Claiming to be a “true story”, it is a travesty of omissions. In eight of sixteen drafts of his screenplay, David Williamson, the distinguished Australian playwright, graphically depicted the chain of true events that began with the original radio intercepts by Australian intelligence and went all the way to prime minister Gough Whitlam, who believed East Timor should be “integrated” into Indonesia. This is reduced in the film to a fleeting image of Whitlam and Suharto in a newspaper wrapped around fish and chips. Williamson’s original script described the effect of the cover up on the families of the murdered journalists and their anger and frustration at being denied information and despair at Canberra’s scandalous decision to have the journalists’ ashes buried in Jakarta with ambassador Woolcott, the arch apologist, reading the oration. What the government feared if the ashes came home was public outrage directed at the West’s client in Jakarta. All this was cut.

The “true story” is largely fictitious. Finely dramatised, acted and located, the film is reminiscent of the genre of Vietnam movies, such as The Deer Hunter, which artistically airbrushed the truth of that atrocious war from popular history. Not surprisingly, it has been lauded in the Australian media, which took minimal interest in East Timor’s suffering during the long years of Indonesian occupation. So enamoured of General Suharto was the country’s only national daily, The Australian, owned by Rupert Murdoch, that its editor-in-chief, Paul Kelly, led Australia’s principal newspaper editors to Jakarta to shake the tyrant’s hand. There is a photograph of one of them bowing.

I asked Balibo’s director, Robert Connolly, why he had cut the original Williamson script and omitted all government complicity. He replied that the film had “generated huge discussion in the media and the Australian government” and in that way “Australia would be best held accountable”. Milan Kundera’s truism comes to mind: “The struggle of people against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”

Well, as long as it’s a good movie, right?

Click here to view the embedded video.

BRISBANE.- An exhibition of Pablo Picasso’s personal art collection will be held for the first
time outside of Europe, and exclusively in Brisbane, at Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) through 14 September.

The exhibition features over 100 works from Picasso’s extraordinary collection plus more than 80 important works by the artist himself. A range of documentary photographs also feature.

‘Picasso & his collection’ includes paintings, drawings and prints by artists such as Chardin, Matisse, Renoir, Cézanne, Rousseau, Miró, Modigliani and Braque, as well as an extraordinary selection of Oceanic and African works.

The exhibition is being generously lent by the musée national Picasso, Paris, and curated by its director Anne Baldassari.

In association with the exhibition, the Australian Cinémathèque will present a curated film program and the Children’s Art Centre will present a major program for children and families.

‘Picasso & his collection’ will give unique insights into the thinking and visual language of an artist who played the most vital role in the creation of modern art. The range of work Picasso collected over his lifetime reflects a very personal, idiosyncratic collection, and paints in its own way an intimate portrait of Picasso the artist.

Picasso’s collection was donated by his family to the French state after his death in 1973, and is now held by the musée national Picasso in Paris. An exhibition of Picasso’s collection has only ever previously been mounted in Paris, Munich and Barcelona.

Of course, having JWM Turner and Claude Monet in the title must be great for marketing as they are two of the most popular painters with modern (general) viewers. After all, Turner’s "The Fighting Temeraire", housed in the National Gallery, London, was voted Britain’s favourite painting in a BBC poll a few years ago; ahead of John Constable’s The Haywain. Both Turner and Constable are strongly represented in the current exhibition.

Monet’s water lilies are also almost universally known with the target audience for blockbuster exhibitions. The NGA’s own much loved water lilies painting is, of course, in the exhibition along with its Haystacks and a few other very good Monets including Waterloo Bridge (from the Stokes collection) and Morning Haze (from Philadelphia). There are, of course, plenty of examples from impressionists and neo-impressionists and a couple of Cezannes.

There is much else of value between Turner, Constable and Monet to please the exhibition goer but one of the good things is the inclusion of some great Australian paintings particularly those by Arthur Streeton, Tom Roberts , Charles Conder, Eugene von Guerard and John Glover. Many of these paintings are well-known to most of us but they stand up well in this company and I think many Australians will give them more respect after this exhibition.

Two pleasant surprises for me in this exhibition was "Camaret, moonlight and fishing boats" (pictured right) by french neoimpressionist (also described as a pointillist or a social realist) Maximilien Luce. I found this to be a very strong picture with the single narrow beam of moonlight cutting through the rich dark blue greens of the night scene to create a powerful even poignant effect.

The second was an Australian picture that particularly struck me was "Flood in the Darling, 1890" by W. C. Piguenit (pictured right). The painting captures the sheer vastness of this part of the world and the terrible beauty and power of it.

Of course, having JWM Turner and Claude Monet in the title must be great for marketing as they are two of the most popular painters with modern (general) viewers. After all, Turner’s "The Fighting Temeraire", housed in the National Gallery, London, was voted Britain’s favourite painting in a BBC poll a few years ago; ahead of John Constable’s The Haywain. Both Turner and Constable are strongly represented in the current exhibition.

Monet’s water lilies are also almost universally known with the target audience for blockbuster exhibitions. The NGA’s own much loved water lilies painting is, of course, in the exhibition along with its Haystacks and a few other very good Monets including Waterloo Bridge (from the Stokes collection) and Morning Haze (from Philadelphia). There are, of course, plenty of examples from impressionists and neo-impressionists and a couple of Cezannes.

There is much else of value between Turner, Constable and Monet to please the exhibition goer but one of the good things is the inclusion of some great Australian paintings particularly those by Arthur Streeton, Tom Roberts , Charles Conder, Eugene von Guerard and John Glover. Many of these paintings are well-known to most of us but they stand up well in this company and I think many Australians will give them more respect after this exhibition.

Two pleasant surprises for me in this exhibition was "Camaret, moonlight and fishing boats" (pictured right) by french neoimpressionist (also described as a pointillist or a social realist) Maximilien Luce. I found this to be a very strong picture with the single narrow beam of moonlight cutting through the rich dark blue greens of the night scene to create a powerful even poignant effect.

The second was an Australian picture that particularly struck me was "Flood in the Darling, 1890" by W. C. Piguenit (pictured right). The painting captures the sheer vastness of this part of the world and the terrible beauty and power of it.