An ex-resistance fighter turned performance artist creates East Timor’s first reality TV show to confront his past.
East Timor endured a brutal 24-year Indonesian occupation in which over a quarter of the population were killed or disappeared. Few carry the scars more distinctively than Osme Gonsalves, a celebrated artist, singer, poet, actor, and prominent ex-resistance fighter, who struggles to find peace despite the goal of sovereignty being reached.
Frustrated by his nation’s perceived apathy, Osme creates a performative alter-ego based on a roving TV reporter called ‘Rambo Marabunta’.
Acting as Rambo, Osme is free to question the population and interrogate his own past.
Osme’s dreams of hosting East Timor’s first reality TV show, however interpreting his dark past into comedy comes at significant personal cost. Osme is bravely attempting to face his past, whilst delivering a love letter to the present nation he fought to free.
Watch the 25min version of the film made for Al Jazeera Witness on this link
Although tribal fighting has long been present in the Papua New Guinea highlands, the influx of modern automatic weaponry in the 1990s turned local disputes into swift lethal exchanges which threatened to permanently reshape highlands culture.
Bootlegged copies of the American film Rambo circulated in remote communities, becoming a crude tutorial on the use
of such weaponry. The influence of the film was so pronounced that the term Rambo is now used in Papuan dialects to describe hired mercenaries who are paid to support local combatants in violent tribal disputes. The services of Rambos were suddenly in high demand as a variety of M16s and Indonesian military weaponry found its way down the Sepik River through swap-laden smuggling routes.
In August 2014, the Animatism project lead us into an involvement with East Timor's first ever public art festival named Arte Publiku. The festival was a combination of music, art, dance, performance and all things creative, encouraging nation building and creative exchange through a week of workshops and performance opportunities. I was lucky enough to hold a camera to the event, and collaborated on two projection pieces for the festival.
East Timor has been a place of immense creative inspiration over the years, starting during my first trip with the Oaktree Foundation in 2010. I've worked on a variety of creative development projects with Dili's free art school Arte Moris, using small grants to facilitate exchanges and workshops between Dili and Melbourne. The project has introduced me to some unforgettable characters, and will likely be a part of my life for many decades to come with many new projects currently in the pipeline.