REPORTING WARS Reviews SUSIE EISENHUTH lectures in journalism at the University of Technology, Sydney. Telling stories that nobody wants to hear Balibo, directed by Robert Connolly. Foot- print Films and Paramount Pictures. 2009, 111 min. www.balibo.com ELBOURNE writer Chloe MHooper said recently of her issues, it was also a compelling read. acclaimed non-fi ction book The Tall The resonance of the storytelling was Man that she had wanted to write underpinned by Hooper’s fi ne writing a page-turner about a subject no and her clear-eyed observation of the one wanted to know about. It was key players on both sides, their shared a great aspiration and a consider- frailties and humanity, but the urgency able challenge given the topic—the of the dramatic narrative was laid death in custody of Palm Island man down in the bedrock of meticulously Cameron Doomagee and the subse- assembled detail. quent trial of Northern Territory po- In the end, the book traversed liceman Chris Hurley. many of the sorts of issues which, She had noticed, Hooper said, as Hooper rightly surmised, we’d that the words ‘deaths in custody’ rather not dwell on. Deaths in cus- tended to make Australians’ eyes tody, forced migration, the ugly glaze over. We didn’t want to know. face of alcohol abuse and violence The book turned out to be an im- in Aboriginal communities—and portant chronicle of those events, and thrumming away like an insistent base immensely moving, but signifi cantly, note throughout, the issue of racism. given the gravity of the underlying PACIFIC JOURNALISM REVIEW 16 (1) 2010 205 REPORTING WARS What does it mean to be racist? Are the Timorese death toll continued to we, or aren’t we? A fiction writer grow. An indelible memory for this who had got hooked on a news story writer is of a lineup of ageing diggers, and won a national journalism award chests full of medals, at a protest rally for a feature exploring its backstory, outside Sydney Town Hall, speaking Hooper had now transformed that out about their shame at Australia’s episode into a remarkable reflection failure to help the Timorese people on Australia and Australians. On who who had fought so bravely alongside we are. them against the Japanese. Australian director Robert The shame and anger come flood- Connolly’s aspiration for his film ing back from the opening moments Balibo—and the challenge of bring- of Balibo, as Connolly and his players ing it to a wider audience—was simi- sound their eloquent lament for the lar. As was his take on our propensity five reporters who died there, and for not wanting to know. Certainly the for the unknown soldier of that same death of the six Australian-based jour- battle for truth, Roger East, gunned nalists—including New Zealander down and tossed off the end of the Gary Cunningham—seeking to tell wharf in Dili like so much rubbish, the truth about Indonesia’s invasion along with scores of East Timorese of East Timor in 1975 was an episode fleeing the invaders. that Australians, or more particularly The film begins and ends with their politicians, didn’t want to know Juliana (Bea Viegas), a Timorese about. Not then, not now, and not over widow testifying after the liberation the intervening period, when dread- about the mayhem of the invasion, a ful crimes were being perpetrated in useful device to anchor a narrative Timor and Australian governments that necessarily moves across three were averting their eyes, shamefully, decades. Her story starts with a child- in our name. hood memory of the arrival of the ‘I will say no more on East troops in Dili. And with the benefit Timor,’ then Prime Minister Gough of multiple eye witness accounts, Whitlam is heard telling reporters in the film slips back through time to the film. ‘I will not elaborate on the recreate the scenes that have never statement I made.’ Let it lie, became been writ large in the history books. the mantra. Older Australians will Warships moored off the coast, skies remember the frustration. ‘Shame, filled with parachutes, terror on the Australia, shame,’ as the banners streets of Dili as scores of fleeing read at the many protests held as locals are mown down by gunfire, the 206 PACIFIC JOURNALISM REVIEW 16 (1) 2010 PJR_16_1_May10_final.indd 206 7/05/2010 2:36:41 p.m. REPORTING WARS first of the thousands who would per- breathes life into these figures we ish in the violence and starvation that have mostly known as a collection ensued under the brutal occupation. of passport photos under the tagline The ‘kind man’ Juliana’s memory ‘the Balibo Five’. Sticking closely to singles out is journalist Roger East, what is known of their movements, who had been urged to come to Timor and carefully recreating scenes from by the young José Ramos Horta. As their surviving footage, the film paints the film backtracks further, we see a likeably down to earth portrait of the personable Horta (Oscar Isaac) the journalists, getting just right the imploring East (Anthony LaPaglia) bravado with a dash of poetry that is to work for his government’s news so often the hallmark of good young agency. Indonesia is about to swal- reporters on the make. The aching low them up, he tells East, and they heart of the film is the sequence from need someone to get the word out, so their final days, where they sit talking the world will stand up for the small with Timorese villagers and journalist former Portugese colony trying to Greg Shackleton (Damon Gameau) establish its independence. files an eloquent piece to camera—his LaPaglia gives us the middle- last— saying how moved they felt to aged East as slow moving but savvy, be made so welcome as Australians, alternately engaged and irritated by and how all the locals wanted to know the silver-tongued Horta, pudgy and was, simply, why was no one coming sweating in the tropical heat but in- to help them. creasingly dogged as his conviction There is inevitably debate over grows that five missing journalists the fictionalising of real—and con- have come to grief, and no one seems troversial—events. Criticisms have to care. The film cuts between East been made of the fictional elements in retracing their steps and the reporters Connolly’s film, but for the most part themselves chasing the invasion story, the variants are minor—educated sup- taking them ever closer to Balibo and positions to sustain the story’s flow. It what we know will be their last stand, is certainly a crowded narrative, and inside the hut on which we have seen some will perhaps wish that as well as them cheerfully daubing an Aussie Horta’s triumphal return to Dili after flag. liberation there was room for more It is agonising to watch the than mention of the courageous East fate of the young reporters unfold. Timorese resistance that preceded it, One of the most memorable things with up to 200,000 lives lost during about Connolly’s film is the way it the occupation. Material enough there PACIFIC JOURNALISM REVIEW 16 (1) 2010 207 PJR_16_1_May10_final.indd 207 7/05/2010 2:36:41 p.m. REPORTING WARS for another film perhaps, or several. true in the sense that the Australian But the fact that the film is government knew about Indonesia’s grounded in fact can hardly be disput- intentions, and what happened to the ed. Outright denial and prevarication journalists at the time, yet covered this may have characterised the political up for years, and that the US and UK response, but over the same period were also complicit’. journalists and experts in Indonesian Connolly’s passionate film makes politics and intelligence matters us look at these events squarely in the have produced a range of thoroughly eye. And it makes no bones about its researched accounts that provide a outrage. Viewers are likely to share searing indictment of successive Aus- it. Outrage that these events have tralian governments, including James been shrouded in secrecy for so long, Dunn, former East Timor consul and outrage that an appalling litany of lies author (1983, 1996), Hamish Mc- has been perpetuated to keep them so, Donald and Desmond Ball (2000) and and outrage that such unconscionably Jill Jolliffe whose Cover Up (2001, shabby treatment has thereby been 2009) was a primary source for the afforded to the memory of the lost film. There was no shortage of well- citizens of Timor and the six coura- documented evidence on the record geous journalists who died trying to for the filmmakers to access, notably tell their story. the damning findings of the report of the NSW coronial inquiry (2007). References Ball, D. & McDonald, H. (2000). Death For Deakin University’s Damien in Balibo, lies in Canberra. Sydney: Kingsbury, a longtime commenta- Allen & Unwin. tor on East Timor, ‘Balibo raises Dunn J. (1996). Timor: A people betrayed. the issue of the distinction between Sydney: ABC Books (originally pub- “fact” and “fiction”’ (interview with lished 1983). Dunn, J. (1995). East Timor: The Balibo the author, September 2009). While incident in perspective. Sydney: there are some factual inaccuracies, Australian Centre for Independent he says, mostly because events are Journalism (ACIJ). compressed and changed for purposes Jolliffe, J. (2009). Cover up. (Revised of narrative, ‘the movie is “true” in the edition). Sydney: Scribe (originally published 2001). sense that it conveys the truth about Kingsbury, D. (2009). Interview with the the murder of the journalists (all six author, September.
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