Street kids documentary invites debate

Street kids documentary invites debate

JAKARTA (JP): Ten-year-old Kancil sleeps on sidewalks and in
parking lots. When he wakes up he washes his face with water from
a tap at Yogyakarta's railway station. Once cleaned up he's ready
to scavenge for breakfast.

He hops on whatever trains are stationed there, seeking food
scraps left from passengers in trash bags under their seats.
"Even if the food is spoiled I eat it to fill me up," he said.

Sometimes security officers catch him before he can board a
train and beat him up. "I don't know why. I just want to find
food," Kancil said.

With his friends Atta, Sugeng and Topo, he makes his living
shining shoes at the nearby food market. "I make about Rp 1,000
(40 US cents) to Rp 2,000 a day," Kancil smiled.

Come evening he goes to watch a communal television, frequents
a pool hall or goes to a video arcade with his friends.

Kancil is one of more than 3,000 street children in
Yogyakarta. The lives of these children are captured poignantly
in the most recent documentary by Indonesian director Garin
Nugroho. The film is the second version of Garin's Dongeng Kancil
Tentang Kemerdekaan (Kancil's story about Independence), produced
for Japanese television station NHK.

Other "stars" in the documentary tell of the dire lives they
lead on the street, including myriad tales of sexual abuse.

"We are usually paid Rp 5,000 by transvestites to give oral
sex... or to be bool (sodomized)," said one of the children,
giggling.

"There's also a man who'll pay us if we let him perform oral
sex on us," said one boy, whose friends around him were twirling
cigarettes in their little fingers and exhaling smoke out of
their noses.

The children admit to their glue-sniffing addiction. "It makes
us feel as if we can hold the stars in our hands... or fly. When
we're on it we can't stop walking back and forth," said another
boy.

Kancil is completely different from Garin's 14-episode
television series Anak Seribu Pulau, a beautiful and poetic
picture of Indonesian children recently aired on all of the
country's television stations. The series is a frank and fresh
portrayal of the lighter side of life of Indonesia's children set
in some of the country's most beautiful regions.

Kancil did not receive rave reviews from a number of the
education experts who participated in a discussion here last
Thursday on the impact of television on children.

Some of the participants branded the documentaries as
"embarrassing", "not educational" and unfair descriptions of
Indonesian children. One said the films "lack value".

Garin's assistant, Gunawan Raharjo, defended the documentary
as an honest picture of a reality that is not always rosy.

"Kancil describes reality... sometimes facts are painful to
watch," Gunawan Raharjo told The Jakarta Post. "But, don't worry,
the version we saw today is different from the one prepared for
NHK," he said.

Most of the 48-minute version prepared for NHK is spent
describing Garin's childhood in his hometown of Yogyakarta,
Gunawan pointed out.

"The second version of Kancil is different. Here, we want to
show the facts about street children," Gunawan said.

The documentary is only being shown in certain forums. "It
won't be shown to the public because the copyright belongs to
NHK... I agree that this film is embarrassing," Gunawan said.

Kancil opens with a speech by Indonesia's first president,
Sukarno, followed by a flag-hoisting ceremony and grandiose shots
of Jl. Malioboro, the city's main street.

"The first version doesn't open with Sukarno speaking,"
Gunawan said. "In the second version, we take a quote from his
speech that says 'humanity is my nationalism.'" (ste)