Garin's film on Yogyakarta street kids causes stir

By Jane Freebury

JAKARTA (JP): Street kids are a touchy subject. There was a series on them on Australian television broadcast into the region a little while ago. A new Garin Nugroho film for Japanese television station NHK is a documentary set among the 3,000 street children of Yogyakarta, and has been screened in Jakarta for restricted private audiences, with reports indicating it has caused some embarrassment. It was bound to be controversial, if only for the very fact that the focus is on a social problem. The copyright belongs to NHK and although Garin has a second version circulating in Indonesia, it will not go on general release, either in cinemas or on television. A private viewing of Dongeng Kancil Tentang Kemerdekaan (The Tale of Kancil on Freedom) made this article possible.

Dongeng Kancil Tentang Kemerdekaan begins with the aspirations of the new Republic of Indonesia 50 years ago with opening credits scrolling over archival film of the late President Sukarno in Yogyakarta for proclamation, August 17. Then, with a match on action at the flag-raising ceremony, the film cuts to the celebrations in Yogyakarta last year. Lookers-on that day last year included the four little boys, the four street children Kancil, Hatta, Sugeng and Topo, who are the subjects of Garin's film. Sukarno's phrases about freedom, justice and welfare still linger on the soundtrack as the camera finds them in the crowd.

The point being made, a documentary account of the children's daily lives begins. First the camera finds its 'lead character' Kancil strolling around a fairground dragging on a cigarette. The Istana Fantasi and other boardings are being pulled down for the show to move on. It is a significant moment, because Kancil and his friends are no longer children. The collapsing fairground is a metaphor for this man-child Kancil, old before his time. These street children are a contradiction in terms. You see the faces and figures of what you guess to be boys around ten years old but what you watch are the behaviors and mannerisms of grown men. (You never actually find out how old they really are.)

Kancil is asked why he left home. "I didn't like being at home. They were always getting mad at me." He says he took the bus to Yogyakarta because he felt burdened by his responsibilities -- cooking, carrying the water, doing the washing, having to look after the other kids, and anyway, when he got to first grade the family ran out of money, so he left.

Sugeng is more succinct. "Just left, is all". He was slapped around at home. Why was that? "Cause I ain't no good". There was also talk about parents taking up with a different partner and starting a new family.

The boys are clearly proud that they can earn their own money and stay 'free and independent' on the street. "I can go wherever I want. I'm free," boasts little Topo. But with Sukarno's early words on freedom and its fragility, and a band of street singers on the Malioboro singing of "going to San Francisco with flowers in your hair", the film meditates on both the freedom of the street and on freedom in a wider sense. Soekarno in his speech on Malioboro (famous as a center of revolution against the Japanese and Dutch colonials) fifty years ago said that his nationalism was his humanity. In the words of the film synopsis, the filmmakers wish to see whether the statement has been realized. Jalan Malioboro, Yogyakarta's busy daytime shopping center and thronging nightlife thoroughfare is a safe place for the urchins to bed down for a short night's sleep, all they would get between the hours Malioboro finally closes down and the following dawn. After throwing off the night's newspaper cladding them, it's a trip for the boys to the mandi, a simple water pipe near the railway station. Then it's off to breakfast, which can also be found at the station, provided you can get to the passengers' leftovers before the cleaning staff clear it away, or the security staff get to you. Five-thirty in the morning and two thirty in the afternoon after the train gets in are the best mealtimes.

Then it's off to work. Between Rp 1,000 and Rp 2,000 a day or night shining shoes. But in order to earn money, Kancil, Hatta, Sugeng and Topo have to either steal the polish or make their own first. From gasoline mixed with the contents of batteries, heated to combine the mixture. Lime juice covers the gasoline smell.

Other more dangerous practices with substances prevail. Glue- sniffing is a favorite pastime. For a can costing as little as Rp 850, they can buy themselves synthetic thrills - like having the feeling of a tummy full of sweet rolls, flying like a bird, like you're moving but not going anywhere. You don't get hungry or thirsty with it either. Getting high on jimson also sets up other mental road blocks.

Structurally, Dongeng Kancil Tentang Kemerdekaan is a combination of these face-to-camera interviews, with montage sequences of central Yogyakarta at various times of day, all set within the key framing device of independence day celebrations, already described. Once the questions about freedom and independence have been posed, a distinctive musical motif, just several bars, that accompanies this sequence, repeats it from time to time during the film. To raise the question again and again.

Editing in the interviews is minimal, with the kids speaking for themselves. Compare this 'in-you-face' talking head business with the scripted voice-overs of Anak Seribu Pulau (Children of A Thousand Islands), which Garin also co-produced. Kancil has no authoritative voice-over to guide the audience. Instead, the boys tell it like it is, including giving details of the sexual services they are paid for -- an extra earner for some of them during the night. Dongeng Kancil Tentang Kemerdekaan is a less than comfortable and reassuring viewing experience.

It is interesting hearing about the moral positions that the

boys have taken up. Sugeng thinks "Jakarta's great. When you're

big you can be as bad as you want." Hatta didn't want to beg so he stole. What did he steal? Clean clothes off a line. He prays for his mother at night to remember her forgotten son, but Sugeng says his mother is bad and that he would kill her. Kancil would perhaps like to be a farmer when he grows up, but certainly never a cop. He has seen guards beat someone up for collecting plastic bags from the train.

Perhaps Kancil will be on his farm some years from now, but what of the future? Canadian director Michael Apted's famous Seven Up series about a group of British schoolchildren interviewed at seven years of age and then every seven years thereafter, well into their adult lives, would be a fascinating precedent to follow. Or Gillian Armstrong's similar follow-up series on a group of Australian teenage girls. But just how would you trace a street kid in Yogyakarta seven years from now?