became a resistance leader upon his release. politically through our reading. The original court case had been simple, Interwoven into the personal story, built with Nairn, Pinto and Todd acting as the through the interview segments and which only witnesses and being questioned by tracks towards Bamadhaj’s  nal visit to two lawyers, Beth Stephens and Michael East Timor, are a series of “unrelated” court Ratner. Given that the court hearing had not sequences. The provision of testimony within been  lmed, we used two strategies to “ ll” Punitive Damage, which again aligns it with this gap. First, we shot a series of black and the interactive mode, extends beyond the white photographs of the participants in documentary interview into the court case, the actual courtroom; second, using a small where the social actors function literally as studio, we  lmed the two lawyers and three witnesses. Two edited sequences, each shaped witnesses against a black backdrop, as they around court testimony, interrupt the smooth reconstructed their question lines and their narrative unfolding of Bamadhaj’s early life. testimonies. The  rst sequence is centered around The sense of testimony or witnessing the testimony of Alan Nairn, an American granted through the “court” footage is journalist who was in East Timor with Kamal heightened not only by the legal quality of and who was severely injured after being the footage but because, in this instance, the beaten by soldiers.4 He recalls Timor’s history social actors look directly at the camera/ under Portuguese rule, the beginnings of viewer. Unlike the “common interview,” decolonization that it underwent in the mid- where the gaze is slightly off-camera,

SCREENING SOUTHEAST ASIA 53 PUNITIVE DAMAGE suturing the viewer through the presence of the  lmmaker, the look here at camera/ viewer is direct, thereby granting the words of the social actors with a sense of immediacy and communicative power. Leon Narbey, our cameraperson, set up a series of mirrors, which enabled the witnesses to see their respective lawyers in real time re ection, while they, the witnesses, spoke directly to the camera lens. Given our social actors were not professional performers, this aided their “performance” as well as intensifying the Helen Todd, mother of Kamal Bamadhaj. power of their address. Due to its use of re-enactments within reconstruction been presented as authentic. the court sequence, Punitive Damage shares Hence, the foregrounding of the scene’s some of the characteristics of the sub- constructed nature was an attempt, in part, genre, the docudrama. Fictionalized or to protect the documentary participants from dramatic sequences have often been used any political backlash. To shelter them further in documentary to reconstruct an event. from accusations, the  lm uses the docudrama Yet we neither attempted a true “ ctional” technique of a caption, underscoring that the representation, using actors, a commonplace sequences are improvisations based on the strategy in the realist television play of the original court transcriptions. 1960s, nor did we place the subjects back in the The two threads of the documentary original courtroom, attempting to faithfully mentioned so far—Bamadhaj’s life-story reproduce the trial. We preferred a stripped and the graphic court testimony from Nairn down, simpli ed version of events which and Pinto—converge about halfway through we achieved through combining the direct the  lm at the point of the Dili massacre. statements to camera, with black and white Kamal is killed along with 270 other young stills shot in the courtroom. This strategy gave people. Apart from the dramatic quality of the court sequences a simplicity that we felt the footage, the massacre functions as a major would heighten the emotional engagement of turning point both literally and in  lmic the audience while at the same, avoiding the terms. For Bamadhaj and his family, it is the potential political backlash that can arise over cessation of his young life. For East Timor, the use of documentary reconstructions. Since the massacre footage reveals the brutality of the advent of observational documentary in the occupation to the world for the  rst time. the 1960s, the use of reconstruction became And for the  lm, Bamadhaj’s death and the increasingly under attack. massacre propels the narrative forward and As Corner suggests, criticisms voiced over sets Helen Todd’s quest for justice in motion. the “duplicity” of using dramatized sequences After Kamal’s death, it is Helen Todd’s in documentary is often a smokescreen, journey that structures the remainder of obscuring the real problem, which is generally the  lm. Todd describes how initially, she is one of political disagreement.7 Punitive unable to comprehend the seriousness of the Damage is highly critical of the American news, but then is forced to face the realization military backing of the occupation of East of her son’s death. Todd’s grief, and her Timor, and Alan Nairn, unpopular with the fruitless attempts to get justice through United States administration because of his the New Zealand government,  ll a brief sustained critique of their foreign policy, interregnum in Punitive Damage, which then could have been vulnerable to allegations enacts a spatial and temporal shift, cutting of journalistic manipulation had the to New York to explain the origins of the law

54 FALL 2004 ANNIE GOLDSON suit that has already been represented in the knows that Panjaitan would never be held  lm. Lawyers Beth Stephens and Michael accountable and, in fact, fared well on his Ratner, the  lm reveals, were old friends of return to his homeland: Alan Nairn who, despite being seriously injured during the massacre, had been able Panjaitan was never demoted or punished in any way. He did as many ex-generals do in to escape. Together, the three realize that the Indonesia, he simply joined the government conditions existed to bring a court case out service, and then was subsequently against Sintong Panjaitan, the Indonesian promoted to very senior positions. general partially responsible for the killings, who had been sent out of Indonesia for The  lm also reiterates the fact of Western “rest and recreation” until the international involvement in the occupation of East Timor. outrage over Indonesia’s actions in East Timor As well as citing other Indonesian generals subsided. He went, as many “allied” generals who should face charges, Nairn points out do, to Harvard University in Boston, which others who should be tried: has close links with the American government 8 and military establishment. Given Panjaitan’s Also, George Bush and the other sponsors. The guns came from the US, the bullets came residency in the United States, the lawyers, from the US. If this were a civilized country, after receiving Todd’s approval, begin to it would be possible to put them on trial. Not mount the case against him. only just the direct perpetrators but also their Helen Todd’s presentation to the accomplices. court culminates in a comment about the signi cance of Bamadhaj’s death, one of the The  lm closes on a statement by Todd, few moments in the  lm where she is near who reiterates the sense of pain she feels on tears: behalf of the Timorese who lost children, while the  nal words in the  lm are from What he was really passionate about was Bamadhaj’s diary entry, the “clarion call” the work that he was doing in support of cited earlier, written the week before he died. East Timor and the pro-democracy groups Part of the reasons in using the “mother- in Indonesia. For our family, Kamal was the son” story as a central thread, apart from peacemaker. Kamal was the one who got along well with everybody. And he had a highlighting the evident heroism of Todd and really good, laidback sense of humor that I Bamadhaj, was to engage large audiences. The think we all thrived on. So I don’t need to urgency of confronting the bloody occupation say that it’s a loss to us or that it’s a loss to made this a political necessity. Given New me. What enrages me is the loss of Kamal. Zealand’s past commitment to anti-apartheid The loss to him of the life that he could have and anti-nuclear issues, I sensed that the lived. And all the work he could have done. country could, potentially, assume leadership And all the good he could have done. in addressing the grievous human rights abuses that were continuing so close to home. The “success” of the court case provides Hence, formally, Punitive Damage is what I a sense of vindication for Helen and for the would describe as a strategically “realist”  lm audience; some kind of justice is seen to which, despite self-re exive elements, has a be done. However, although there is much strong narrative shape, is deeply emotional, to admire about elements of the American and has many points of identi cation for a judiciary, I feared that the upbeat ending of general audience. Punitive Damage could function as a classical “happy ending,” celebrating the United Punitive Damage and Strategic States justice system, and hence the American Realism way of life. To temper this positive valence, the  lm includes a statement by Todd that This approach was something of a departure makes it clear that, despite her “victory,” she for me, having been schooled in the  lm SCREENING SOUTHEAST ASIA 55 PUNITIVE DAMAGE studies orthodoxy that rejected realist forms suffering oppression.”11 Jane Gaines has of  lm and television.9 As an interactive also explored the triangulation of emotion, documentary, Punitive Damage foregrounds audience and documentary in her more recent the presence of the  lmmaker. Despite a study, coining the term “political mimesis” degree of self-consciousness, however, the which, she says, “begins with the body.” interactive documentary mode continues She describes the effects of  lms that appear to be reliant on the notion of indexicality, so real that they “make struggle visceral,” suggesting that the camera can “catch the that “go beyond the abstractly intellectual to truth.” Ultimately, interactive documentary produce a bodily swelling” and hence act on does not deny the possibility of truthful politicized audiences, extending a community representation. And this mode, through its of resisters.12 linkage to discourses of modernism through Punitive Damage relies heavily on emotion, the projects of Enlightenment and social engendered primarily through the strong progress, claims to be able to change the world on-screen presence of Helen Todd. She was rather than merely represent it. A framework motivated by grief over the loss of her son, of poststructuralism and postmodernism is yet she made it abundantly clear that she was likely to judge such a documentary as naïve also taking the dif cult step of legal action on because of its reliance on an Enlightenment behalf of the Timorese. Western audiences, notion of the “truth,” while at the same identifying with her over the loss of her son, time exhibiting blind faith in the progressive could not help but be drawn into her deep imperative. empathy with the Timorese. Rather than Despite understanding and, in part, identi catory mechanisms, such as emotion, agreeing with the critique of realism, functioning to mystify people and de- during the process of making my  lm, I politicize people as the “anti-realists” argued, began to re-evaluate what is usually taken such strategies could be seen as potentially to be the implication of postmodernist and engaging audiences, encouraging them to poststructuralist theories in which the only combat an immediate political travesty. In properly political approach to  lmmaking other words, emotion and affect can generate, must be an avant-gardist, self-re exive one. to use Gaines’ term, political mimesis, a In fact, I discovered that alternative positions condition that “moves” the audience “to do on the issue of realism had continued to be something instead of nothing in relation to the voiced, albeit quietly. Bill Nichols coined political situation illustrated in the screen.”13 the concept of “political self-re exivity,” Alex Juhasz argues that poststructuralists as opposed to formal “self-re exivity,” wrongly lumped documentary realism into admitting a realist-looking documentary the same category as Hollywood realism. can, under some circumstances, function in Realism and identi cation in early feminist a politically re exive manner if it is at odds documentary, she states as an example, were with a prevailing ideological position.10 The used as viable theoretical strategies towards realist strategies of Punitive Damage in fact political ends and, rather than interpellating indeed did just this, revealing a profound women as “uni ed subjects,” they in fact injustice that had been hidden from view. mobilized vast numbers of women in Other writers, including Julia Lesage and complex ways. She points out that realism E. Ann Kaplan pointed to the problems of deploys “always changing conventions” that a counter-cinema stance that discouraged can function in a number of ways, at times identi cation or ignored the affective side functioning to con rm patriarchal reality and of the viewers’ response, and the latter at others testifying to “alternative, marginal, expressed concern over the potential subversive or illegal realities.”14 “danger of a theory that ignores the need A number of examples from Punitive for emotional identi cation with people Damage appear to ful ll the latter possibility.

56 FALL 2004 ANNIE GOLDSON

The  rst is the announcement of Bamadhaj’s Bamadhaj, as a middle-class Westerner (or at death in the  rst few minutes of the  lm. least as a non-Timorese), would be a far more Its delivery through a re-presented news signi cant political event than the deaths of report already alerts an audience to how many thousands of Timorese. In this section, we are usually informed about such events. however, the dying youth becomes Bamadhaj, But beyond this self-re exive touch, the reminding us of what violent death really knowledge of Kamal’s death from the looks like. The ready emotion engendered by beginning, directs the audience’s narrative the story of Helen and Kamal can be extended, curiosity away from the fact of his death (will hopefully, to the young man, reminding us he die or not?), but rather toward why, and that every such death is a tragedy, even that of how, his death occurred. Hence, while the a nameless Timorese boy. emotional impact of his dying is maintained Fourth, although not heavily self-re exive, through the presence of Helen Todd, attention the recreation of the court scene led to a is shifted to the context of his killing: the particular audience engagement, a kind of political circumstances of East Timor. And dual effect. Audiences both knew that the rather than focus the blame entirely on characters in the courtroom were “real,” that is, the Indonesian military, Punitive Damage non-actors, in that they recognized them from consistently reminds the audience that it was the interviews within the  lm. Yet at the same the United States and Western support—our time, it was obvious that the court case was support—that made the occupation possible. “re-enacted” as the “characters” were  lmed A second example of the use of a strategic against a black backdrop, not on location. They “realism” is the alternating pattern of the continued to transmit, however, a strong sense  rst third of the  lm, in which the story of of sincerity and authenticity. This suggests Kamal’s life is juxtaposed with court scenes that at one level, life is performative; memory, describing the state of East Timor. This, to history and emotion are transmitted through me, made for some chilling juxtapositions, an ability to communicate signs and language. a kind of presaging of his death. One is I believed that with Punitive Damage, I was aware of this bright boy growing up initially both attempting and obliged to reach as large oblivious to the horror unfolding nearby. an audience as possible, and this required an Already this suggests a demarcation: a world engagement of some kind with “realism.” Yet of the fortunate and those that suffer. But the despite this attempt to rehabilitate realism, I audience already knows that with Bamadhaj’s still acknowledge its critics, recognizing the coming of age, these worlds will collide, complexity of the debate around truth and resulting in his death. Again, the mounting transparency. Like Gaines, I would argue that narrative anticipation could precipitate there has to be a way to be both a champion audience re ection on how profound the of the critique of realism and a defender global divisions remain. of the uses of realism and I see this  lm as A third strategy worth re-examining is the exemplifying a “strategic” rather than naïve representation of Bamadhaj’s death. Rather realism.15 than restaging his death, we inter-cut footage of the dying Timorese youth being cradled The Human Rights Documentary by a friend in the Santa Cruz cemetery, with eye-witnesses’ accounts of Bamadhaj’s death. I have coined Punitive Damage a “human This narrative “solution” had resonance rights” documentary, part of a subgenre beyond the practicality of illustration. News that has arisen since the transformation of and current affairs practice, emerging as it the international political order from a Cold does from the developed world, tends to War basis to globalization. The human rights privilege the death of Western subjects. Within documentary shares characteristics with the contemporary news discourse, the killing of “committed documentary” as explicated

SCREENING SOUTHEAST ASIA 57 PUNITIVE DAMAGE most fully by Thomas Waugh.16 The subject based on identity led to critics’ claims that matter of Punitive Damage for example—the social transformation was being drowned in plight of the Timorese under Indonesian the buzz of human differences.18 occupation— ts well with the anti-colonial The rise of the human rights documentary, documentaries of the 1970s and 1980s.17 then, is in part an attempt to return to a However, unlike the committed broader sense of a coalition politics, not one documentary, which frequently argued for circumscribed by the politics of identity. After ideological transformation, the human rights all, Punitive Damage fails the test of identity documentary is less overt in its commitment politics: it is known as a  lm about East to the Left. The earlier strand of documentary Timor, yet neither Helen Todd nor Kamal, often relied largely on Marxism as a central nor I, for that matter, are Timorese. Consistent doctrine of political transformation. Punitive with this shift, such works tend to be aimed Damage is more circumspect emphasizing at larger, even mainstream audiences: they instead the historical experience of the are not produced with the primary intention Timorese living under occupation: a society of raising the consciousness of small target terrorized by torture, disappearances and “identity” audiences, as are many media lack of basic freedoms. Punitive Damage thus activist projects. aligns itself with key planks of the human Interestingly, however, Punitive Damage rights agenda as it has arisen from the 1980s, remains informed by feminism, despite articulated by groups such as Amnesty moving away from a narrow de nition of International and Asia Watch. Human identity politics. I have written previously rights documentaries, then, often position on the fact that “narratives of struggle” are themselves as “neutral” or “moderate” increasingly spoken by women, re ecting politically, given the dif culties of articulating the gendered experience of war.19 In the partisan political positions on the Left since instance of Punitive Damage, Helen Todd the collapse of the Soviet sphere of in uence used her own painful experience to address and the revelations about life under state what she admitted was the greater struggle Communism. Furthermore, the rise of of the Timorese, thus extending out to those poststructuralism and feminism has made the whose children had disappeared without premises of Marxism problematic because of a trace. And if Todd empathized with the its universal epistemological base. Timorese, I empathized with her, only At the same time, human rights imagining what it must be like to lose a documentaries are distinct from media child under such circumstances. However, it activist and experimental personal appears that the female directors of human documentaries, which are often based in rights documentaries, which I would judge an identity politics that emerged from the to be undoubtedly feminist, recognize the critique of Marxism. The lists of works limitations of an analysis based purely in mapped out through lines of origin—AIDS identity or one that deals solely with gender. videos, gay and lesbian documentaries, Black These  lmmakers have chosen to work in that video and so on—paralleled the politics of complex and interconnected territory where fragmentation that was occurring during the gender is just one factor amongst many. 1970s and 1980s within political movements, The umbrella of human rights signals a as counter-hegemonic resistances arose based return to a broader conceptual framework on categories such as race and gender. But within which a multitude of other movements while a general shift away from the master can be collected. There are dangers in this as narratives, such as Marxism, revealed the the concept can encompass too wide a range political limitations of earlier movements of ideological positions, including corporate (such as their gender-blindness), the interests and the Right wing. But although subsequent fragmentation into a politics the brief of the human rights community

58 FALL 2004 ANNIE GOLDSON

Family gravesites in East Timor. extends to address con ict resolution, good genocide. This is where Punitive Damage can governance, humanitarian principles, and be placed. even democracy, its core practice still is the Ultimately, despite Punitive Damage’s “old-fashioned” campaigns against manifest timeliness and its wide release, it is dif cult injustice, torture, political detention, and to gauge in the end whether it had a political

SCREENING SOUTHEAST ASIA 59 PUNITIVE DAMAGE

effect. Could I claim that the screenings accurately answer given we are hampered by for politicians in Wellington and Canberra empiricism as Jane Gaines suggests: changed the course of their policy? Or that What do we count as change? How do we the popularity of the  lm with certain sectors know what effects the  lm has produced? of the population moved public opinion? In How do we determine where consciousness the end, these are impossible questions to leaves off and action begins?20

Annie Goldson is a documentary  lmmaker whose recent titles include Punitive Damage, Georgie Girl and Sheilas: 28 Years On. She is also a writer and is currently completing a book on human rights and documentary. Goldson teaches at the University of Auckland in Aoteroa New Zealand.

Notes

1Punitive Damage, directed by Annie Goldson (1999). 2Max Stahl is a freelance  lmmaker who specializes in  lming in war zones. He was working for Yorkshire television in East Timor the month prior to the massacre and amassed an extraordinary body of work. His  lms include Cold Blood: The massacre of East Timor (1995) and East Timor Stories (1999) 3See, Bill Nichols, Representing Reality (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1991). 4 Alan Nairn is a journalist who publishes regularly in The Nation, The New Yorker and the Multinational Monitor, and regularly reports for Paci ca Radio’s Democracy Now. He also wrote the introduction to Pinto (1997) and has testi ed twice before the US House of Representatives Subcommittee on Human Rights about abuses by the Indonesian military, highlighting US administration support. See, Constancio Pinto, Matthew Jardine, and Allan Nairn, Timor’s Un nished Struggle: Inside the Timorese Resistance (Boston: South End Press, 1997). 5 The murder of the Australian news team at Balibo just prior to the invasion and the hostility expressed towards the media by the Indonesian military meant that there was very little independent documentation of the invasion. See, Jill Joliffe, “Back to Balibo,” The New Zealand Listener (November 15, 2003): 24, for further background to Balibo. 6 See the following for his life story: Constancio Pinto, Matthew Jardine, and Allan Nairn, Timor’s Un nished Struggle: Inside the Timorese Resistance (Boston: South End Press, 1997). 7See, John Corner, The Art of Record: A Critical Introduction to Documentary (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1996). 8 Nairn is referring to the former US President George Bush Senior, not his son, the current president of the United States. 9 See, Claire Johnston, “Women’s Cinema as Counter-cinema,” in Movies and Methods: An Anthology, ed. Bill Nichols (University of California Press, 1976), 208 - 217. 10See, Bill Nichols, Representing Reality (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1991), 65. 11See, Julia Lesage, “The Political Aesthetics of the Feminist Documentary Film,” Quarterly Review of Film Studies 3 (Fall 1978): 507 – 23. See also, E. Ann Kaplan, Women and Film: Both Sides of the Camera (New York: Methuen, 1983), 217. 12See, Jane Gaines, “Political Mimesis,” in Collecting Visible Evidence, eds. Jane Gaines and Michael Renov (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 89. 13Ibid. 14See, Alex Juhasz, “They said we were trying to show reality – all I want to show is my video,” in Collecting Visible Evidence, eds. Jane Gaines and Michael Renov (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 195. 15See, Jane Gaines, “Political Mimesis,” in Collecting Visible Evidence, eds. Jane Gaines and Michael Renov (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 84 - 102. 16See, Thomas Waugh, ed., Show Us Life: Toward a History and Aesthetics of the Committed Documentary (Metuchen, NJ, and London: Scarecrow Press, 1984). 17Committed documentary produced through the Cold War years, includes In the Year of the Pig (1969), The Battle of Chile (1976-78), and El Salvador: Another Vietnam (1981). 18See, David Simpson’s recent analysis for an analysis of the policing effect of identity politics: David Simpson, Situatedness or, Why We Keep Saying We’re Coming From (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002). 19 See, Annie Goldson, “After the Fact: Truth, Testimony, and the Law in Human Rights Documentary,” Screening the Past: An International Journal of Visual Media and History 14 (November 6, 2002). 20See, Jane Gaines, “Political Mimesis,” in Collecting Visible Evidence, eds. Jane Gaines and Michael Renov (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 88.

60 FALL 2004