Garin's film on Yogyakarta street kids causes stir

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?