Independence Day in Paradise Lock the Door!

November 18th, 2011 § Leave a Comment

All Men are Birds

Dear Strangebirds and Odd Bedfellows

December 1^st 2011 is the 50^th anniversary of the first declaration of independence by the West Papuan people; when the province was still under the control of the Dutch. Three weeks ago thousands of Papuans gathered for the 3^rd Papuan People’s Congress and again proclaimed ‘independence’; this time from Indonesia. As has been the pattern over these last 50 years, the Indonesian security forces answered the people’s voice with violence, arrests, torture and killings.

See footage from the attack on the Papuan People’s Congress – Oct 19^th 2011

http://westpapuamedia.info/category/video/

Many of us know little about the shady goings on inside the giant forested island just to the north of Australia; but we did catch a glimpse of the awful, murderous behaviour of the Indonesian military (TNI) as they butchered, raped and burnt the civilian population of East Timor in 1999.

Despite great changes in Jakarta for democracy, human rights and civilian rule, the TNI are still out of control in far-flung provinces like West Papua and Maluku (Ambon). Only 40% of their military budget is supplied by Jakarta, the rest is grafted from the locals and their land in these remote, resource rich locations.

On December 1, 2011, tens of thousands of West Papuans will be marching and demanding justice, democracy and economic inclusion; undoubtedly the TNI will attack them, beat some, shoot others and torture and imprison many.

If you think we should stand up for our West Papuan brothers and sisters just across the water to the north – then email your state and federal members and demand that representations are made to the Indonesian government demanding ‘no violence against peaceful protesters on Dec 1st’. This violence is predictable, our response shouldn’t be.

Greens Senator Richard Di Natale will be making such a demand in the Australian Federal Senate at some stage over the next few weeks. Contact him if you support this action.

(Sen R. Di Natale)” <Georgia.Webster@aph.gov.au>

Four hundred thousand (400,000) West Papuans have been killed by the Indonesian military since the early 1960’s, each one of these was a person – a son or daughter, and deserved their life and liberty – it’s time for the killing to stop! Get involved.

Melanesian creation story

‘Interview#16’ – a new animation drawn from SBiP DVD

http://www.youtube.com/user/sbip1?blend=7&ob=5#p/u/0/kC5PdjUayPs

Here for the first time is an animation called ‘Interview#16’. It is a combination of all the animation sequences from SBiP entwined in a stand-alone story. It is the story of Jacob Rumbiak (one of the main characters in SBiP). It shows how Jacob was there in 1961 when West Papuan independence was proclaimed, the ‘Morning Star’ flag raised for the first time and the national anthem sung. It shows samples of Jacob’s remarkable life and journey from child soldier to politician and man of peace. It is particularly resonant at this the 50^th anniversary of the 1961 West Papuan declaration of Independence. It is dedicated to all West Papuans and their celebrations on Dec 1^st 2011.

‘Land of the Morning Star’ by David Bridie from ARIA nominated Strangebirds in Paradise CD soundtrack

http://www.youtube.com/user/sbip1?blend=7&ob=5#p/u/0/6ze_tcoQGwM

SBiP NEWS – Serious Animations

Strangebirds in Paradise – A West Papuan Story, is a multi-headed ‘hydra’ of mixed media. One of the mediums we chose to communicate ideas and stories from West Papua was animation. I’ve been enamoured with cartoons since the 1970’s Warner Brothers and Hanna Barbera animations ruled Saturday morning TV with a slapstick fist and funky theme tune.

There is magic and voodoo in the sampled reality of animation, an inexplicable attraction that is neither a true portrait of reality nor completely devoid of it. Animation lives in a fantastical realm of its own, haunting the space between reality and imagination.

We chose animation to portray some of the difficult, violent and disturbing histories portrayed in SBiP. With uber talented artists, Michael Kumnick and Juan Serano we built a series of ‘After-effects animations’ that sample the life of child soldier/political prisoner/exiled West Papuan leader, Jacob Rumbiak. Freed of the constraints of time-travel, access and the prohibitive costs of filming recreations; we travelled back to the 1960’s to meet Jacob as a boy, then as a refugee in the jungle, then a child soldier in the OPM, a political prisoner in the 1980’s and finally an escapee to East Timor and Australia.

From my ‘naive’, pencil storyboards, Michael Kumnick drew beautifully detailed pencil storyboards of the characters and environments. After a couple of face-to-face meetings we ping-ponged updated drawings via email and quickly settled on the fixed visuals and narratives for the ten or so animations.

Finding the animator required viewing dozens of artists’ show reels. I told my producers, Jamie and John; that I’d know the style when I saw it and sure enough, as soon as I watched Juan’s sassy show reel; I knew he was the one. His art has strong key lines, semi-realistic style and strong monochromatic colourings. It offered a certain ‘solemnity’ that was imperative in telling stories with such strong adult themes. I also loved his use of flat, strong, moody colour that brings a weight and intensity to the images. For six months, Juan, his co-animator Joanne Fong and I worked via email to finesse each piece.

The ‘title sequence’ is a good example of why animation is such a wonderful tool for telling serious stories. We wanted something ‘grand’ and punchy to introduce the film and the medium of animation to the viewer. I decided to incorporate the Melanesian myth of the morning star, because it is prophetic and beautiful; and because of it’s deep and intimate cultural imbedded-ness in West Papuan history and culture.

Images of the fisherman on the water and him capturing the morning star, whilst beautiful, will mean little to western audiences, but will directly connect with Papuan and Melanesian audiences and thereby add a deeper, cultural level to the story telling and the film. Likewise, the use of the ‘garuda’ will mean little to Australians but a great deal to Indonesians. It is an excellent way to ingrain subtle but potent cultural attributes, both iconic and narrative.

The music is from David Bridie’s ARIA nominated soundtrack album ‘Strangebirds in Paradise’ available from his Wantok Musik website - http://www.wantokmusik.org/albums_strangebirds.htm

Available at

http://www.strangebirds.com.au

http://www.wantokmusik.org/albums_strangebirds.htm

Here is a review of SBiP written after the recent Amnesty International screening in Auckland NZ and printed in the Pacific Journalism Review.

Exposé through music of media

Ignorance of West Papua

NICK CHESTERFIELD is editor of West Papua Media.

Strange Birds in Paradise: A West Papuan Story, feature documentary directed by Charlie Hill-Smith. Melbourne: The House of Red Monkey, 2010. 75min. www.strangebirds.com. au Soundtrack: www.wantokmusik.org/ artists_strangebirds.htm

As the songman of freedom lies dying from an Indonesian bullet, his spirit spawns a great tree of life, feeding the irrepressible spirit of West Papuan liberation. The Birds of Paradise, for so long held prisoner by the Java warlord demons of destruction, pillage and brutality—sing for life, and fly to freedom.

THIS beautifully illustrated animation sequence epitomises the West Papuan desire for simple survival, an assertion that West Papuan people are the custodians of a true paradise that the Indonesian military mafia has turned into a hell on earth.

Combining one of the oldest musical traditions of Earth, and inspired by the liberation music of West Papua’s executed poet laureate Arnold Ap, the groundbreaking film Strange Birds in Paradise shows the spirit of West Papuan resistance is alive and building, and refusing to accept more than 45 years of brutal occupation by Indonesia. Rarely does a film tell a hidden story of a truly miserable situation with such beauty, and with great sensitivity in attempting to understand all players’ perspectives in this ongoing tragedy.

Australian director Charlie Hill-Smith has woven together many complex threads to create this rich and evocative tapestry clearly showing the ‘mystery of life’ in Papua today.

With innovative storytelling methods unseen in documentaries, Hill-Smith explores differing experiences and perspectives of Indonesia’s colonial occupation of Papua, from everyday people, musicians, artists, academics, freedom fighters, refugees, activists; telling the stories of those who resist and have martyred themselves to protect the survival of one of the oldest, most linguistically diverse cultures, custodians of an earthly paradise.

Strange Birds accurately portrays the hope and occasional disconnectedness of those forgotten in the jungle, and the energy of the new generation. Particularly poignant today, it accurately depicts the losses of that new generation of civil resistance from Papua’s new generation of elite forced to hide in insecure border camps after being hunted like animals. One failing is probably the lack of focus on the rise and transformation of the civil resistance movement inside, but one can read between the lines in the value that is given to the power of songs for freedom.

West Papua is a place that is still off limits to foreign journalists and human rights observers, with Jakarta sharing a dubious honour with Syria and other dictatorships as among a few countries that ban independent verification of abuse. The film was shot undercover in West Papua and Papua New Guinea, with the film crew posing as tourists. Strange Birds shines a bright light on the otherwise ignored experience of West Papuans living a daily death. Capturing the intrinsic language of singing for life that is at the heart of Papuan culture, daily life, resistance and survival, Strange Birds advocates clearly the core message that music can rise above tyranny. An evocative soundtrack written by Arnold Ap, and arranged by Australian music legend David Bridie, with West Papuan singer-activists providing the beautiful Melanesian harmonies, bring to life some of the most important songs Arnold Ap wrote to rally his people to fight for their liberation.

Ap, a pioneering Papuan ethno- musicologist at Cenderawasih Uni- versity, was arrested in 1983 by the Indonesian military for recording traditional West Papuan songs. Together with nonviolent movement founders Jacob Rumbiak and Thomas Waing- gai, Ap helped pioneer a sense of ethnic pride for West Papuan culture that Jakarta wanted destroyed forever. Ap was executed extra judicially in 1984, shortly after he recorded the song ‘Mystery of Life’, which was smuggled out via a prison guard to his wife. According to Ap: ‘I sing to live, singing is a sign of life. If I am not singing it means I am already dead.

‘Strange Birds powerfully documents the power and reverence in which Ap’s music is still held by West Papuan people, as the soundtrack to self-determination. Hill-Smith ex- plains: ‘I believe art is a weapon and culture is life. As long as the West Papuans can sing they will prevail and Arnold Ap will never die.’

Faced with the dilemma of how to counter more than 45 years of willful ignorance of the West Papua issue by the international community, Strange Birds manages to highlight a powerful undercurrent that has maintained people’s identity, and hope, through a genocide that has claimed over 526,000 West Papuan lives since 1962.

Jacob Rumbiak, an exiled West Papuan political diplomat and academic, describes Strange Birds as ‘a diploma for somebody who knows nothing about West Papua’’. Certainly, audiences in Europe, Asia and Australasia have been deeply moved by the film, with many asking the question: ‘Why do the international media ignore this issue?’ Why indeed? One theory is the majority of international media is so embarrassed by its craven, complicit behaviour that to suddenly report it would highlight media weakness. Tyranny must be documented; resistance must be documented too.

West Papua’s history means that any truthful analysis will necessarily examine the crimes of Indonesia’s military and their multinational corporate enablers like Freeport and the timber industry, and also why the West turns a blind eye as a modern day Eldorado is plundered into a wasteland. The vast forests of Papua, protected for millennia by a deep and reverential connection with its inhabitants, are being felled illegally by the military to feed Australia’s obsession for merbau outdoor furniture and flooring, and our insatiable need for palm oil. Wherever the Indonesian military kleptocracy decides to pillage next, the raiders attempt to eliminate any organised resistance by engaging punitive sweeps against civilians.

Hill-Smith, together with producers Jamie Nicolai and John Cherry, has used visually rich animation sequences by Colin Moore, and contemporary wayang kulit shadow puppetry to perfectly illustrate the mercenary dynamics of Indonesian occupation, and the deep motivations from Papuan traditional beliefs to maintain hope and transform survival into freedom.

Interweaving his own personal journey of discovery, Hill-Smith takes the viewer on an epic journey through West Papua’s history, sharing the journey he had as his eyes were opened after blundering into a forgotten warzone. Adopting the persona of Javanese wayang kulit hero Samar, he shares his shock of hearing ‘the guarded whispers of sons, fathers, and brothers murdered’. The fact- checked evidence presented is confronting and sobering, which makes for uncomfortable viewing for those who have enjoyed the fruits of genocide occurring in Papua.

This film particularly juxtaposes the experience of non-political West Papuan farmers, activists, exiles, and refugees, as well as the lives of those who through their beliefs were forced to flee.

Traveling through the Baliem Valley, the film highlights the neglect of Papuan people’s welfare by Indonesia, and the shocking lack of educational resources or medical care. Hill-Smith meets an eight-year-old boy Ruben, deaf, in great pain from an easily preventable ear infection curable by access to simple drugs. With the nearest hospital in Wamena, the Indonesian government refuses to supply basic medical services where they are needed most. It is evident that ordinary people in the Baliem Valley are now too terrified to talk. In the Baliem Valley the brutality of the Indonesian military climaxed in 1981 during an operation known by local Dani tribes people as ‘Wamena Bleeds’. Almost 14,000 people were killed during and air and ground assault on civilians in the Highlands area.

Strange Birds is a travelogue in some ways, but also an examination of the human and historical landscape of West Papua, as vast and undiscovered as the forests daily being destroyed by the bulldozers of the military logging companies. It deftly illustrates Indonesian nationalism as being a political construct to unify all the disparate peoples of a new Javanese empire, a land of impunity for the plunderers, as West Papua is a very long way from Java.

Strange Birds provides a timely reminder that people do not leave their homes, unless they have no other choice; that refugees only flee to survive heinous abuse. The students fleeing from the March 12, 2006 riots conveyed a cri de coeur for the future of the homeland that people must respond to.

During filming, feeling completely helpless in an environment like Skotchiou village on the PNG/West Papua border. we were all so thoroughly moved at the core of our beings by what we witnessed that there were no question of staying silent.

Is this film an honest examination of the situation in Papua? Yes and No. Uncovering a hidden history is never an easy task, but Hill-Smith, through his own experience as an exchange student in Indonesia, has set about understanding Indonesian peoples’ perceptions of the occupation as West Papua. Far more than just talking heads, the story is told with sensitivity and truth.

Hill-Smith cannot be accused of showing one-sidedness, the insistence on showing the Indonesian side of the story with a trait that admittedly was a trifle annoying during production. But the finished product is testament to the wisdom of this approach, in that the extremely honest and candid Indonesian perspective demonstrates clearly that the military is not loved by the people of Indonesia either. As the film demonstrates clearly, no observer can see the reality of Indonesia’s military occupation and condone their behavior.

West Papua Ready to Explode.

October 28th, 2011 § 1 Comment

The highest mountains between the Himalayas and the Andes are the snow-topped crags of West Papua (4884m). A gleaming white tropical glacier pokes out of the sweltering green of Asia’s largest rain forests. The second largest island on earth, 15% of all the world’s languages, encyclopedic biodiversity and a new Elderado for our resource hungry world.

The last few years has seen a slow, steady burn of resource extraction, violence and colonialism in West Papua. But a trickle of murders, disappearances, arrests, torture and a wave of mass civil actions have raised the international volume of this previously silent war.

The torture and murder of potato farmer Yawen Wayeni at Matembu village On August 3, 2009, showed the worst elements of the Indonesian military (TNI) with unequivocal clarity. TNI soldiers taunt Yawen after disemboweling him and sitting around as he slowly dies. http://hub.witness.org/en/upload/killing-yawan-wayeni

Leaked surveillance reports in 2011 from Indonesian Special Forces (Kopassus) ‘Anatomy of Papuan Separatists’, lays open the repressive strategies of the TNI and the pervasiveness of their spying on and threatening every echelon of West Papuan society at home and abroad. Jacob Rumbiak, a West Papuan exile, now Australian citizen and Executive President of West Papuan National Council; is a major character in Strangebirds in Paradise – A West Papuan Story and one of the ‘targets’ detailed in the Kopassus report 2011. Enjoy the comical lay out of this buffoonish PowerPoint presentation. http://sydney.edu.au/arts/peace_conflict/docs/Kopassus_Anatomy_of_Papuan_Separatists.pdf

An analysis of this report has been done by the West Papua Project, the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Sydney. http://sydney.edu.au/arts/peace_conflict/docs/Anatomy_for_print.pdf

Things really heated up in mid September 2011 when thousands of mine workers at McMoran/RioTinto owned Freeport/Grasberg Mine, went on strike. Seemingly not a big deal, but Freeport is Indonesia’s biggest taxpayer, 30 million dollars production per day. So when the miners stopped work to demand pay increases from $US1.50 – $3.00per hour, compared to miners in China and Brazil – $US17.00 and $US15.00 respectively; a lot of rich and powerful people took notice. The strike has continued and striking miners attempting to stop the importing of ‘scab labor’, where beaten, arrested and three men shot dead. http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2011/10/11/freeport-strike-turns-deadly.html

Following a year of large civil protests, where tens of thousands have marched across the province; Oct 19^th 2011 saw a seminal gathering. Two hundred language groups from all over West Papua met in the capital Jayapura for the ‘3^rd Papuan People’s Congress’. They elected a President and a Prime minister and declared their independence from Indonesia, demanding United Nations monitors be deployed. As the congress wrapped up the security forces moved in, opened fire and arrested hundreds of delegates. Indonesia’s elite anti-terror squad, Densus 88, trained by Australia, was pivotal in the violence. Six bodies have since turned up in sewers and ditches around town, there’ll be more to follow. http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2011/s3350029.htm http://www.smh.com.au/world/indonesians-fire-on-west-papuan-activists-20111019-1m8fh.html http://pacific.scoop.co.nz/2011/10/exclusive-al-jazeera-footage-of-indonesian-crackdown-on-papuan-congress-6-die/

Journalists are murdered http://www.cpj.org/killed/2010/ardiansyah-matrais.php , farmers are tortured, strikes are broken and politicians are jailed and ever so slowly the world tunes in to this waking nightmare in the modern world.

What part of ‘psychotic, neocolonial ubber-mafia’ doesn’t the Australian government understand? This is not a well-groomed fighting force, the quashers of the Dutch, the saviors of the Indonesian people. This is a self-serving, corporate machine with big fucking guns. Only 1/3^rdof the Indonesian military’s budget is paid by Jakarta, the rest is grafted from their own legal and illegal businesses; the perfect brief for a pirate organization and West Papua has become their secret cash cow. The TNI are a long way from home and long way from where anyone can hear you scream; and the long suffering Australian military has been forced by successive Australian governments to train these nasty bastards.

It took video pictures of the infamous Santa Cruz massacre in East Timor for the world to take note and support the East Timorese against the barbarity and collusion of the Indonesian military. The TNI’s modus operandi is now well known and it is time for Australia to wake up and realize this human rights disaster is not going away.

Eye Witness 2011

Australian ex-priest and now West Papuan campaigner, Peter Woods, also appears in Strangebirds in Paradise – A West Papuan Story, and has just returned from a research trip to West Papua where he observed the 3^rd Papuan People’s Congress, interviewed many of the Papuan leaders and witnessed the TNI’s violent suppression. This is his most recent newsletter.

Peter Papua Paintings Oct 2011

ARIA AWARDS 2011 In other news, the awesome soundtrack to Strangebirds in Paradise by Aussie music legend David Bridie has just been nominated for an ARIA award, for Best World Music Album 2011. Aria Awards

Check out this beautiful and diverse collection of Melanesian musical brilliance at David Bridie’s Wantok Musik website.

http://www.wantokmusik.org/albums_strangebirds.htm

Here’s a review from the Age http://m.theage.com.au/victoria/songs-of-freedom-fly-20110809-1il4b.html

Screening News

We are still waiting for SBSTV to announce when they will screen SBiP for the national audience. We hope the constant rumblings from restive West Papua will prompt SBS programmers into getting this most important story front and centre, and preferably soon. Please go to the following SBS site and ask them when it’s screening? http://www.sbs.com.au/films/movie/7747/Strange-Birds-in-Paradise-

SBiP has also just played at an Amnesty International screening in Auckland New Zealand,

http://pacific.scoop.co.nz/2011/10/screening-of-west-papua-film-spotlights-indonesian-crackdown/

SBiP will also screen on the 29th Oct at the inaugural Barossa Film Festival 2011 held in Tanunda, Barossa Valley, South Australia.

http://barossafilmfestival.com/

Quest for the West Papuan Penis Gourd#10

In Francis Ford Coppola’s, ‘Apocalypse Now’, a Louisiana saucier confronts a tiger in the Cambodian jungle and is left jabbering, ‘Never get out of the boat.’ As the bony, black fingers of the pig-tusked, warrior poked my luminous pink testicle through a loop of string and squeezed my terrified penis into a dried vegetable; these cautionary words echoed through my spinning head. ‘Never get out of the boat’. Absolutely Goddamn right!

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Episode#10

This type of tourism is a kind of cultural zoo, locals performing for money. None the less, Indonesian immigrants own most economic interests in West Papua and this cultural tourism is one of the few examples of sustained indigenous economy. Sergius laughed, saying, ‘Ini pertama, kamu bule gila’. ‘This is the first time a tourist has joined in, you’re a crazy whitey.’ He was right. I was a long way from home, way out of my depth, out of my trousers and ‘Out of the boat’. The next day we walked back into the Baliem Valley, out of the domain of the Dani and back into the sphere of the Indonesians. As we approached the first TNI checkpoint our buoyant giddiness from this magical tribal world began to fall away, replaced by a brooding cloud of reality and uncomfortable questions. I felt deeply conflicted, how could this Javanese culture that I had lived with for so many years, that I had come to love and respect; be guilty of these alleged atrocities? And why the hell didn’t I know anything about it? I had spent fifteen years travelling around Indonesia and had falsely prided myself on knowing the geopolitics of the region. If what we had heard was true, why wasn’t it front-page news in Australia and why weren’t the rest of the world screaming blue murder? The answers to these questions would have to wait until my next adventure in Papua. Welcome to Paradise – Lock the door!

Strangebirds CD Soundtrack & DVD Release

August 31st, 2011 § Leave a Comment

‘ The album transcends purely musical importance.’

– the Australian 20/8/11

“Not just a soundtrack, Strange Birds in Paradise stands alone as an album of cultural and political significance, putting West Papua’s extraordinary music talent firmly on the contemporary music map.”

- David Bridie 2011

Strangebirds in Paradise CD - http://www.wantokmusik.org/albums_strangebirds.htm

Gday Diggers, Dawdlers, Odd balls and Strangebirds, greetings again my friends and welcome back for more potent cure-alls from the medicine cupboard of socio-political documentary making. Lets begin by acknowledging the truth. This is the world of serious documentary – a hapless, listless world of sour and fettered losers fighting and snapping for the crumbs that fall from societies give-a-toss table of sweet fuck-all. Yes if it’s glamour and glory you’re in search of – bugger off and make a cooking show or dance with a has-been, B-grade star with sequined camel-toe. Despite these tawdry realities Strangebirds in Paradsie is rocketing ahead towards a date with destiny and SBS.

Yes friends as we wait for the SBSTV broadcast of Strangebirds to be announced (later 2011) we launched the Strangebirds in Paradise DVD and CD Soundtrack http://www.strangebirds.com.au/ at the Northcote Social Club a few weeks ago; and it was totally pumping.

A great line up of musicians was MC-ed by comedic maestro’s Lemo and Greg Fleet, with David Bridie leading the minstrel onslaught. The Black Orchid String Band played a few tunes off the CD Soundtrack – described by Impress Magazine ‘as one of the most important albums of 2011’. The ranting, mad dog of Oz broadsheets, The Australian; also reviewed the Strangebirds CD Soundtrack http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/arts/this-weeks-music-cds/story-e6frg8n6-1226116073674.

‘In Strange Birds in Paradise, the producer-player (David Bridie) turns his attention to the troubled western half of New Guinea. With West Papua’s indigenous inhabitants under the yoke of the Indonesian military and struggling to keep their fecund cultural traditions alive in the face of political oppression, the album transcends purely musical importance.’

– the Australian 20/8/11

Over 200 men, women and lashings of children crammed the Sunday arvo gig. David Bridie was joined by the likes of Vika and Linda Bull, The Red Eyes and the Rumwaropen Sisters for a glorious, audio mix of tribal, Melanesian, rock, pop, electronic and more. An attending journo from the Sydney Morning Herald said, “It’s the best political issue gig, I’ve ever been to”. And this of course is the point. By using a second string to our bow, namely music, we are reaching more people from different backgrounds and hopefully inspiring them to join in and speak out for West Papua.

The article in the Age http://m.theage.com.au/victoria/songs-of-freedom-fly-20110809-1il4b.html , is a classic example of the success of ‘the arts’ as a weapon of social change. A full page, with photo talking about the musical culture of West Papua; and in doing so revealing the socio-political history and creating awareness not through dry political rhetoric, but through the juicy beats of music and art – Turn on, tune in and get active!

Here’s a preview Melbourne Times Weekly wrote up..

Preview: Strange Birds in Paradise

Where: Northcote Social Club, 301 High Street, Northcote. Preview : Stephen A Russell

Filmmaker Charlie Hill-Smith spent years traveling around Indonesia before stumbling across the province of West Papua. “Like most Australians, it was completely off my radar, even with my political understanding of south-east Asia,” he says today.

Engaging with the highland tribes people, Hill-Smith was shocked to discover the terrible stories of life under Indonesian military rule. As he built their trust, Hill-Smith began to hear of abducted children, murdered fathers and whole villages burnt to the ground; stories of torture, rape and human rights abuses. “They started asking why East Timor was getting a referendum, but Australia had forgotten about West Papua?”

According to Hill-Smith, the idea of western countries turning a blind eye to political turmoil in recourse rich hotbeds is nothing new. “West Papua is described as a mountain of gold on a sea of oil,” he says. “Every western resource company is in there, including the big Australians, Rio Tinto and BHP, ripping out timber, oil and gold hand over fist.”

Hill-Smith decided to make a documentary, Strange Birds in Paradise, which has gone on to pick up several awards and launches its soundtrack at the Northcote Social Club this week.

The film features the music of West Papua’s greatest singer-songwriter, Arnold Ap, whose traditionally inspired music became a powerful symbol of resistance. Outlawed by the Indonesian government, Ap was arrested, jailed and later believed to be executed.

“When a regime arrests poets, you know they are pretty desperate,” Hill-Smith says. “You’re not going to stop a popular resistance movement by banning singing.”

Melbourne musician David Bridie worked with West Papuan refugees, helping them re-record Ap’s nationalistic anthems, then forming the soundtrack to Strange Birds.

The album features music from Bridie, Tabura, Airi Ingram, and Black Cab, with the launch MC’d by comedians Lehmo and Greg Fleet. “There will be some great artists playing, mixing West Papuan, European and Australian sounds, and we’re hoping to reach out to a whole bunch of people who don’t know anything about it, who’ll come along and enjoy the music and the culture.”

Hill-Smith hopes the raised awareness will help West Papua’s plight. “It’s fine to stop our cattle going to Indonesia, but we won’t say boo about women and children getting murdered by the Indonesian military. We just kowtow to Jakarta; our priorities are awfully askew.”

Hill-Smith says it’s important not to preach. “You have to have a good time and share the beat to create that interesting third place.”

– or whatever that means.

The gig was awesome and received good press coverage in print

http://m.theage.com.au/victoria/songs-of-freedom-fly-20110809-1il4b.html

and on radio..

http://syn.org.au/program/arts-mitten/episode/audio/2011/08/09/strange-birds-paradise-west-papuan-story/4987

Great music, great people, cool jugs of beer that understand a man’s needs and yearnings and another excellent exercise in West Papuan awareness building. Muchos Gracias to all. To those who haven’t seen or heard the film/music – go online and get into it. http://www.strangebirds.com.au/ & http://www.wantokmusik.org/albums_strangebirds.htm

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Quest for the West Papuan Penis Gourd Ep.9

The journey to create the new Australian feature documentary, ’Strange Birds in Paradise – A West Papuan Story ‘ (SBiP), began back in 1999 when some old mates convinced me to go hiking in the remote highlands of Papua New Guinea and West Papua (just north of Australia). This is the serialised story of that adventure. In Francis Ford Coppola’s, ‘Apocalypse Now’, a Louisiana saucier confronts a tiger in the Cambodian jungle and is left jabbering, ‘Never get out of the boat.’ As the bony, black fingers of the pig-tusked, warrior poked my luminous pink testicle through a loop of string and squeezed my terrified penis into a dried vegetable; these cautionary words echoed through my spinning head. ‘Never get out of the boat’. Absolutely Goddamn right!

Episode9: Back inside the main compound I was greeted with hoots and giggles from the women and children. My skinny, white frame and flaming pink nuts, disarming even the most sceptical locals and bringing many to tears of laughter. I danced, sang and laughed with the villagers up and down the mud-floored compound. I stamped and clapped in time; my hideous pink plums bouncing and flopping like some grotesque circus act in a butcher’s shop.

Soon the Chief approached me again, stating, ‘I will catch the pig and you will kill it’. To say I was perturbed is an elephantine understatement. I hadn’t used a bow and arrow since I was nine years old and my subscription to Babes, Boars and Bow Hunter, had long since elapsed. This of course worried me and I suspect scarred the living shit out of the poor Dani blokes forced to hold the wriggling pig. With grit teeth and shaking forearms my first attempt failed to fly, the bowstring completely missing the arrow and raucous laughter filling the compound. Whilst my second attempt didn’t kill the pig outright, it certainly gave the unfortunate animal a nasty scratch.

A group of young men fell on the wounded hog and dispatched it with a knife through the front armpit and into the heart. The ears and tail were immediately cut off and the carcass butchered with knife and axe. Carrying the pig’s ears and tail the Chief ushered me into the men’s house at the top of the compound. This dark hunting lodge was full of sacred stones, hunting trophies and objects of ancestor worship. The ears and tail were placed amongst the smoky rafters as ‘the land’s proof’ that we were here this day, with these people and for this occasion.

As the Chief rolled string from palm leaves on his thigh he told me a story. He said that in the beginning there was a race between a bird and a snake, to see if we humans would be like birds and live only one life, or be like snakes and live on forever. The race was long and arduous, but the bird eventually won; and so we all must die.

Meanwhile the pig had been gutted, singed of hair and cooked in an underground oven of stone and fire. The whole village sat together in the dirt compound and devoured the juicy pork and steamed green leaves.

To be continued..

CHS SBiP Blog#8

July 14th, 2011 § Leave a Comment

Hola – Strangebirds of a Feather. Owing to Melbourne’s insidious winter and general lack of moral fibre on my Weeties, I’ve had on-line constipation and have been unable to blog for the last few months. But that hibernation is over – Let’s party. Yes folks we ‘re officially launching the SBiP CD Soundtrack and DVD on Aug 14^th at Northcote Social Club in Melbourne. A big line up of musical talent and the comedy musings of Greg Fleet and Lemo will punch out your winter blues and trombone the cockles of your cold, cold heart. (All gig details below) PS – don’t forget to read the serialised version of Quest for the West Papuan Penis Gourd (see below)

‘SBiP…a wonderful creative space for both hope and despair’ – John Hughes

SBiP News May – July 2011

SBiP on TripleRRR

Multi generational cultural glory was achieved last week when ‘Mystery of Life’, a song from our new SBiP CD soundtrack was played on Melbourne’s TripleRRR-FM. This beautiful song by murdered West Papuan singer/songwriter, Arnold Ap, had never been recorded outside West Papua until we recorded a bunch of Ap songs at David Bridie’s studio in 2009. These Arnold Ap songs are all conquering in Papua, where they are sung from the mountains to the coast. Now this haunting song, that Ap wrote and recorded on a makeshift cassette player in prison and then handed to a prison guard who smuggled it out to his wife only days before being shot; is sung by a new generation of Papuans and appreciated by a whole new culture – us! Viva Triple R, Viva Arnold Ap. (info on CD soundtrack below..)

SBiP Distribution – After finishing cutting SBiP into a TV friendly 52minutes we have sent the revised film to its new homes with SBS TV and Off The Fence (international distributor). We are hoping SBS will screen SBiP later this year and we wait with fettered breath in hope that the film will achieve it’s mission and sell into numerous international TV markets. The yardstick of success for SBiP has always been – to hit a large TV audience both at home and abroad.

Screening#1 Ballarat Regent Theatre – 23 June 6.45pm

Cold Night in Ballarat – Made Glorious Spring by Warm Crowd. Full house, very attentive, vigorous applause. An older demographic-crowd was treated to Jacob Rumbiak (West Papuan political exile) for our 30 minute Q&A session. Questions focused on the present political and human rights situations. People wanted to know about Rio Tinto’s human rights and environmental record in Papua and why the Australian government is so backward in coming forward. Local Christian groups out in force, very motivated to help West Papua and for more screenings in Ballarat.

Screening#2 Nova Cinemas – 1^st July 7pm

Home Ground Advantage. The Australia West Papua Association (AWPA) VIC. Put on an excellent event with singing, raffle, food and drinks. The house was full, to overflowing; lots of gorgeous, little Papuan kids running everywhere. Ronnie and Jacob sung ‘Mystery of Life’ – famous song by murdered WP singer/song writer Arnold Ap. I think this is the first time I have heard this beautiful song sung in English = cultural evolution 101. As SBiP was crafted in Melbourne, this was a home game, with many friends and WP supporters allowing the film to really preach to the choir. The film was very well received, not a dry eye in the house. Many people came to see the film for a second time and said, ‘ it gets better every time, and I still cry every time.’ American film maker Juan Ramos said, ‘I’ve never seen a film with more complex narrative threads – that works!’

Q&A manned by CHS, Jacob Rumbiak (West Papuan political exile), Peter Woods (ex priest). Once again a very emotional Q&A, Jacob wept while pleading the audience to stand up and help the people of WP. Questions were asked about the UN and why it has not spoken out about WP. There were many audience members who had been involved with East Timor in the 1990’s. CHS – told audience that the experience of East Timor is the best way to try and understand the situation in WP. As always there was not enough time to answer all the questions. Food and drink after screening was great, lots of talking and camaraderie.

SBiP in Arena Magazine – John Hughes

Wonderful Australian filmmaker and cultural guardian John Hughes (Indonesia Calling 2009) has just written an article for left leaning intelligentsia rag – Arena Magazine. The article, titled after a new term used by Melanesians to describe Australia – ‘Oz-Tak-Lihat’, which translates as ‘Oz Doesn’t See’, in Indonesian; is a sturdy analysis of the lack of support for the story of West Papua by Australian media and government. Hughes states, ‘There are now a number of films available that help in challenging the silence that has characterised Australian politicians public dissimulation in relation to the suffering of the Papuans to our north.’ Hughes goes on to discuss SBiP’s rocky road to completion, where he says, ‘The film was rejected at several stages of development and production by both Australian public broadcasters. This cannot be because the film is not important, well made, imaginative or accurate, as it is all of these and more.’ The article is timely, relevant and well researched – check it out.

SBiP Radio Australia - Jacob Rumbiak and I did a quick interview with Isabelle Genoux a few weeks ago, give it a listen..

http://blogs.radioaustralia.net.au/english/2011/pacific/strange-birds-in-paradise-a-tale-of-west-papuan-independence-culture-and-music

SBiP DVD – http://www.strangebirds.com.au/

The DVD is now available and a must see for all modern Aussies who think they know about our region and the forces that shape it. Get on board and stand up for the rights of our neighbours just over the Arafura Sea by buying SBiP DVD and getting informed. Then get off the footy couch and join the Australia West Papua Association AWPA.

SBiP CD Soundtrack – Buy it now

http://www.wantokmusik.org/albums_strangebirds.htm

Yes Music-Lovers, this kick-arse soundtrack is now available. For all those strange birds in Melbourne, we’re having a CD and DVD launch in Sun 14^th August 2011. Come and join the stellar line up of talent.

Here’s the press release..

STRANGE BIRDS IN PARADISE

A West Papuan Soundtrack

“Music can rise above tyranny”

“Art is a weapon and culture is life, as long as they can sing they will prevail.”

- Film-maker Charlie Hill-Smith on the plight of the West Papuans

in their fight for independence from Indonesia

On Sunday August 14 from 1-5pm, the soundtrack and DVD to the powerful and award winning political feature documentary Strange Birds in Paradise

will be launched at The Northcote Social Club.

The afternoon of music will include performances from Tabura (featuring Leah, Petra and Rosa Rumwaropen), David Bridie, Airi Ingram, Phil Wales, Black Cab, El Witeri (The Red Eyes), and MC’s Lehmo and Greg Fleet. These and other performers yet to be announced join a distinguished line up of Melanesian performers, showing their support for the freedom movement in West Papua – an issue that garners less international attention than that given to the fate of Indonesian livestock.

While the Indonesian army continues to dominate the indigenous inhabitants of West Papua, the making of this album saw five West Papuan musicians and singers gather in Melbourne to record the outlawed folk songs of West Papuan freedom fighter and musician Arnold Ap with Australian musician and film composer David Bridie.

In Strange Birds in Paradise, David Bridie interweaves his original score with the songs of Ap, carried by the remarkable voices of West Papuan performers Hein Arumisore, Jacob Rumbiak and Gillius Kogoya, and features musical collaborations with Airi Ingram and Phil Wales. These artists will also come together for the launch, joined onstage by West Papuan musicians Ronny Kareni, Frederick Yawandare, Adrianus Birif, Anselmus Pisakai and led by West Papuan leader Jacob Rumbiak.

The launch will celebrate and recognise of the work of Arnold Ap, as well as political hero Kelly Kwalik – both assassinated for bringing controversial folk songs to the people of West Papua and the world. The day will shed light on the rich musical history intrinsic to West Papuan culture, simultaneously raising awareness of the struggle faced by West Papuans, our closest neighbours, and the atrocities occurring daily in a political climate of greed, corruption and genocide.

Of the CD, Bridie says “Not just a soundtrack, Strange Birds in Paradise stands alone as an album of cultural and political significance, putting West Papua’s extraordinary music talent firmly on the contemporary music map, in the Pacific region and beyond. There are a lot of political refugees from West Papua living in Australia, and this launch is for them as much as it is for those residing in West Papua.”

Strange Birds in Paradise is an album which engages with the unique music of West Papua and champions a community who will fight to keep their cultural traditions alive in the face of extreme political oppression and widespread genocide.

What: When: Where: Tickets: Contact:

Strange Birds in Paradise Album Launch (alongside official DVD release) August 14, 1-5pm Northcote Social Club $18 Presale / $22 on Door ($15 Concession available at door only – no presale) Penney & Logan PR

Carolyn Logan/ carolynlogan@bigpond.com / 0400 441025 Tilly Morris / enquiries@tillymorris.com.au /0418582812 www.wantokmusik.org / www.strangebirds.com.au

Quest for the West Papuan Penis Gourd Ep.8

The journey to create the new Australian feature documentary, ’Strange Birds in Paradise – A West Papuan Story ‘ (SBiP), began back in 1999 when some old mates convinced me to go hiking in the remote highlands of Papua New Guinea and West Papua (just north of Australia). This is the serialised story of that adventure.

In Francis Ford Coppola’s, ‘Apocalypse Now’, a Louisiana saucier confronts a tiger in the Cambodian jungle and is left jabbering, ‘Never get out of the boat.’ As the bony, black fingers of the pig-tusked, warrior poked my luminous pink testicle through a loop of string and squeezed my terrified penis into a dried vegetable; these cautionary words echoed through my spinning head. ‘Never get out of the boat’. Absolutely Goddamn right!

Episode8: Pigs are everything in the Papuan highlands; up here it is pig grease that makes the cultural wheels go round. If you want to get married, you need pigs. If you want to build a house, you need pigs. If you want to plant a garden, have a child or go to war, you definitely need pigs. They are the number one trade good and status symbol; they live in people’s houses and are the primary source of protein. Owning a brace of big pigs is as manly and kudos rich as an Aussie bloke owing a Holden V8 Ute.

The boys and I now stood inside the wood and mud compound. In front of us and slightly up hill stood the entire village, grouped together and singing softly; their exquisite three part harmonies echoing like bird song. Again the Chief rushed at us with menacing taunts of his bow and arrow, all the while booming his incongruous, ‘Wa, wa, wa’. We later learned that this apparently threatening display is designed to scare away any evil spirits that may accompany visitors.

We were surrounded by singing men, women and children, and before I could blink an old woman had her head between my legs and had hoisted me up onto her shoulders. I was completely freaking out, not knowing that honoured guests are carried by the women and suspecting I was being taken to husband by this stout old crone. The eerie singing rose and fell as we were whisked away into a smaller adjoining compound. ‘The Chief wants to give you a horim’, said Sergius. ‘How kind’, I replied awaiting the generous gift. ‘No, he wants you to wear the horim, now’, he grinned. It was right about now that I wondered what I was getting myself into. ‘Clothes off’, commanded an old warrior with a beard full of spider’s web. ‘All of them?’ I limply asked. ‘Semua – everything’, he decreed. So in front of a gaggle of giggling highlanders I sheepishly dropped my strides and stood naked in the chilly morning air.

Like backstage on Broadway, I was set upon by enthusiastic dressers. They painted me with river mud, dressed me in armbands, kauri shell breastplate and an enormous feathered collar and headdress. The boys laughed hysterically as the old warrior wrestled my glowing pink plums through loops of string and forced my recalcitrant pecker into the wooden husk of the horim. In a flash I was ready to go, looking like the bastard prodigy of Peter Allen and Quetzalcoatl.

To be continued…

CHS SBiP Blog #7 Strangebirds in the Editing Suite

April 28th, 2011 § Leave a Comment

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Hola, my loco feathered friends and welcome into the shadowy, nether world of the edit suite. Yes we are cutting a television version of ‘Strangebirds in Paradise’ (SBiP) to satisfy the cravings and limits of free-to-air TV. The feature length (75 minute) was designed for the international film festival circuit, allowing SBiP to build a reputation amongst erudite, international audiences. But now it’s time for the main game, the reason we made this film in the first place – to hit a million ordinary people – right where they live; through the god-king technology of television.

SBSTV – the rampaging Minotaur of multi-cultural Oz has agreed to screen our little movie, but only in a one-hour format (52minutes); so we have begun the painful task of recutting. This 52-minute edit will also be heading off to Europe and the USA as we attempt to entertain the western world by opening their eyes to the secrets and colours of West Papua and Indonesia.

At first I was dreading this editing process, having already bled onto the cutting-room floor during the first editing ordeal with Andrew Brinsmead and Mark Atkin (2009) – when we cut 100 hours of material down to a heavily pregnant 75minutes. The very thought of revisiting this ungainly digital beast sent me into a cold sweat of involuntary gaging and ‘bronzing up’.

However, back under the warm wing of my loving producers’, Jamie Nicolai and John Cherry; I regained confidence, hit the shower block and threw myself headlong into the edit with Deb Agars. For those ‘au fait’ with the narrative of SBiP; you’ll agree it is a very busy film. An unofficial, undergraduate crash-course in South East Asian history and geo-politics – crammed with a shoehorn into a ‘bursting-at the seams’ 75minutes of drama. But what to cut? How to slim down this cultural porker without losing its heart and soul? How do you cut 23 minutes from a 75-minute feature film and not throw the baby out with the bath water?

It was decided that the central narrative was ‘my personal journey’ from Oz – thru Indonesia – into West Papua; and the stories of Donny Roem (young West Papuan musician & refugee) and Jacob Rumbiak (Papuan leader in exile) – supplied the most important secondary narrative strings. The focus on music as a central theme has been somewhat decreased and the heavily detailed history sections have been thinned and amended.

Losing some of the history has hopefully not ‘dumbed down’ the film in any manner, but has certainly streamlined the story, hopefully making it a better film for TV audiences to easily consume. The loss of the Arnold Ap story (murdered West Papuan musician) is a great shame; as this is a little known tale of great cultural importance to West Papuans; and we were very motivated to hold up his memory to the world.

To my immense surprise and unbridled delight Deb and I cut this obstreperous monster of light and sound down to size in quick time and with relative ease. Apart from the ‘Arnold Ap’ section we have not removed any major topic from the feature, but have whittled down each topic without losing continuity. With final touches from maestro Mark Atkin (editor), audio-guru Mik Levage (sound mix) and Tim Egan (colour-grade) we should have a kick arse TV hour ready in a few weeks time. Wish us luck and get ready for an hour of TV that’ll knock ya socks off and have ya repeatedly smashing ya head against the idiot box and singing hallelujah to SBS in 25 different languages. Viva my most excellent crew, viva SBS and Viva the people of West Papua!!

SBiP DVD – http://www.strangebirds.com.au/

The DVD is now available and a must see for all modern Aussies who care about human dignity and human rights. This is the single most important human rights story in our region of the world and its time for all of us to get up to speed. So grab a few copies and give them to friends and family. Check out the 3 mini films, animations and music clips on the DVD Extras and help spread the word to all your brethren.

CD Soundtrack – http://www.wantokmusik.org/albums_strangebirds.htm

The amazing music from SBiP (AFI nominated – Best Sound Documentary 2010) was composed by David Bridie of ‘My Friend the Chocolate Cake’ & ‘Not Drowning Waving’ – fame. David composed tailored sound-scapes for specific characters in the film. He wrote and recorded an energetic contemporary tune for my personal journey, a brooding track for the West Papuans and a menacing electro-track for the Indonesian Army (TNI). Combined with traditional Papuan songs and Melbourne-recorded tunes by murdered West Papuan musician Arnold Ap; they create a wonderful, eclectic mix of stirring, contemporary world music. Following great praise and constant requests for copies of the soundtrack, David has re-mixed and will release and CD soundtrack of SBiP through his record label, Wontok Records. This striking album will be released in late July at a musical event in Melbourne, Australia – watch this space for details = very exciting. The DVD (now available from strangebirds.com.au) has 7 songs from the film with film clips, so jump online and grad a copy.

Quest for the West Papuan Penis Gourd Ep.7

The journey to create the new Australian feature documentary, ’Strange Birds in Paradise – A West Papuan Story ‘ (SBiP), began back in 1999 when some old mates convinced me to go hiking in the remote highlands of Papua New Guinea and West Papua (just north of Australia). This is the serialised story of that adventure.

In Francis Ford Coppola’s, ‘Apocalypse Now’, a Louisiana saucier confronts a tiger in the Cambodian jungle and is left jabbering, ‘Never get out of the boat.’ As the bony, black fingers of the pig-tusked, warrior poked my luminous pink testicle through a loop of string and squeezed my terrified penis into a dried vegetable; these cautionary words echoed through my spinning head. ‘Never get out of the boat’. Absolutely Goddamn right!

Episode7: By day six we had hiked deep into Dani lands, far from the last Indonesian Army (TNI) outpost. After a cruel days hiking up and down calf-burning mountains we collapsed in a village visitor’s hut and recuperated with sweet black tea and noodles. With out warning the door burst open and in strode a tiny warrior covered in black pig fat and built like a power lifter. His impressive headdress of long bird of paradise plumes only eclipsed by his metre long penis gourd topped with a spiralling pig’s tail.

His terrifying frown switched to a radiant grin and he bellowed ‘Selamat datang, Wa, wa, wa – Welcome!’ This was the Chief, elected by his piers and exuding energy. He greeted us warmly and described with pride, his village, his people and their valiant history in inter tribal war. He took care to explain that his people didn’t indulge in such pagan nonsense now that they’d been saved by Jesus. We chatted for a few hours and discussed our interest in the horim. He grinned madly, sweeping his imposing horim to one side and bellowing that, ‘ Tomorrow would be a day we would never forget’. Why would you doubt him?

We awoke to a misty morning in a green valley of vegetable gardens. Fingers of sunlight cut through the treetops and lit a massive granite escarpment to the west. With eggs, noodles and tea under the belt we accompanied a local man down the dirt track towards the village compound. As we entered a grassy clearing a hooting scream assailed us. A fully decked out warrior with spears was screaming at us from atop a purpose built lookout tower of sticks and vines.

Suddenly the Chief appeared from the tall grass leading twenty warriors in full costume and battle cry. They rushed at us screaming and thrashing at us with their spears and quickly ushered us towards the compound chanting, ‘Wa, wa, wa’. ‘Welcome, welcome, welcome’. As the Chief escorted me over a stepped style through a mud archway into the earthen compound he proclaimed that if we purchased a pig, he would show us something we would never forget.

To be continued…

Strangebirds in Adelaide Blog #6

March 25th, 2011 § Leave a Comment

Salute and Grog-speed dearest and strangest Birds.

Digital light, sitar and didge with a whiff of face paint and petrol – Adelaide crams festivals of music, film, arts and muscle cars into one pregnant month – a riotous, ritualistic expulsion to purge a year of quiet sedation and urbane introspections in the city of churches and shallow graves.

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Adelaide Film Festival As Strangebirds in Paradise (SBiP) marches into the twilight of its festival life (15international festivals), we gathered in Adelaide for two screenings amongst a delectable array of quality offerings and a weighty sample of culturally paralysing pop flotsam. Whilst technically infuriating, with awful picture and sound quality in the Palace cinemas Rundle St.; the screenings did their job – enlightening and outraging the audiences.

Canadian filmmaker and worldly character Peter Wintonick, ably led the two emotional Q&A sessions .

Questions ranged from, “Who owns Freeport?”, to “..should the TNI be indicted for war crimes? To, ‘why is there such a gender imbalance in SBiP? ‘SBiP is an important piece of informational art.’ - Peter Wintonick,

Audience members included legendary Australian doco man Bob Connelly (Rats in the Ranks’, ‘Black Harvest’, ‘First Contact’) and leftist media-intelligentsia-kingpin, Bob Ellis; plus an array of my old mates and family. Obviously having my 80 year old aunts exposed to a close-up of my hideous wedding tackle – projected on the big screen – is a regret and a scaring experience they’ll take to the grave.

Thoughts on the Fest. The big news of the Adelaide film fest is SAFC and Adelaide film fest funded feature doco, “Shut up little man”, a thoroughly entertaining exploration-tation of an American analogue audio-verite viral-recording of two arguing, old drunks. Well crafted and rich in retro iconography, it is an hilarious and tragic celebration of exploitative, sadistic voyeurism and I suspect, the next rung in the “Shut up Little Man” ladder to Broadway.

Whist I enjoyed the film greatly and the elephantine interiors of the beautiful Piccadilly Cinema, I noted the tiny, candle lit woodshed in which SBiP made its two appearances, mused painfully on our societies and the film festivals’ priorities and placated myself in the truth that ‘Pop is King and Nero is on the fiddle’.

With favourable reviews to fill our wings the ‘Strangebirds’ Murder’ lifts off from Adelaide and beautiful South Australia, – great to be home with friends and family and flagons of quaffable claret.

Strangebirds News SBiP TV Deal! Yes folks we finally have a TV deal. The great mixed voice of the nation, the colossus of multi-cultural Australia, the mighty SBS. Thankyou SBS for seeing the relevance of SBiP, and for having the stomach and fortitude to take on a very difficult film with serious and dangerous political themes. SBiP may play on SBS at any time from August 1^st, I dare say it’s programming will be dictated by the perceived relevance of the topic of West Papua to SBS’ perceived audience – so send them an email and ask to see it in primetime.

SBiP DVD The DVD eagle has landed and is feasting on the sacrificial goat of juicy DVD extras. Check out http://www.strangebirds.com.au and grab a copy of the new DVD. We have put a lot of effort into producing a DVD that gives you plenty of extra Strangebirds’ gold; in this case – an EP of Papuan music and stacks of extra footage from inside West Papua, plus a 4 minute animated story using the compiled animation from the film. Spread the word to all your people and help get the message out. - everybody needs to know the truth about West Papua and SBiP is one way to get it. SBiP is a completely independently financed feature film and we need DVD sales through strangebirds.com.au to recoup our significant investment, so tell all your mates.

New Tit-Bits – new micro animation on youtube http://www.youtube.com/user/sbip1?feature=mhum#p/u

Future Screenings & Events SBiP is now off to Europe to screen in the London/Australian film festival in May. Aussie music legend, David Bridie is presently putting the icing on a CD soundtrack of the SBiP and will release it through his Wantok Musik label. Stay tuned for details of this most excellent collection of eclectic tunes at http://www.facebook.com/wantokmusik

Quest for the West Papuan Penis Gourd Ep.6

After almost fifty years of Indonesian colonisation, these remote mountain people speak Bahasa Indonesia, the national language of the Republic of Indonesia; and after spending a year as a teenage exchange student in Java, I too speak this Malay based linga-franca of South east Asia. A little language changes everything. Suddenly you can peer a little deeper below the surface, you can express your appreciation, ask why life is as it is and most importantly, share a joke. On the third day I quizzed our elderly walking companion, Carro, as to why he had come on this, at times gruelling hike. He chuckled quietly to himself and with a wry grin said that he had thirteen wives at home and just needed to get out of the house.

Our guide Sergius spoke six languages and was fast becoming a friend. As we walked he joked constantly about our hi-tech hiking gear. Why did we wear $400 (a years salary) Gortex hiking boots, while he strode over mountains in a pair of second hand, pink thongs? Sergius laughed hysterically at his own gags and then suddenly his beaming toothy grin would slam shut, his heavily muscled brow frowning over his dark eyes. ‘Kamu belajar politic? ‘Do you study politics?’ he asked. ‘Do you know what is happening in East Timor? Do you have any news from Jakarta?’

This was the first hint that something was wrong. Sergius said that people were under pressure to conform. ‘The Indonesians say that we should wear clothes, they say we should not wear the horim (penis gourd)’, he lamented, ‘But the old people don’t want to wear clothes, they say, ‘Tidak – No!’’

Slowly it became known that I spoke Indonesian and that we were trustworthy sorts, and so on the fourth night and for every night following, our visitor’s hut became a forum for conversation. After evening meal, our hut would fill up with old men and women, young warriors and mothers and the questions would begin. ‘Is East Timor really having a referendum on independence from Indonesia?’ Is Australia sending troops to support a U.N. referendum?’ ‘What is President Habibie saying?’ Why is Australia, America and the rest of the world ignoring West Papua?’

In hushed tones people began to tell us stories. Whispers of missing husbands, murdered brothers, raped wives and villages burnt to the ground. I translated some of the horror stories for the boys and we began to feel that something was very, very wrong. These awful stories were not one-offs, for it seemed that every second person had a tale of violence or dispossession. Over the next few days the penny finally dropped, we weren’t hiking through a Neolithic tourist wonderland, but were blundering around in an undeclared warzone.

to be continued…

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Strangebirds in South Australia

February 7th, 2011 § Leave a Comment

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Strange Birds in Paradise

Yes my dearest Strangebirds I am flocking home to Adelaide, South Australia for a few big weeks of films, festivals and shallow graves. When consummate international-weirdo and Musi hater, Salman Rushide (author of ‘Satanic Verses’ and ‘L.Ron Hubbard – ya Fat, Sci-Fi Hack’); describes your home town as ‘strange‘, you know you’re living in the twighlight zone. Just because Salman doesn’t understand that South Australia’s sandy soils means you’d be crazy not to dig shallow graves; doesn’t mean we shouldn’t embrace the driest state in the driest inhabited continent (dry as a dead dingo’s donger one day, perfect the next). As a born and bred Barossa Valley/Adelaide Croweater, I’m wrapped to be home in South Australia and excited to be finally screening SBiP to my brethren.

The film will have two screenings in the Adelaide International Film Festival – on the 27^thFeb and 3^rd March at the Palace. I’ll be at both doing Q&A, so come along and toss some thorny ones at me, the stickier, the better. Book tickets here as it’s bound to sell out – tix.adelaidefilmfestival.org http://tix.adelaidefilmfestival.org/sess...

Keep track of SBiP on our Facebook site – http://www.facebook.com/pages/Strange-Birds-in-Paradise/164275913066?v=wall and website – strangebirds.com.au

SBiP News Slung in canvas under balmy skies, the Deckchair Cinema in the hot tropic of Darwin is an Australian cinematic icon that you all should experience. This time of year it’s a tad damp up north so the Darwin Film Society’s – ‘Flix in the Wet’, moves the Deckchair Cinema out of the torrential down pours and into the Mitchell St. cinema.

Strange Birds in Paradise (SBiP) screened to an enthusiastic audience in a town that understands Australia’s regional geo-politics better than most. Strong connections to East Timor created during that nations fight for independence in the 1990′s have created an educated and engaged minority who lapped up the film and dived into a vigorous Q&A session.

With Robin Osborne, author of seminal text ‘Indonesia’s Secret War’(1985), on board for the Q&A; we ploughed through a boisterous hour of inquisition into Indonesian, American and Aussie political intrigue. Osborne’s enlightening book was one the first entries into this little know topic and has influenced academics, politicians and laymen ever since. During East Timor’s 1999 U.N. Referendum, ‘Indonesia’s Secret War’ was photocopied and handed around enemas to U.N. employees to recall the lies and deception perpetrated by Jakarta during West Papua’s 1969 U.N. Referendum; where only 1026 hand picked Papuans were threatened with having their tongues cut out if they voted for independence. Yes the U.N. may rip off your book but Big kudos to you Mr. Osborne – a very important book.

SBiP screens again in Darwin (Birch, Carroll & Coylle Cinemas) on Feb 13^th 2011

Check out these taste testers from our up coming SBiP DVD – March 2011

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEZnCgTd3Cg

Strange Birds – Bathtime – Outtake 4

Quest for the West Papuan Penis Gourd - Episode 5

On a sticky mud track we left the river and hiked up and out of the main valley, our chests heaving and calves burning as the first merciless hill fell behind. Hill after hill we followed well-trodden walking trails that interconnect the highlands like earthen arteries; valley-to-valley, village-to-village. We were soon amongst immaculately kept farming gardens. Rows of onions, fields of strawberries, contoured lines of potato, ginger, cabbage and garlic. These Neolithic farmers are considered to be the oldest farming culture on the planet, part of an ancient migration wave at least 30,000 years old and still planting.

The next few days were like a time machine. Twenty first centaury westerners in Gortex, hiking amongst naked, Neolithic farmers. A surreal dream where black men wearing spider’s webs in their hair to ward off ghosts share instant packet soup with white men in lycra skivvies and wrap around sunglasses. A totally natural world; where wood and stone have not been superseded by tin and plastic. Where bare feet walk earthen tracks and each village of grass houses and wooden walled compounds melds into the natural world, like mushrooms in the grass.

So we hiked in blissful, tourist ignorance, drinking in the awe-inspiring views of mountains, ravines and raging rivers and savouring the intermit dealings with local families as we shared their food and stayed in their grass-roofed visitors huts. If this tribal empire was surprising, then the fact that this acutely foreign culture and I share a common tongue; completely blew our digital age, dominant culture, free market minds. To be continued…

Strange Holidays in Paradise

January 21st, 2011 § Leave a Comment

SBiP News – Greetings Strange Birds,

In reverence to the little baby Jesus, Solstice pagans and holiday frolickers everywhere the flock at Strange Birds downed tools and flew the coop for a few weeks of time off.

But with Festivus and New Years already a distant speck in life’s rear view mirror we’re now barreling down the 2011 superhighway with the certainty of a Mayan soothsayer.

2011 is going to be a magnificent year and if you believe King Seven Rabbits and the Mayans of central America, the final year of existence before the this whole mortal coil thing goes up in flames; the end is nigh, time is short; so we’re looking busy.

‘Strange Birds in Paradise’ (SBiP) is continuing it’s journey through international film festivals with trips to Poland and the United Kingdom (May 2011) and screenings at the Darwin, Deckchair Cinema (Jan 30th) and the Adelaide International Film Festival (Feb 27 & March 3rd).

To get 2011 rocking ‘Brains trust Strange Birds’ have brewed up a tasty feast of digital morsels to wet your collective appetites for our up coming DVD release in March 2011, here are a few examples of the array of extras we’ve packed onto the DVD. Plus – read on below for the 4th installment of my serialised ‘Quest for the West Papuan Penis Gourd’.

Mambo Simbu – Melanesian Music. SBiP uses the beautiful music of slain Papuan music legend, Arnold Ap to introduce Melanesia culture to an international audience. His haunting and beautiful tunes are the iron fist in the velvet glove of resistance music; subtle and whimsical with deep nationalist sentiments. This is one of the 7 music clips on the SBiP DVD.

Micro Doc – Returning to West Papua. Here’s a short DVD extra showing me returning to West Papua to secretly film the main body of SBiP with my two cameramen. Check out the 1000Rp Indo-70′s sunnies in Jayaura.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEZnCgTd3Cg

Two Dogs Animation. As a massive cartoon fan and part time hack cartoonist, I wanted to use as much animation as possible in SBiP as a way of telling some of the difficult and at times, harrowing back story. The following is a little animation that didn’t make the final feature cut, but we thought might titillate.

West Papua is a topic whose time has come and the following articles provide hope that cracks are appearing in previously inscrutable world opinion.

House of Lords, Thursday, 16 December 2010. Indonesia Question, 11.22 am

Asked By Lord Harries of Pentregarth

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will make representations to the Government of Indonesia regarding the initiation of a dialogue with the indigenous West Papuan opposition.

The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Howell of Guildford): My Lords, the UK remains committed to the territorial integrity of Indonesia. We will do all we can in support of measures to address the widespread poverty in the area in question, and to raise our concerns about human rights abuses wherever they occur. We encourage, along with other international partners, a meaningful dialogue which would be of assistance in finding an acceptable solution.

Lord Harries of Pentregarth: I thank the Minister for his reply, but would he urge on the Indonesian Government the sheer seriousness of the present situation. He will not need to be reminded of the statement of the Foreign Secretary in the other place that friendly relationships with states should in no way preclude our raising human rights abuses in the strongest terms. Would he draw the attention of the Indonesian Government to the fact that 10,000 people are assembled in June to reject the so-called special autonomy measures? The West Papuan people do not believe that these are helping them, and a dialogue is needed with their leaders.

To read in full…

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201011/ldhansrd/text/101216-0001.htm#10121652000744

The following has just been released in Indonesia and is an encouraging example of enlightened Indonesian society.

West Papua: Open Letter From Indonesian Civil Society Concerning Human Rights In West Papua

OPEN LETTER
Raising Concern and Offer Solution::
One-Year Human Rights Promotion in Papua 2010

To the attention of
President Republic of Indonesia,
Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono
In Jakarta

Dear Mr. President,

We are writing this letter to you to raise our concern over human rights conditions in Papua. We are confirmed that lacking of protection and recognition of Papuansâ€™ rights have led to abusive and violent practice against Papuans. This pratice has persistently cause death to Papuans and left trauma for them and their family. This practice clearly does not reflect the spirit of this countryâ€™s constitution to protect whole citizens.

We have recorded that there have been some big issues this year that attract public attention. The issues such as footage violent action against civilians by military in Tinggi Nambut Papua,[1] violence against civilians in Bolakme,[2] ethnic conflict between Papuan highlanders and Yoka people,[3] shooting civilians in Nafri[4], shooting against prisoners in Tanah Hitam,[5] civilians shot dead in Boroway,[6] arrest and detention of Filep Karma and Buchtar Tabuni[7] and the rally of returning special autonomy. Other cases relating to social, economy and culture which potentially bring negative impact on Papuans and destroy Papuan values such as MIFEE in Merauke,[8] Dagewo case in Paniai[9], the transfer of local land in Lereh for palm oil plantation, Freeport case,[10] and many illegal logging cases.

Bsaed on our observation and data collected, the problems mentioned above happen because of the following reasons:

First, government still stigmatisize any Papua groups and individual as separatist as they do resistance against government. Government uses â€˜stigmatization of separatistâ€ as powerful strategy to silence Papuans demand and freedom of expression and weaken the critical thinking from Papuans who often criticise the govermnent policy. This strategy is partially successful as it silences resistant movement but in the other side it gives more energy and spirit for more resistance. Also, this unpopular strategy has planted the seeds of hostility and mistrust among Papuans against Indonesia.

Second, Jakarta still plays dominant role in the issue of any policies and their implementations in Papua. Jakarta, as the central power, is still unable to trust any process of development in Papua although Papua has been given special autonomy to manage themselves. MIFEE case, violence against civilians in Bolakme, Tingginambut-Puncak Jaya and Freeport cases are example on how central government still exercise their absolute authority which potentially destroy basic rights of Papua. Central govermnet just interest in investment without considering the basic rights of Papuans and their values

Third, Papua is still considered as conflict area. Therefore, security approach is dominant. Huge number of troops are deployed every year to Papua to secure the border area and investorâ€™s assets. Ironically, the security approach has caused fear and revive the past trauma. People in the border feel fear when they go to bush and forest to hunting, gardening as they might be arrested as being suspected as members of Papua freedom movement (OPM)/ National Freedom Army (TPN).

Fourth, The massive deployment of troops which is to secure investorsâ€™ assest has caused human right violations and fear. The rights of people are neglected and intimidation is done when the locals demand their rights and speak critically.

Fifth, Economic problems are still strongly perceived as the main problems in Papua. Therefore, huge amount of money and investment is needed to build Papua to improve their economy. RESPEK ( strategic plan for rural development) program is one example where the program emphasize infrastructure development rather than human resources development. Moreover, suspection among the locals is rising over the use and management of special autonomy fund used for RESPEK program. Also, no efective supervision has led to corruption

Sixth, the policy issued by govermnet and its implementation actually repair the impact not solve the basic problems which has been persisting so long. It is crucial that any policy has â€˜solving-problemsâ€™ elements. If not, the problems will never be solved.

Based on the description above, we urge Mr. President to take immediate action by ordering central government and localgovernment to do the following:

First, hold peaceful dialog as an effective means to solve the problems in Papua. The dialog Jakarta-Papua which has been initiated by Papua Peace Network Team needs to be supported. The dialog should involved all elements: government, customary community, religious leaders, academics and civil groups.

Second, stop all stigmatization against Papuans and place them a citizens who have rights to be protected by the state. Constitutions guarantee freedom of expression and this should also be applied to Papuans. Some articles in state criminal law and government regulation No. 77 year 2007 about treason and subversion need to be amended as it limits the freedom of expression.

Third, revise or redesign security approach to be human rights-based approach as it will recognise the rights of Papuans and protect Papuans from violent acts. The deployment of troops need to be adjusted to the need of the local area and real threat as to save state budget of defense.

Fourth, police should exercise their professionalism in keeping the order and promote human rights. The professionalism is shown by giving protection so people feel secure and peaceful in doing their activities. This is important to bring back trust from the people.

Fifth, push the policy that promote human rights and provide justice to the victims of human rights abuses. Government has to take immediate action to establish human rights court and reconciliation and truth commission in Papua as mandated by special autonomy law.

Sixth, central government needs to revise public-service related policy because the existing policy does not provide and touch the basic rights of Papuans. There are three public service issues that needs to taken into consideration: education, health and economy where these three areas are directed to empowernment, affirmative action and protection.

Seventh, Policies issued for Papua need to have recognition of human rights elements. This is so because all existing policies basically emphasize on economic and welfare problems.

Eighth, governor, Papua legislative (DPRP) and Papua Peopleâ€™s Assembly (MRP) should build good coordination and reponsive to the problems of human rights abuses in Papua. Lack of initiatives and good will from these institutions show that they actually do not have commitment to promote human rights in Papua and potentially increase mistrust among Papuans.

We write this open letter with the hope that immediate action to be taken to solve the problems in Papua. Thanks

Jayapura, 05 January 2010

Institutions support this open letter

Papua Based Institution
Foker LSM Papua, ALDP, Elsham Papua, SKP-KPC, KPKC Sinode GKI Papua, LBH Jayapura, JAPH-HAM Wamena
Jakarta Based Institution
Imparsial, Kontras Jakarta, HRWG, PRAXIS

Quest for the West Papuan Penis Gourd - Episode 4

<p>The journey to create the new Australian feature documentary, ’Strange Birds in Paradise – A West Papuan Story ‘ (SBiP), began back in 1999 when some old mates convinced me to go hiking in the remote highlands of Papua New Guinea and West Papua (just north of Australia). This is the serialised story of that adventure.

You get a lot of bang for your buck in Indonesia; and West Papua is no different. No less than ten Papuan porters rocked up at our hostel the following morning. The impressive caravan carried string bags (billum) of fruit, vegetables, rice, coffee, sugar, flour, salt and cooking oil and boxes of tinned meats, dried fish, salted pork and noodles. We were also joined by Carro, a tall, elegant Papuan gent of around sixty years, who was not on the pay roll but just, ‘..keen for a bit of a walk’. The top-heavy ratio of eleven Papuans to four Dim-dims (PNG Pigeon-English for ‘white men’), made us feel a little like Lord Muck and his entourage of colonial idiots, but with high spirit, blue sky and tourist grins we hiked out of Wamena following the Nappo River to the south-east.

Within an hour we spotted the first village. Huts like fungi clinging to the hillside and our first up close encounter with penis gourds. Crossing a swing bridge built entirely of natural vine we spotted a group of four young men smoking and talking. All four strapping lads wore nothing but gourds and beamed smiles as they recognised Sergius and his team. I’ve never met any race more comfortable in their skin then these blokes. Nude, bar a strap-on zucchini, and with the composure of a Renaissance man in an Armani suit.

Whilst ceremonial penis gourds tend to be long and flamboyant, these blokes wore short and wide gourds with large openings on the top. Upon discussion the young fellers described how long gourds, topped with possum or pig’s tails were used for ceremony and special events; their impressive scale fuelling the pomp and drama. Where as these utilitarian versions were the sports models, short and strong and ideal for thrashing through the bush in pursuit of wily tree kangaroo or delicious giant rat. I laughed when one of the gourd boys whipped his tobacco and rolling papers out of the top of his gourd and offered us a smoke. Masculine, sexy and practical, I decided right then and there, that penis gourds are the future and the future is gonna be mine!

Strange Birds at the AFI’s

December 22nd, 2010 § Leave a Comment

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Greetings Strange Birds,
Two big nights at Melbourne’s Regent Theatre, 4 AFI nominations and Reg Grundy.

Friday night was the Australian Film Industry’s craft awards, hilariously MC-ed by Shane Jacobson of ‘Kenny’ fame, and with SBiP up for Best Director, Best Sound and Best Cinematography we were in with a red-hot chance of picking up a gong. Alas the Gods of Bling gave us nothing as Best Director and Best Sound went to ‘Inside the Fire Storm’ and Best Cinematography to ‘Miracles’.

Night two brought out the Stars of the Southern Cross. Ben Mendlson’s bald escort stole the show with chain mail over exposed arse cheeks as ‘Animal Kingdom’ and Jacki Weaver cleaned house. Willem Defoe was the ring-in big star, but the undeniable highlight was the AFI’s honoring of eighty year-old Reg Grundy.

Hisses of disbelief greeted award presenter and legendary radio knob, Alan Jones; as he revisited the long list of Grundy’s ‘B-Grade Gold’. Grundy’s business brilliance revolutionized global television in our life time and made him a fortune by presenting Australians as beach loving, teenage, imprisoned lesbian quiz master battlers with cheap lighting and awful scripts. I yelled this out repeatedly during the standing ovation and ended up in a bare knuckles match with Reg and his fabulous wife at the bar. I walked away with a shiner and a diamond studded stick pin from Bruce and Walsh.

‘AFI Best Feature Documentary’ saw SBiP pipped for a fourth nomination, this time by a wonderful film called, ‘Contact’, a worthy choice. Naturally the SBiP team was disappointed at not taking home a gong from our nominations, but documentary makers are the Burke and Wills of film making; hapless buffoons lost in the burning sands; and the 4 AFI noms – tiny thimbles of cool water in an unrelenting artistic desert.

SBiP News: Last week SBiP screened at the Warsaw Film Festival, had two sell out nights and rated in the top ten audience choice; so like the old Pope, we’re big in Poland and busy making a party.

The constant trickle of awful news from West Papua has come to a head over the last month with Obama and Gillard visiting Indonesia as video of Indonesian military torturing West Papuans hits You Tube and Wikileaks reveals U.S soft policy on TNI human rights. I knocked up an opinion piece questioning the lefts commitment to human rights and it hit the Sydney Morning Herald last week, check it out….

Farcical Indonesian Tribunal Exposes Liturgy of Lies. (SMH Fri Dec 10th 2010)

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/australia-must-make-a-stand-for-west-papua-20101209-18raa.html

As YouTube evidence of Indonesian soldiers burning the genitals of West Papuan, Tunaliwor Kiwo, beams around the world; the Indonesian military (TNI) has been exposed holding a cynical mock trial in an effort to cover up systemic violence.

On command of Indonesian President Yudhoyono, Prime minister Gillard agreed not to mention West Papua during her recent visit to Indonesia on the proviso that the torturers of Tunaliwor Kiwo were brought to justice. Prime minister Gillard has been left red faced after the promised trial turned out to be a deceit. TNI soldiers from another; lesser ‘abuse case’ were paraded and given soft sentences, while Kiwo’s torturers remain on active duty.

Despite the Australian embassy in Jakarta telling Indonesian officials of Australia’s, “unhappiness with the military’s investigation”, the blatant contempt evidenced by the recent ‘show trial’, creates little confidence in Indonesia’s sincerity. So while Australia continues to train Indonesia’s disgraced Kopassus Special Forces, the Australian Prime minister and indeed the entire Australian Left seem to have lost their voices.

Where’s the outpouring of neighborly solidarity that lifted East Timor out of the geopolitical rubbish bin and into the minds of mainstream Aussies? In 1999 East Timor held a United Nations referendum, due in part to international and Australian pressure; and we all caught a disturbing glimpse of the Indonesian military as they tortured, raped and scorched their way back to Java.

1999 was also the year I first traveled to West Papua and discovered the best kept secret in the Asia-Pacific. Hiking with old mates amongst the highland farms of the Dani people we started hearing stories of dispossession, detention, torture and murder. Yale University suggests that 400,000 West Papuans have been killed by the Indonesian military since they invaded in 1962/63; yet few Australians know anything about these killing fields on our northern shoulder.

I had lived and traveled on and off in Indonesia for 15 years but tellingly had never heard a travelers tale, nor a whisper from West Papua. My mates and I departed West Papua shocked by the local’s stories and with a growing suspicion that we were being lied to. Obviously the Australian government has always known what’s happening in West Papua but has chosen placation over human dignity and moral leadership.

Back in Australia, no one had even heard of West Papua, as if this Indonesian province of 2.6 million people had been erased from the Papua New Guinean border. Why the silence? Where are the Churches, the students, and the humanitarian groups who fought for East Timor? Where are the unions who boycotted the Dutch in Indonesia and the racist regime in South Africa? Where are the conservatives who beat their chests after Howard ‘saved East Timor’?

A clue to this sustained silence can be gleaned from history. When General Suharto took power in Indonesia in 1965/66, he opened the floodgates to western resource companies. Every Australian government since Menzies kow-towed to this murderous bully, partially to ward off the feared disintegration of this 18,000-island republic; but mainly to gain access to Indonesia’s vast natural resources.

The first western company to do business with Suharto was the Freeport goldmine in West Papua. Partly owned by Australia’s Rio Tinto, the Freeport Mine is the largest gold/copper mine in the world and Indonesia’s biggest taxpayer; and yet West Papuans live in poverty, experiencing the worst health, education and development levels in Indonesia.

Freeport’s four billion dollar profit in 2009 didn’t come easily. Dr. Damien Kingsbury of Deakin University says of the local Amungme people, ‘These people have been kicked out, they’ve been given a token payment and if they’ve protested, they’ve been shot.’ None of this would have been possible without Freeport’s paid protection from the TNI. This neo- colonial business model, whilst wildly profitable, is internationally embarrassing and only works under a marketing umbrella of collusive denial.

But here’s the rub − the TNI is not a professional army, it only gets one-third of it’s military budget from the Indonesian government; the other two-thirds come from its own private businesses. As Dr. Kingsbury observes, ‘The TNI has been described by many commentators as a Mafia like operation, it’s like the Mafia but on a very big and very organised scale. It’s involved in illegal activities, like illegal logging, illegal mining, extortion, gambling, prostitution, gun-running and so on.’ This conflict of interest is at the heart of the TNI’s ongoing human rights abuses. How can they serve the county while serving them selves? West Papua has necessarily become a resource cash cow. A military fiefdom 3000 km from Jakarta, full of tribally divided, uneducated farmers; sitting atop a new Elderado.

Despite journalists still being banned, West Papua is no longer the secret it was in 1999. Prime minister Gillard should not be placated by Indonesia’s mock trial of torturers nor train them, in the form of Kopassus; but should work with Jakarta to reform the TNI and open up West Papua to international scrutiny. It’s time for Australia to step up for the tortured and murdered people of West Papua.

Naturally the article copped a good bollocking from those who accurately see me as a ‘Johnny-come-lately’ to the subject of West Papua; and from some on the left who obviously thought I was talking about them.

On a lighter note the SBiP team finished putting the SBiP DVD together – chockers with music and extra penis gourd close-ups and being released early 2011. Here’s a rather somber out take from the DVD Extras - http://www.vimeo.com/18039711

Remembering that Jesus is the reason for the seasoning but Buddha makes better rice; I wish Birds of all feathers a Merry Christmas and oodles of Birdy Numnums.

Quest for the West Papuan Penis Gourd - Episode 3

The journey to create the new Australian feature documentary, ’Strange Birds in Paradise – A West Papuan Story ‘ (SBiP), began back in 1999 when some old mates convinced me to go hiking in the remote highlands of Papua New Guinea and West Papua (just north of Australia). This is the serialised story of that adventure.

Indonesia is the fourth largest nation on earth, stretching from embattled Aceh in the far north of Sumatra to Jayapura, here in the far, far east. In 1949 Indonesia gained independence after 300 years of repressive Dutch colonialism, becoming a nation state created from the map of the world’s first multi national corporation, the Dutch East Indies Trading Company (VOC). So Holland’s richest coffee and spice plantation suddenly became the world’s largest Muslim country. Viva Café Hallal!

We flew from Sentani airport near coastal Jayapura into the Baliem Valley in the central highlands. The immaculately dressed Indonesian pilots with their starched applets and pirate Raybans were keen for me to join them in the cockpit for a better view and even keener to fire up a smoke. All three of us were soon puffing away on clove cigarettes, another first on this trip of revelations. Within seconds we had fully Dutched-out the cockpit. I could barely see the pilots and completely lost the instrument panel and windscreen behind a wall of eye stinging smoke. When a stewardess opened the cockpit door, plumes of sweet, clove smoke bellowed into the cabin. I grinned at my mates through the almost impenetrable cloud, and called back, ‘Welcome to paradise boys. Lock the doors’.

Wamena is a ramshackle town of a few thousand people, sitting on the banks on the churning Nappo River in the mighty Baliem valley. Heavily scarified with endless garden beds, the Baliem is a wide river valley sitting at 3000 metres above sea level, like an island of open space in a sea of inscrutable mountain ranges. After the stifling heat of the coast, the cool, clean air and the distant blue mountains are powerfully invigorating. White men didn’t even get here until the 1940’s and where they thought there were no people; they found a million tribesmen living in complex animist agrarian cultures; truly the land that time forgot.

This capital of the highlands is only accessible by air. The Indonesians fly in hundreds of tonnes of rice and staples to support this satellite town. Outside the crowded terminal we were beset by Papuan hiking guides hungry for the obviously rare tourist rupiah. After some vigorous negotiation we made a deal with Sergius Elopere, a heavy browed local man with a beaming smile. Sergius agreed to lead us into the southern mountains for a weeklong hike in the lands of his people, the Dani.

to be continued…

SBiP – The Little-Big Film that Could.

December 8th, 2010 § Leave a Comment

SBiP News#2 Strange Birds News by Charlie Hill-Smith

AFI Awards. Dear Strange Birds, this week, the Australian Film Industry holds it’s annual award ceremony, the 2010 Samsung AFI Awards. Generally I pay scant attention to this sort of industry gas bagging festival. Where dated Aussie egos backslap each other like suffocating carp in a thinning gene pool. “A hack fest of Hall of Fame has-beens and First timer wanna-bees”, I thought, “Fortifying their prolapsing ivory towers with scaffolds of sycophancy”. That was until I got nominated, shaped up and started whistling Dixie on the industry skin flute. Now I love the AFI’s, this noble festival, this selfless industry, these generous comrades, keen to congratulate and vicariously share. It’s now replaced Pig Racing at the Adelaide Show as my calendar event of the year and the Logies as the night of all nights. So I’m strapping on the ball gown, waxing the b, s & c, bleaching my ring of confidence and am ready for my red carpet close-up.

Yes folks SBiP is nominated for 4 AFI awards, the most of any documentary for 2010. We were surprised and thrilled as the film, whilst succeeding with film festival audiences, has no luck with Australian television and we’re hoping this is the kick up the jatsie that is needed. Who would have thought that our privately funded, written and produced little film would grow up so quickly and do us so proud? SBiP Producers Jamie Nicolai and John Cherry are nominated for AFI-Best Feature Documentary, Mik LeVage, Doron Kipin & David Bridie for AFI-Best Sound, Gus Kemp for AFI-Best Cinematography and yours truly for AFI-Best Direction. So it’s penguin suits, red carpet, cheap fizz and idiot grins for the crew of SBiP. Wish us luck and pray I don’t get into another fistfight with Jack Thompson.

George Telek. One of the many artists to be featured in SBiP is the Papua New Guinean singer-songwriter, George Telek. A preeminent figure in David Bridie’s Sing-Sing Concerts, Telek sings his famous lament ‘West Papua’ in front of a full house in Melbourne’s Hamner Hall. Telek recently rerecorded his famous ‘West Papua’ song as a reggae arrangement at David Bridie’s studio in Melbourne and Gus Kempe (AFI nominated cinematographer from SBiP) and I shot and edited a very low budget clip for the new release. It’s wicked. Check it out! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvTHpJk8r6M&feature=related

MIFF. We had a great screening at the Melbourne International Film Festival in July 2010 under the keen and crazy eye of fabulous festival director Richard Moore. Amongst Moore’s wild selection of Queer Zombie Porn and drive-in shlock, SBiP found a receptive audience and sold out two screenings. The following is an interview with Indie Film Nation from MIFF 2010. Check it out! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFZCqC7tPCc

SBiP Teaser. To have a peep at our 2 minute teaser for Strange Birds in Paradise – check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCqvidOSzRE

Quest for the West Papuan Penis Gourd - Episode 2

Charlie’s Episodic Documentary Diary.

The Melanesian town of Vanimo swelters in the tropical heat some fifty kilometres from the 141st longitude east, the Papua New Guinea / Indonesian border. The seemingly arbitrary dissection of this, the second largest island on earth, occurred in the pre World War I colonial days when Germany, Britain and the Dutch were all vying for some hot Pacific action.

My hiking buddies and I knew nothing about West Papua, after all the place barely rated a mention in newspapers or mainstream news. Its’ fortunes had been so ignored and my general knowledge so poor that I thought it was either part of PNG or another developing nation; an ignorant myth that was about to be unequivocally debunked.

The border itself was no more than a scratch cut in the endless green jungle. A blind drunk customs officer hid his stubby of PNG Gold Lager as we entered the tin shed customs’ post and finally stamped our passports after a gormless fit of inkpad dropping, hiccups and general red eyed buffoonery. If a rat-arsed government official was a surprise, the fact that these Papuans were speaking Indonesian; was a total shock to me. I really didn’t think there would be much Indonesian influence in this far-flung province, 3000 kilometres from Jakarta. ‘Selamat datang ke Indonesia – Welcome to Indonesia’.

Our stumbling official waved us into a battered taxi sitting in the raging, afternoon sun. Ten minutes later we pulled into the first Indonesian Army (TNI) check point; this too was totally unexpected. A small brood of stern faced Indonesian soldiers sat smoking clove cigarettes in the shade of an old house high above a silver river snaking through the jungle below. These were Kopassus, TNI Special Forces, hard-core boys who did Jakarta’s dirty work, killing other Indonesian citizens in East Timor, Acheh and the Maluku. I flashed our special travel permits and laid my best Javanese greetings on them whilst passing around a pack of American made Marlboro’s, always a favourite with guys who usually smoke crappy local brands. During the following two-hour drive to Jayapura we were stopped by no less than four TNI checkpoints. We had nothing to hide, so laughed it off, but this was not the chilled out Melanesian life style I had heard so much about.

Soon we were walking the hot streets of West Papua’s capital, Jayapura. The Muslim call to prayer hangs over the still harbour mixing with the hubbub of Asian accents. The spicy smoke of sates, nasi-goreng and clove cigarettes transport me to Java and I realise this is not a Papuan town and I am squarely back in the Republic of Indonesia. I could see a few ethnic Papuans, selling vegetables and trinkets on the footpaths; but most of the faces in this city of 200,000 are Indonesian. Faces with high cheekbones and smooth, tanned skin; the faces of the Javanese, the masters of the Indonesian archipelago.

To be continued..

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Dear Strangebirds and Odd Bedfellows

See footage from the attack on the Papuan People’s Congress – Oct 19th 2011

Many of us know little about the shady goings on inside the giant forested island just to the north of Australia; but we did catch a glimpse of the awful, murderous behaviour of the Indonesian military (TNI) as they butchered, raped and burnt the civilian population of East Timor in 1999.

On December 1, 2011, tens of thousands of West Papuans will be marching and demanding justice, democracy and economic inclusion; undoubtedly the TNI will attack them, beat some, shoot others and torture and imprison many.

Greens Senator Richard Di Natale will be making such a demand in the Australian Federal Senate at some stage over the next few weeks. Contact him if you support this action.

(Sen R. Di Natale)” <Georgia.Webster@aph.gov.au>

Four hundred thousand (400,000) West Papuans have been killed by the Indonesian military since the early 1960’s, each one of these was a person – a son or daughter, and deserved their life and liberty – it’s time for the killing to stop! Get involved.

‘Land of the Morning Star’ by David Bridie from ARIA nominated Strangebirds in Paradise CD soundtrack

There is magic and voodoo in the sampled reality of animation, an inexplicable attraction that is neither a true portrait of reality nor completely devoid of it. Animation lives in a fantastical realm of its own, haunting the space between reality and imagination.

The music is from David Bridie’s ARIA nominated soundtrack album ‘Strangebirds in Paradise’ available from his Wantok Musik website - http://www.wantokmusik.org/albums_strangebirds.htm

Available at

Exposé through music of media

Ignorance of West Papua

NICK CHESTERFIELD is editor of West Papua Media.

Strange Birds in Paradise: A West Papuan Story, feature documentary directed by Charlie Hill-Smith. Melbourne: The House of Red Monkey, 2010. 75min. www.strangebirds.com. au Soundtrack: www.wantokmusik.org/ artists_strangebirds.htm

THIS beautifully illustrated animation sequence epitomises the West Papuan desire for simple survival, an assertion that West Papuan people are the custodians of a true paradise that the Indonesian military mafia has turned into a hell on earth.

Australian director Charlie Hill-Smith has woven together many complex threads to create this rich and evocative tapestry clearly showing the ‘mystery of life’ in Papua today.

This film particularly juxtaposes the experience of non-political West Papuan farmers, activists, exiles, and refugees, as well as the lives of those who through their beliefs were forced to flee.

Strange Birds provides a timely reminder that people do not leave their homes, unless they have no other choice; that refugees only flee to survive heinous abuse. The students fleeing from the March 12, 2006 riots conveyed a cri de coeur for the future of the homeland that people must respond to.

During filming, feeling completely helpless in an environment like Skotchiou village on the PNG/West Papua border. we were all so thoroughly moved at the core of our beings by what we witnessed that there were no question of staying silent.

Eye Witness 2011

ARIA AWARDS 2011 In other news, the awesome soundtrack to Strangebirds in Paradise by Aussie music legend David Bridie has just been nominated for an ARIA award, for Best World Music Album 2011. Aria Awards

Screening News

Quest for the West Papuan Penis Gourd#10

‘ The album transcends purely musical importance.’

– the Australian 20/8/11

“Not just a soundtrack, Strange Birds in Paradise stands alone as an album of cultural and political significance, putting West Papua’s extraordinary music talent firmly on the contemporary music map.”

- David Bridie 2011

Strangebirds in Paradise CD - http://www.wantokmusik.org/albums_strangebirds.htm

Preview: Strange Birds in Paradise

Quest for the West Papuan Penis Gourd Ep.9

Meanwhile the pig had been gutted, singed of hair and cooked in an underground oven of stone and fire. The whole village sat together in the dirt compound and devoured the juicy pork and steamed green leaves.

To be continued..

‘SBiP…a wonderful creative space for both hope and despair’ – John Hughes

SBiP News May – July 2011

SBiP on TripleRRR

Screening#1 Ballarat Regent Theatre – 23 June 6.45pm

Screening#2 Nova Cinemas – 1st July 7pm

SBiP in Arena Magazine – John Hughes

SBiP Radio Australia - Jacob Rumbiak and I did a quick interview with Isabelle Genoux a few weeks ago, give it a listen..

SBiP DVD – http://www.strangebirds.com.au/

SBiP CD Soundtrack – Buy it now

Yes Music-Lovers, this kick-arse soundtrack is now available. For all those strange birds in Melbourne, we’re having a CD and DVD launch in Sun 14th August 2011. Come and join the stellar line up of talent.

Here’s the press release..

STRANGE BIRDS IN PARADISE

A West Papuan Soundtrack

“Music can rise above tyranny”

“Art is a weapon and culture is life, as long as they can sing they will prevail.”

- Film-maker Charlie Hill-Smith on the plight of the West Papuans

in their fight for independence from Indonesia

On Sunday August 14 from 1-5pm, the soundtrack and DVD to the powerful and award winning political feature documentary Strange Birds in Paradise

will be launched at The Northcote Social Club.

Strange Birds in Paradise is an album which engages with the unique music of West Papua and champions a community who will fight to keep their cultural traditions alive in the face of extreme political oppression and widespread genocide.

What: When: Where: Tickets: Contact:

Links:

Strange Birds in Paradise Album Launch (alongside official DVD release) August 14, 1-5pm Northcote Social Club $18 Presale / $22 on Door ($15 Concession available at door only – no presale) Penney & Logan PR

Carolyn Logan/ carolynlogan@bigpond.com / 0400 441025 Tilly Morris / enquiries@tillymorris.com.au /0418582812 www.wantokmusik.org / www.strangebirds.com.au

Quest for the West Papuan Penis Gourd Ep.8

To be continued…

SBiP DVD – http://www.strangebirds.com.au/

Quest for the West Papuan Penis Gourd Ep.7

Salute and Grog-speed dearest and strangest Birds.

Canadian filmmaker and worldly character Peter Wintonick, ably led the two emotional Q&A sessions .

Quest for the West Papuan Penis Gourd Ep.6

Keep track of SBiP on our Facebook site – http://www.facebook.com/pages/Strange-Birds-in-Paradise/164275913066?v=wall and website – strangebirds.com.au

Quest for the West Papuan Penis Gourd - Episode 5

Greetings Strange Birds, Two big nights at Melbourne’s Regent Theatre, 4 AFI nominations and Reg Grundy.

Farcical Indonesian Tribunal Exposes Liturgy of Lies. (SMH Fri Dec 10th 2010)

Quest for the West Papuan Penis Gourd - Episode 3

See footage from the attack on the Papuan People’s Congress – Oct 19^th 2011

Screening#2 Nova Cinemas – 1^st July 7pm

Yes Music-Lovers, this kick-arse soundtrack is now available. For all those strange birds in Melbourne, we’re having a CD and DVD launch in Sun 14^th August 2011. Come and join the stellar line up of talent.

Greetings Strange Birds,
Two big nights at Melbourne’s Regent Theatre, 4 AFI nominations and Reg Grundy.