‘Balibo’ is a film that has been 35 years in the making. Ever since the day back in 1975 when five Australian journalists where viciously murdered by Indonesian troops while covering the invasion of East Timor, their families have been pushing for the truth to be told. But each time they tried to tell their story (or even find the complete truth) they were prevented, not only by the Indonesian Government but also by the Australian Government. That is why Director, Robert Connolly’s film ‘Balibo’ is such a valuable film; finally the truth is out there for all too see. Connolly has based his career on making great films, he directed ‘The Bank’ and ‘Three Dollars’ and was a producer on ‘The Boys’ and ‘Romulus, My Father’, but these screen classics pale into insignificance after you’ve viewed ‘Balibo’.

This film hasn’t only affected those lucky enough to see it, the deep scar it has left on his actors were clear for all to see when I sat down with two of the stars of the film, Damon Gameau and Nathan Phillips. Damon (who has made a name for his with roles in ‘Love My Way’ and ‘Underbelly: A Tale Of Two Cities’) plays Greg Shackleton in ‘Balibo’  Nathan (who has starred in a ton of films including ‘Wolf Creek’, ‘Dying Breed’ and ‘Snakes On A Plane’) both got involved with ‘Balibo’ in very different ways. ‘I didn’t have to dance like a monkey or anything,’ jokes Nathan. ‘I’ve known Rob since I did ‘Australian Rules’ and I know he is a filmmaker who is before his time. And I knew he didn’t make puff pieces. I was familiar with the story of ‘Balibo’… or at least I thought I was… no I feel like I was ignorant.’ Damon has a different tale to tell, ‘I did dance like he monkey,’ he says laughing. ‘To be honest I didn’t know much about the Balibo story. I found Greg Shackleton’s final piece he did to camera on YouTube and then I put that down as an audition and sent it off in a email… really, really low quality, but it all happened.

Not only did the cast of Balibo have to endure the heat of East Timor on their shoot but they also found themselves confronted by ‘ghosts of the past’ in some extremely eerie ways. ‘The lines between life and art really did blur,’ explains Nathan. ‘Not only we were meeting people who knew them, we were meeting the last people who knew them.’ ‘And we were given full access to the Balibo house,’ adds Damon. ‘It still feels like the 70s… it’s like a time warp. What was really eerie though was that we set up our beds we accidentally set them up in the exact same spot where the character that each of us were playing had had their beds. Then just before we shot the scene of the massacre we sat in the house where they were killed… that was really emotional. The night before they died they get any sleep because the Indonesians were firing off mortars and it was just so hot, then the night we were there we didn’t sleep either because there was an accident and a drunk guy. There were just so many coincidences while were there.’

So how hard was it to portray these men? ‘There was a real responsibility in getting ready to play these men,’ explains Damon. ‘This wasn’t just a case of getting their habits and tricks down pat, these were real humans and you had to do it properly. We had to remember that after this was over we had to look their families in the eye. They have been talking about this for 35 years, now they get to see it. That’s 35 years of crying themselves to sleep.’ ‘You also need to remember that some of these mother and fathers have died of a broken heart,’ says Nathan. ‘And they didn’t even get to see their son laid to rest. The only comfort they had was the men all died together.’ ‘It was tough,’ adds Damon. ‘The more families we met the more the weight took hold. I read Greg’s diary and Timor got to them and to us. It’s such an infectious and spiritual country that it takes over your body. Greg also wrote a poem about love on the day he died, and then you meet the families involved, then you find that you are living their actually death… it can be really dark, you have to be careful. Sometimes acting can be dangerous…. Look at what happened to Heath Ledger.’

I finished by asking Nathan and Damon what they wanted their closing thoughts on ‘Balibo’ to be and they left me with this. ‘I have a new admiration and respect for journalists of both then and now. I hope we use this film as an educational purpose to learn about the history of Timor. They are our closest neighbor… and guys it is a beautiful place to go on holidays to.’ ‘We need our generation to learn that what we are told isn’t what always happens,’ says Damon. ‘In the last twelve months 60 journalists have died in the field and people need to know that these atrocities happen. People need to realise that no journalists were deliberately killed during the Vietnam war yet in Balibo and even today journalists are hunted down to stop the truth getting out.’

‘Balibo’ is out now.

Dave Griffiths

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If Al Gore’s docco ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ taught us anything at all it is that sometimes we need to view some environmentalist’s words as a ‘do what I say, not what I do’ dose of medicine. While Gore denies it some say his mansion has lights burning in every room all night, and of course there is always the criticism leveled at how many plane trips he makes every year. But you get an entirely different feeling when you interview British filmmaker Franny Armstrong about her new docco ‘The Age Of Stupid’; a no holds-barred look at the future our Earth has if climate change takes over. When you talk to Franny you get a strong sense that this is a topic very important to her; and it’s obvious that the world should be listening to her.

Even the way that Franny became a filmmaker and how ‘The Age Of Stupid’ came about is proof she is in this to get the truth out there rather than to make a quick dollar. ‘I got into filmmaking completely by accident,’ she laughs. ‘I was perfectly happy as a drummer in a pop group and then I heard about the ‘big’ McDonalds story that led to my first docco ‘McLibel’. My Dad was a filmmaker and I borrowed his equipment and just went out and made it. ‘The Age Of Stupid’ was different though. I first head of Climate Change back in school when it was called The Greenhouse Effect, and I thought ‘that’s pretty serious’. And it stayed in the back of my mind until 2002 when I thought I could use what I call the ‘Traffic’ (named after the film) style of filmmaking with the intertwining stories structure to get the message across.’

This style involved a big risk for Franny because instead of having just a simple narration style docco she invented the idea that the stories are told as an archivist (played by Oscar nominated actor Pete Postlethwaite) sits down in 2050 and looks back at what chance humans had of saving the Earth. But that wasn’t her original idea. ‘Originally it was going to be kids. Kids saying things like ‘look what you did to the Earth’, ‘look what you left for us’, but the first group of people we showed it to absolutely hated it. People don’t want to go somewhere and get berated by teens and that’s when I realised it should be our generation saying ‘look what we’ve done… we could have stopped this.’

So how hard was it to get Pete Postlethwaite involved. ‘Actually it was easier then you imagined. When we came up with this character people asked me who I wanted in the role and I just said ‘Pete Postlethwaite’ because he is my all-time favorite actor, and people were saying to me ‘Franny you can’t just you want him because he’s your favourite’. To be honest I didn’t even know what his opinion was on the environment, but I googled him and found out that he was actually trying to get a wind farm built on his land. He’s obsessedwith climate change. Then I just contacted his agent, and there was another funny story there as well. He said he would do the docco but they hadn’t told him what he was doing so he turned up thinking he just had to do a narration.’

Franny learnt with ‘McLibel’ that sometimes taking on a corporation like McDonalds can lead to some backlash from the company has she received the same treatment from Shell whose awful practices of gathering oil from Nigeria are exposed in ‘The Age Of Stupid’? ‘To be honest no they haven’t. Maybe it’s because the film went number one in the U.K., maybe it’s because they have pulled out of Nigeria now, who knows why? Actually the Nigerian story was a really fascinating one. We searched for someone who was affected by what was happening and we found this girl. She was affected and all she dreamed about was becoming a doctor and helping people… twelve months we go back and she’s now selling diesel. Honestly it was liked we scripted it, because that really did show how people become corrupted by these giants.’

I end the interview by asking Franny how aware of climate change Australians are considering that our interview took place just days after Kevin Rudd’s ‘Environmental Plan’ was not passed due to opposition by the Liberal Party. ‘It is bad but realistically his plan doesn’t go far enough either. He is after a 5-25% reduction when realistically he should be aiming for 40%. A 40% reduction will still only give the Earth a 50/50 chance of survival… that’s like a coin toss This is the Earth we are talking about, so ask yourself two questions. If the Leaders of our country made every decision by the toss of a coin… would we wear that? And also if you were getting on a plane and the airline said to you there was only a 50/50 chance the plane would make it’s destination. Would you still get the plane…of course not… you’d want something done to make the odds higher in your favor.’

‘The Age Of Stupid’ opens on August 20^th.

Dave Griffiths

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