Tino Saroengallo's body of water<\/p>\n
Dewi Anggraeni, Contributor, Melbourne, Australia<\/p>\n
As someone who relies a great deal on instinct, when I finally
\ncame face-to-face with Jakarta-born Tino Saroengallo, I knew I
\nhad been cut down to size. I quietly deferred, though on the
\nsurface Tino deferred to me because of my age.<\/p>\n
You get an inkling of the depth of Tino's instinctual capacity
\nwhen you see his award winning The Army Force Them to be Violent,
\nthe first documentary film to be screened in commercial cinema in
\nIndonesia. No one without a fair degree of primal instinct would
\nhave come out unscathed from filming those events.<\/p>\n
Instinct, in Tino's life, has been working hand-in-glove with
\ncreativity, beating the path of his life, and driving his work
\nwhich flows and turns as life necessities requires it. Tino has
\nnever even attempted to preshape his future.<\/p>\n
\"Unlike many people, I've never had a particular ambition, or
\ndreams for that matter. I just move with the flow. My life is
\nlike water,\" he said, sipping his cappuccino, at the cafeteria in
\nthe Victorian College for the Arts complex, in Melbourne.<\/p>\n
He began his story with a surprise. He was a graduate of the
\nMaths-Science stream in secondary school in the mid-1970s in
\nJakarta. Tino did not see it as a mistake, however. \"The Maths-
\nScience stream is very versatile. Let's face it, our secondary
\nschool doesn't really mold you into anything in life,\" he said
\ncasually.<\/p>\n
If you believe the theory that the left-side of your brain is
\nfor rational thinking and the right-side for creativity, Tino
\nmust have been using the left-side of his brain during his school
\nyears, and kept the right-side of his brain active at the same
\ntime. When the time came for him to choose a university course,
\nhe decided that all he wanted to do was to study a language. So
\noff to the School of Letters of the University of Indonesia he
\nwent.<\/p>\n
There he was counseled by dean Dr. Benny Hoed, who suggested
\nhe consider taking up French, Chinese or Japanese. Being a fan of
\nKhoo Ping Ho, Tino decided on Chinese.<\/p>\n
Fate must have been waiting for him already, because during
\nhis first year he met a friend who had just returned from Taiwan,
\nwho impressed him greatly with his fluency in Chinese. So Tino
\nbelieved that if he wanted to be serious, he would have to go and
\nstudy in Taiwan too. Lucky for him, his parents were able to fork
\nout the necessary funds.<\/p>\n
\"It was also in Taiwan that I lost my innocence, so to speak,\"
\nTino confessed, grinning, between sips of cappuccino. He worked
\nhard at his studies nonetheless.<\/p>\n
A year and a half later, he realized it was time for him to
\nreturn to Indonesia, because his roommate told him that he'd
\nbegun to talk in Chinese in his sleep.<\/p>\n
During his last years of university, his fellow students began
\nto map out their careers, which never strayed far from the
\ndiplomatic corps, intelligence service or academia. Tino knew he
\nwould not survive in any kind of bureaucracy. \"I didn't have the
\nstomach for that,\" he confided.<\/p>\n
While feeling around for what to do, he began to take up odd
\njobs like door-to-door selling, which was at the time very
\nunusual for university students to do.<\/p>\n
Lucky for him Harry Kawilarang and Aristides Katoppo \"rescued\"
\nhim by inviting him to join their publication, Mutiara, which was
\nright up his alley at the time. He continued working for them
\nafter his graduation from his university course.<\/p>\n
Several years went by before restlessness overtook him, and he
\nbegan to look around. He had interesting stints with magazines as
\nvaried as Ekstra and Jakarta-Jakarta, always avoiding being
\npulled into the system, maintaining his freelance status.<\/p>\n
Tino's first foray into the audio-visual world was when he was
\ninvited to join an RCTI private television station crew making
\nfeature news, where he worked with expatriate Jeremy Allan
\nproducing Jakarta Masa Kini (Jakarta Today). \"Unfortunately,
\nthree months later the program was deemed a failure by the
\nmanagement of RCTI,\" Tino recounted matter-of-factly.<\/p>\n
In the beginning of the 1990s Tino was producing Rocket music
\nprogram, this time holding the lofty position of program manager.<\/p>\n
\"I learned how to produce by trial and error,\" he said. Yet he
\nmanaged to take his program around Indonesia. That was also where
\nhe learned how to organize a traveling crew, producing a
\ntelevision show.<\/p>\n
When he outgrew Rocket, he moved into producing with another
\nexpatriate, Scott McGregor, sit-coms Dunia Dara (Women's World),
\nabout single, independent women living in a house together, and
\nthe male version Buana Jaka (Men's World), portraying four
\nsingle, independent men living together.<\/p>\n
Fate then introduced him to the world of advertising where his
\nfriend and colleague Garry Hayes convinced him that he should be
\na director, before going on to produce Simfoni. \"That was a
\nchallenge,\" said Tino, \"because Simfoni was a live show, screened
\nevery weeknight.\"<\/p>\n
Tino's first brush with feature films turned out to be an
\nawesome experience. As location manager of the film Victory, he
\nfound himself working with an all-professional crew, members of
\nwhich had made films like Little Buddha, The Last Emperor and
\nSuperman I, II, III, IV. He learned to work professionally during
\nthat time.<\/p>\n
\"Now there are books like Movie Magic, which guide you
\nstep-by-step,\" he said. \"I learned the hard way.\"<\/p>\n
During that time he also found himself working with stars like
\nWillem Da Foe and Sam Neill. They made Yin & Yank, which later
\nwas renamed The Last to Surrender.<\/p>\n
Tino drifted from one work to another, until May 1998, when he
\nfelt the urge to do something memorable. He looked around and saw
\nthe political situation quickly unraveling, picked up his camera
\nand made The Army Force Them to be Violent, which was shown in
\nthe Indonesian Film Festival (IFFEST) 2002 in Melbourne, from
\nOct. 1 to Oct. 6.<\/p>\n
Tino was involved in the making of several full-length feature
\nfilms shown there, such as Ca Bau Kan and Pasir Berbisik.<\/p>\n
We shall wait for the next yield from Tino's creative soul.<\/p>", "url": "https:\/\/jawawa.id\/newsitem\/tino-saroengallos-body-of-water-1447893297", "image": "" }, "sponsor": "Okusi Associates", "sponsor_url": "https:\/\/okusiassociates.com" }