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I saw Balibo today at a fundraiser for the John Byrne Memorial Trust. It was not only a chance for me to see a film I’d heard so much about and missed at the Melbourne International Film Festival, but also an opportunity to learn a bit about a remarkable man who spent time working with refugee young people in Melbourne’s West. See: http://johnbyrnememorial.com.au/
The film, we were told by two of the young actors involved, was 6 years in the making. For those not aware, it’s based on a true story. Balibo looks into the fate of 5 young journalists who were in East Timor around the events of October-December 1975. Anthony LaPaglia plays the veteran journo trying retrace their steps and find out what happened after they went missing in action. A young Jose Ramos-Horta is also a key figure in the story. The film was actually shot in Timor, and the brilliance of it for me was that it drew me into both the landscape and the political tension/fear. The editing skewed time, switching between scenes of the Balibo 5 going after their iconic news footage on the Timorese/Indonesian border, and LaPaglia following their trail weeks later. The suspense in the cinema was intense.
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