Balibo the Film and the Reality
The ban on screening Balibo recalls the 1975 deaths of five foreign journalists in East Timor. One witness of this incident, a former intelligence officer, believes the element of dramatization is inevitable, resulting in a fictional film featuring images of a brutal military.
December 8, 2009
FEW people recognized the small, 62-year-old man wearing a faded blue T-shirt over black denims, his face lined with the beginnings of wrinkles, his thinning hair turning grey. He sat relaxed with his legs stretched out in a corner of the Utan Kayu theater in East Jakarta, on Thursday a week ago, waiting for the screening of the film Balibo, which tells the story of five Australian journalists killed in East Timor in October 1975.
The man is Col
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