A Gabriela poster honouring martyred women during the Marcos martial law
years in the Philippines on display at the AUT film screening. IMAGE:
David Robie/APR
Seven weeks ago the Philippines truth-telling martial law film Katips
was basking in the limelight in the country’s national FAMAS academy
movie awards, winning best picture and a total of six other awards.
Last week it began a four month “world tour” of 10 countries starting
in the Middle East followed by Aotearoa New Zealand on Sunday – hosted
simultaneously at AUT South campus and in Wellington and Christchurch.
The screening of Vincent Tañada’s harrowing – especially the graphic
torture scenes – yet also joyful and poignant musical drama touched a
raw nerve among many in the audience who shared tears and their
experiences of living in fear, or in hiding, during the hate-filled
Marcos dictatorship.
The martial law denunciations, arbitrary arrests, desaparecidos (“disappeared”),
brutal tortures and murders by state assassins in the 1970s made the
McCarthy era red-baiting witchhunts in the US seem like Sunday School
picnics.
Filmmaker and journalist Max Stahl, 66, has died almost 30
years after capturing images of the Indonesian massacre at Santa Cruz cemetery
in the Timor-Leste capital Dili, which helped accelerate the country’s
struggle for independence.
By coincidence, he died on the same day in 1991 as Sebastião Gomes,
the young man who was buried in Santa Cruz and whose death led to the
protest that ended in the Santa Cruz Massacre.
More than 2000 people went to Santa Cruz to pay tribute to Gomes, who
was killed by Indonesian-backed militia in the Motael neighbourhood.
Filmmaker Max Stahl speaking to the 20th anniversary of Pacific Journalism Review in Auckland in 2014. Image: Del Abcede/APR
The atrocity by the Indonesian military was secretly filmed by Max
Stahl and footage smuggled out of the country. International attention
on East Timor dramatically changed as a result.
At the graveyard, the Indonesian military opened fire on the crowd,
killing 74 people at the scene. Over the next few days, more than 120
young people died in hospital from their wounds or as a result of the
crackdown by occupying forces.
Most bodies were never recovered.
Born on 6 December 1954 in the United Kingdom, journalist and
documentary maker Christopher Wenner, better known as Max Stahl, began
his ties to the country in 1991 when he managed to enter East Timor for
the first time.
He became a Timorese citizen in 2019.
Hiding among the graves
On November 12, hiding among the graves of Santa Cruz cemetery, he
filmed the massacre — one of many during the Indonesian occupation of
the country. Images were circulated around the world’s media and this
changed history.
Decorated with the Order of Timor-Leste, the highest award given to
foreign citizens in the country, the Rory Peck Prize for filmmakers, and
several other rewards, Max Stahl leaves as a legacy the main archives
of images from the last years of the Indonesian occupation of the
country.
The archive was adopted by UNESCO for the World Memory Register and
has been used for teaching and research on Timor’s history under the
framework of cooperation between the University of Coimbra, the National
University of East Timor and CAMSTL.
The original 1991 Dili massacre footage by Max Stahl. Video: Journeyman Pictures
Stahl studied literature at the University of Oxford and he was a
fluent speaker of several languages, including the two official
languages of East Timor — Portuguese and Tetum.
He began his career writing for theatre and children’s television
shows. However, he found his calling as a war correspondent when he
lived with his family. At the time his father was ambassador to El
Salvador where Stahl reported on the civil war between 1979 and 1992.
Stahl covered other conflicts such as those of Georgia, former
Yugoslavia and East Timor (from 30 August 1991), where he arrived as a
“tourist” at the invitation of resistance groups.
“The king is dead. With great sadness, I write to inform you that Max passed away this morning.”
— Max Stahl’s wife Dr Ingrid Brucens
Historic resistance leaders
Throughout his long ties to East Timor, where he lived until he had to
travel recently to Australia for medical treatment, he interviewed
historic resistance leaders such as Nino Konis Santa, David Alex and
others.
Santa Cruz and the 12 November 1991 massacre made the name Max Stahl
known internationally with his images exposing the barbarism of the
Indonesian occupation.
In Portugal, the images made a special impact — both through the
brutality of the violence portrayed and because the survivors gathered
in the small chapel of Santa Cruz, praying in Portuguese while listening
to the bullets being fired by the Indonesian military and police.
The 1999 referendum prompted Max Stahl to return to East Timor when
he covered the violence before the referendum and after the announcement
of independence victory. He also accompanied families on the flight to
the mountains.
News of Max Stahl’s death on Wednesday at a Brisbane hospital quickly
became the most commented subject on social media in East Timor,
prompting condolences from several personalities during the struggle for
independence.
In statements to Lusa news agency, former President José Ramos-Horta
described Max Stahl’s death as a “great loss” to Timor-Leste and the
world. He said it would cause “deep consternation and pain” to the
Timorese people.
“Someone like Max, with a big heart, with a great dedication and love
for East Timor … [has been] taken to another world,” he told Lusa.
Dr Ingrid Brucens, Max Stahl’s wife, and who was with him and the children in Brisbane, announced his death to friends.
“The king is dead. With great sadness, I write to inform you that Max
passed away this morning,” she wrote in messages to friends.
Antonio Sampaio is the Lusa correspondent in Dili.
ON this day we honour Australian award-winning journalist and film
maker Mark Worth who died in West Papua on January 15, 2004 -
suspiciously just two days after the ABC announced his documentary, Land of the Morning Star, would be screened across Australia.
Many
of Mark's friends and colleagues deemed his sudden death as suspicious
and many called on the Australian government for a thorough
investigation.
Yet the Australian government predictably left any investigation up
to the Indonesian government, which buried his body so quickly that no one
was able to properly establish his cause of death, which was officially
left as mere pneumonia. His death remains an unresolved issue with
many.
Mark Worth's sudden death shocked Papuans and all involved in
Free West Papua campaigns in West Papua, PNG, Australia and the world.
Mark Worth had worked tirelessly exposing the truth about the cruel
occupation of West Papua from inside West Papua, which ultimately, many
assume was the real cause of his sudden death.
Pacific Media Watch contributing editor Alistar Kata's report on an incisive new documentary.
INVESTIGATIVE journalist Kim Webby’s incisive and compassionate new documentary, The Price of Peace, about Tūhoe campaigner and kaumatua Tame Iti and the so-called “Urewera Four” won a standing ovation at its premiere during the NZ International Film Festival this week.
It deserved this - and more. Webby has crafted arguably the most brilliant film portrayal of race and cultural relations in New Zealand in contemporary times. She has examined a criminal case of national interest to explore biculturalism and justice in general, and specifically the litany of injustices imposed on the Ngāi Tūhoe people for generations.
And Webby has exposed the hypocrisy and myth making over both the Tūhoe case of justice and the disturbing facets of the current political orthodoxy around state surveillance.
The 87-minute film – made over a period of seven years - is essentially about the trial of the Urewera Four and its aftermath following the notorious “terror” raids in Te Urewera in 2007.
It portrays a striking and polarised duality about how mainstream New Zealand viewed the arrests and the people who were brutalised by this masked “swat” team-style attack on a peaceful and laid-back community.
NINE years ago two Paris-based filmmakers, Jerôme Lambert and Philippe Picard, who have directed many documentaries for French public television, made a controversial documentary, Cabu: Politiquement Incorrect (Cabu: Politically Incorrect), about one of Charlie Hebdo's most famous cartoonists.
The documentary hasn't yet been released in English, but an almost six-minute section of it about the decision-making process around publication of a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad has been edited as a short package and published online on Op-Docs at The New York Times.
Ultimately, the publication of this cartoon - and others – by the satirical magazine led this week to the tragic assassination by two jihadist gunmen of the cartoon creator, the editor and eight other people and two police officers protecting them in a savage raid on the publication’s office.
By the end of three days of blood-letting in Paris, including a double hostage siege, 17 innocent people had been killed plus three extremist gunmen - shot dead by French elite security forces. More than 3.7 million people and global leaders on Sunday marched in rallies across France - including the French Pacific territories - to pay tribute to those who lost their lives.
According to the NYT's website for Op-Docs, it is a "forum for short, opinionated documentaries, produced with creative latitude by independent filmmakers and artists". And there is an open invitation for submissions. Here is the introduction to the video - Charlie Hebdo, Before the Massacre:
Raging fires around Athens, a still from the devastating Alister Barry climate change film Hot Air
by photographer Nikos Pilos.
IN THE wrap-up session of the Pacific Journalism Review 20th anniversary conference at the weekend, independent film maker Alister Barry was beaming.
"I've never had such a tremendous reception for the film," he admitted to Café Pacific. He was blown away by the tremendously engaged and enthusiastic response of a packed audience. Many said his climate change film Hot Air, premiered at the NZ International Film Festival in July, was inspirational.
But what needs to be done? The Vanguard Films investigation reveals in a devastating way how politicians are shackled when trying to confront such a critical global challenge as climate change. It also exposes the weaknesses of the NZ democratic system.
The lively discussion at AUT University centred on what strategies need to be followed. Some called for another documentary about climate change in the Pacific. A graduating student journalist from AUT was on hand to report the discussion.
AN EXTRAORDINARY story of mining skulduggery and a courageous struggle by indigenous Kanak environmental campaigners has been captured in a poignant new documentary, Cap Bocage – described by the filmmaker as a tale of “when a mountain fell into the sea”.
The culprit in this case is Ballande, one of the oldest nickel mining companies in New Caledonia with a record of three decades laying waste a coastal environment in north-east Grande Terre.
The documentary, made by director Jim Marbook, filmmaker and also a television and screen production lecturer in AUT University’s School of Communication Studies, is an astute piece of cinematography.
Made over a period of seven years, it patiently peels away all the complexities and subtleties of the environmental struggle against a hard-nosed mining company that employs most of the people in the remote Kanak community.
It also tells the story of articulate and charismatic campaigner Florent Eurisouké – who visited Auckland for the global premiere at this week’s New Zealand International Film Festival – and his environmental organisation Mèè Rhaari take on Ballande through boycotts and finally the lawcourts.
A YEAR after Indonesian troops killed more than 270 peaceful demonstrators at the cemetery of Santa Cruz in the Timor-Leste capital of Dili in 1991, news footage secretly shot by a cameraman surfaced in a powerful new film.
The Yorkshire Television documentary, In Cold Blood: The Massacre of East Timor, screened in six countries and later broadcast in other nations, helped change the course of history.
Until then, countries such as Australia and New Zealand – in spite of a New Zealander being killed in the massacre – had been content to close a blind eye to the illegal Indonesian invasion in 1975 and the atrocities committed for a quarter century.
The cameraman, Max Stahl, who risked his own life to film the massacre and bury the footage cassette in a freshly dug grave before he was arrested, knew this evidence of the massacre would be devastating.
In a documentary made a decade later by Yorkshire Television’s Peter Gordon, Bloodshot: The Dreams and Nightmares of East Timor, that interviewed key players –including Stahl himself - in the transition to restored independence in 2002, Timorese leaders reveal just how critical this footage was in telling their story of repression to the world.
“The bomb will not start a chain reaction in the water, converting it all to gas and letting all the ships on all the oceans drop down to the bottom. It will not blow out the bottom of the sea and let all the water run down the hole. It will not destroy gravity. I am not an atomic playboy.”
– Vice Admiral William P. Blandy, Bikini bomb test commander, 25 July 1946
WHEN the military scientists of an advanced technological nation deliberately explode their largest nuclear bomb (and 66 others) over Pacific islands and use the opportunities to study the effects of radiation on nearby native people, which group is best described as “savage”?
And what should you call the people who prevent a documentary about these American post-war crimes from reaching a wide audience in the United States?
Nuclear Savage is a recent documentary film that explores American nuclear weapons testing in the Marshall Islands, 1946-1958 - and particularly the secret Project 4.1: an American experiment in exposing Pacific Islanders to overdoses of radiation – deliberate human radiation poisoning – just to get better data on this method of maiming and killing people.
The public broadcasting establishment has spent more that two years keeping this story off the air.
DRAFTHOUSE FILMS have announced their award-winning controversial, shocking and surreal film The Act Of Killing about the Indonesian anti-communist massacres in the 1965-66 purge - screened at the New Zealand International Film Festival last year - is now available on video on demand.
Winner of more than 50 awards internationally, appearing on more than 40 official critics' top ten lists, and shortlisted for best documentary at this year's upcoming Academy Awards, Joshua Oppenheimer's groundbreaking documentary The Act Of Killing is finally available to watch everywhere.
At the time of checking, 352,000 people had seen the trailer.
In this chilling and inventive documentary, executive produced by Errol Morris and Werner Herzog, the unrepentant former members of Indonesian death squads are challenged to re-enact some of their many murders in the style of the American movies they love.
Police, military perimeter guards and the public watch
the 38th independence anniversary parade at the
"widows village" of Kraras. Mobile photo: David Robie/PMC
ON 28 November 1975, Timor-Leste made its fateful unilateral declaration of independence. A week later, a paranoid Indonesian military, fearful of an upstart "leftwing" neighbouring government,
staged its brutal invasion and 24 years of repression and massacres followed.
On 17 September 1983, the infamous massacre of at least
300 civilians (probably a far higher number) took place at the village of
Kraras and Wetuka River near Viqueque.
This heralded the end of the so-called ceasefire between
Indonesian and Falintil forces and led to the long guerrilla struggle against
Jakarta's harsh rule.
This week, the people of Kraras - the "village of widows" -
proudly hosted the 38th anniversary of Timor-Leste independence; the real date,
not the "rewritten" post-UN date. They also honoured the 30th anniversary of the
Kraras massacre.
The massacre has been graphically portrayed in
Timor-Leste's first feature film, Beatriz's War, and it was fitting that this movie should be screened to thousands of Timorese in an open-air arena at the
independence festival this week.
Nuclear Exodus - Rongelap Islanders on board the Rainbow Warrior. Photo/video: David Robie
Flashback to 1987: NUCLEAR EXODUS: THE RONGELAP EVACUATION
The legacy from US nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands has provided a media backdrop to last week's 44th Pacific Islands Forum in Majuro. Here is a short documentary made by David Robie and his Aroha Productions team and broadcast by Television New Zealand.
The item was published in the New Zealand Listener as a documentary preview on 2 May
1987 before the film was screened on TVNZ's Tagata Pasifika:
The Rongelap Islanders of Micronesia have been described as the first victims of World War Three.
Many of them remember March 1, 1954, as the day it "snowed" on their atoll, as deadly fallout dusted down from a 15 megaton thermonuclear test, codenamed Bravo, held on Bikini Atoll.
Since then Rongelap people have suffered leukaemia deaths, cancers, thyroid tumours, miscarriages, deformed children and births described as "jellyfish" babies.
A noted American researcher has predicted that everyone who was aged under 10 when the contamination occurred will die of cancer.
This award-winning, 12-minute film tells the story of their contamination, and of their evacuation three decades later by the peace ship Rainbow Warrior to Mejato Island, 150 km away. Scripted and co-produced by Pacific affairs writer David Robie, Nuclear Exodus is a damning indictment of the nuclear machine.
THIS is a sneak preview of a documentary about the Solomon Islands conflict that Larry Thomas from Fiji and I have been working on for years.
We started filming in early 2003, prior to the deployment of the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI). We went back and did more filming after the RAMSI intervention.
We are now in the editing stage and looking for funds to complete the film. If you have ideas on where and how to access funds to complete this important film, please let me know.
This film will contribute a lot to the history of the Solomon Islands conflicts and the aspirations of Solomon Islanders.
In filming, we travelled to Malaita, Western Solomons and around Guadalcanal.
AWARD-WINNING filmmakers Annie Goldson (Brother Number One, An Island Calling), and Kay Ellmers (Canvassing the Treaty, Polynesian Panthers) present the feature version of He Toki Huna: New Zealand in Afghanistan.
It will be screened - full-length - for the first time at the New Zealand International Film Festival on Sunday.
Originally airing in a broadcast version on Māori Television, the film has been extended adding substantial more content.
Following non-embedded journalist Jon Stephenson into Afghanistan, the documentary discusses the role and legacy New Zealand troops have played in that beautiful war-torn country.
Revelations have surfaced that Stephenson was spied upon by US agencies while he was working in Afghanistan, and that as an investigative journalist, he was called a "subversive" by New Zealand's own Defence Force gives the film a currency - even urgency - begging the question of what the role of the media is within our democracy.
Using a range of Kiwi and Afghan voices, He Toki Huna asks why New Zealand became involved in the war, why it stayed so long, and why the public have learned so little.
He Toki Huna challenges the rosy picture presented by most media reports, which have side-stepped the realities of combat and death in a conflict that has dragged on for 10 years.
Jake Bryant's footage captures the extraordinary landscapes of Afghanistan.
French servicemen watch a nuclear test at Moruroa atoll. A still from the documentary.
ALL THOSE nuclear-free Pacific campaigners from Tahiti's Oscar Temaru to a generation of Greenpeace activists would have been so delighted with the triumph of a 52-minute documentary at this year's FIFO Pacific Film Festival in Tahiti last weekend. A vindication for the "children of la bombe". The film Aux Enfants de la Bombe won the supreme award.
The Tahitian and French victims of the legacy of more than three decades of nuclear-testing in the Pacific finally got their story told. And what a graphic and poignant tribute.
All thanks to the courage of a French nuclear scientist, Bernard Ista, who defied French bans on filming the nukes and left shoe boxes full of damning evidence when he died from throat cancer at the age of 54. Here is an unsigned reviewer's posting on the FIFO website:
A WELL-DESERVED GRAND PRIX FOR AUX ENFANTS DE LA BOMBE IT IS the prize we hoped that they would win - for the truth, for the forgiveness half-given, which makes the courage of those who took the dusty files out of the cupboard more credible. A prize in recognition of awareness and responsibilities was dreamt of above all.
FLASHBACK TO 1988: Excerpt from David Robie’s 1989 book Blood on their Banner about the cave massacre of 19 Kanak militants by French troops at dawn on 5 May 1988 on Ouvéa in the Loyalty Islands:
Leaders of the [pro-independence] FLNKS immediately challenged the official version of the attack. Léopold Jorédie issued a statement in which he questioned how the “Ouvéa massacre left 19 dead among the nationalists and no one injured” and the absence of bullet marks on the trees and empty cartridges on the ground at the site”. [Yéiwene] Yéiwene insisted that at no time did the kidnappers intend to kill the hostages – “this whole massacre was engineered by [then Overseas Territories Minister Bernard] Pons who knew very well there was never any question of killing the hostages”. [Nidoish] Naisseline also condemned the action: “Pons and Chirac have behaved like assassins.” - Blood on their Banner, p. 277.
REBELLION [L’ordre et la morale] 2012: In his most visceral and impassioned outing since 1995’s La Haine, Mathieu Kassovitz dramatises the extraordinary French military response to a New Caledonia hostage-taking in 1988. Starring as Philippe Legorjus, a captain in an elite counter-terrorist division hastily despatched to the Pacific territory, Kassovitz leads a uniformly excellent cast. Upon arrival, he discovers that the French army has been deployed too. Legorjus’ efforts to achieve a resolution through negotiation with the indigenous Kanak independence group clash with the blunter approach of the army and a different agenda from above.
His attempts to earn the trust of the hostage takers’ leader [Alphonse Dianou], depicted in scenes of searing intensity, are constantly imperilled by a political battle playing out in Paris. Prime Minister Jacques Chirac is challenging François Mitterrand for the presidency, and the distant conflict has become a central issue. Chirac is determined that the rebellion be quelled – by whatever means. And time is running out.
Based on the Legorjus memoir, Rebellion has all the seat-edge of a thriller, buttressed by a real political heft. It delivers a gripping illustration of the bloody, expedient and far-reaching potential impact of colonial powers’ internal political squabbles. – NZ International Film Festival, July 2012
Rebellion is perhaps to the Kanak struggle what Balibo (portraying the killing of the Balibo Five journalists and Roger East) is to East Timor in popularising Pacific pro-independence campaigns on a global stage. Screening at the NZ International Film Festival at the Civic, Auckland, on Monday, July 23, at 8.45pm.
CAFÉ PACIFIC has received this appeal for censored Fiji Times footage from Vanja Alispahic, a researcher for a forthcoming documentary about the censorship of journalists worldwide. Killing The Messenger: The Deadly Cost of News is a feature length film taking a hard look at the price of news in the world. Any takers?:
We pay every week with the life of a reporter, a cameraman and a support worker and the world barely notices. The abuses of civil liberties and denial of human rights for journalists varies dramatically from country to country. Everyone in the world is impacted each time a reporter is imprisoned or a blogger is censored.
We are beginning principal filming and we are hoping that you can aid us in tracking down images and/or footage of the Fiji Times on the instances that the newspaper was forced to replace its articles with blank spaces as in the image attached. Printed or high quality digital copies, if available, would help us immensely.
As countries restrict news, they restrict information that is important to all. This film aims to address the dangers faced by journalists today and why these dangers exist, as well as raise public consciousness about the deadly cost of news in today's society.
We hope you can aid us in the completion of this film. We will be honored to give you due credit in our film for your participation.
If you need more information regarding the documentary please let me know. You can also visit our website for more information on all of our documentary projects.
