Filmmaker Dea still captured by her beloved Irian Jaya

Filmmaker Dea still captured by her beloved Irian Jaya

Bruce Emond, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Like many enduring romances that survive the test of time, Dea
Sudarman came upon the love of her life by chance.

Only 23 and working for The New York Times in 1977, she
answered a newspaper ad for a position on the crew of Our
Wonderful World, a long-running prime-time documentary series in
Japan.

She got the job, and so began her grand adventure leading to a
career in documentary filmmaking. For the next 15 years it took
her to pockets of Indonesia, working for six months on research
in the field for hours of footage which would be edited down to
24-minute films in a Tokyo studio.

And it was then that she was smitten by Irian Jaya.

A high school graduate, Dea said she "chose to learn in the
field". Her fluent English is a legacy of growing up in New York,
where her father was a military attache at the United Nations,
and she believes the different approach to teaching in the U.S.
-- "there is a dialog, it's two-way, not one-way like in
Indonesia" -- served her and her five elder sisters well for the
future. All have made careers in the arts.

"Of course, I didn't know how to make a film at first," Dea
said on Tuesday at a Central Jakarta hotel. "I was what we call
the waterboy, the gopher, preparing the tea, making the coffee. I
did that job for about two years, and then I got the chance to be
a soundperson. And after two years I became a director."

In editing her films, she learned the importance of capturing
the most important moments, comprehending them and then putting
them together to keep viewers from changing the channel.

"In documentary, the success of the film is when the people
trust you, and when you can communicate to them, and they can
communicate to the camera. It's that process that can make the
film successful."

Dea recalls that her thoughts about going to Irian Jaya the
first time were about its distance, but there were other people,
particularly her parents, who were uneasy about the trip.

"The image of Irian Jaya was that you will never come back --
they eat you. But on that first trip, I stayed for 13 months, I
had such a good time. I fell in love with it -- the nature, the
people."

Dea hates the "p" word, taken from English to become primitif
in Indonesian, with all its connotations of a god-forsaken people
who have lost their way and need to be brought back to the path
of enlightenment.

Meaning "civilization".

"I came to Irian and found it was not like all the horrid
stories you hear before you go. And I thought that I should show
Irian as it is, with its kindness, with its beauty ... it became
like a mission to understand why other people have this
perception about Irian and then giving information about the
reality of Irian."

She loved the adventure of it all, from roughing it in the
jungle, feeling leeches covering her body, or eating the
menagerie of animal life to be found in Irian's various areas.

There were also more perilous moments, such as hearing the
"mayday" message of the plane she was supposed to be on before it
crashed, killing all aboard, or spending four days on a crippled
boat in the Arafura Sea, with one pot of water to be shared by
the five people aboard, as sharks circled the craft.

Of course, moving around in the interior of the province, Dea
was not able to learn the dialects of the 260-odd tribes.
Although there were always village residents who spoke textbook-
perfect Indonesian, she said language was not a problem to
communication.

"Most of the time, you don't need any language. You just speak
with your heart and your eyes. In documentary films you don't
direct the people, right? I just followed them and the camera is
just on. There's no language."

She took early retirement from the Japanese TV station in 1992
and established Savitri, a cultural foundation. She now shuttles
between Jakarta and Timika, and in recent years she has also
worked as a mediator between the government, giant copper and
gold mining company Freeport and local people.

Dea acknowledged that she got flak for working with Freeport,
long criticized for its environmental record and its sometimes
thorny relations with locals. To her, however, it's all about
being practical in finding a solution to a problem.

"What I do is try to create an understanding, tell the
government, 'Look, these people are under your area, OK? You have
to treat them as part of your society.' With Freeport, I say the
same; 'Look, these people are your neighbors, and good neighbors
are your best security' ... We ask questions, and create
dialog ... At the end of the day, what I intend to do is let the
people benefit from what Freeport can do, and also that Freeport
understands what the people are thinking."

Over the years, she has built up an extensive collection of
art from the tribes she encountered, including the Dani, Komoro
and Asmat. Dea is set to donate about 1,000 of her art pieces, as
well as thousands of slides, photos and many of her videos, to
Gedung Dua8, a cultural and community center due to open in
Kemang, South Jakarta, in late October.

But life has changed in Irian Jaya. A trip from Timika to a
remote village, which was an eight-hour trek only a few years
ago, now takes 15 minutes on a new road.

Dea is one who has little time for romantic musings on how
things used to be.

"There will be change, whether from one aspect or another. You
cannot put them in an aquarium and watch them from afar, like
they're really exotic. They will have to change, they will have
to adapt ... Maybe they want to change, maybe they want to eat
Supermi. Who are we to say, 'it's not good, stick to eating sweet
potatoes'".

Although her videos have not found any takers among local TV
stations -- "they want things like Discovery and National
Geographic, with a name" -- they will have a new home where the
public will be able to watch how Irian Jaya used to be. They are
also a token of a love that continues to grow.