Human Rights Watch Traveling Film Festival - Interview with Leonard Retel Helmrich

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Interview with Leonard Retel Helmrich, director of Eye of the Day

HRW: What’s your connection to Indonesia?

Helmrich: My parents were from Indonesia. My father was an old colonial Dutch person. He had a plantation and grew coffee and rubber. After World War II, the Indonesian government took it away from him. At that time he also met my mother, who was a real Javanese girl from the rural areas. I was born in Holland, but all my older brothers and sisters were born in Indonesia.

HRW: So when did you first visit Indonesia?

Helmrich: When my mother died in 1990, I had a feeling I had to go there. When I went there I had some recognition of how the people were, and I thought I should make a film to express what I think Indonesia is like.

HRW: What did you want to convey about the country in your documentary?

Helmrich: To give a perception of people in a nonwestern society. You always hear so much about how other cultures are, and it’s always done in an unrecognizable way. I wanted to use those aspects that everyone recognizes—human emotions—to express their daily life, how they look at the world. Just to make a global understanding. That’s a very big issue, but with film you can do that. Up until now I haven’t seen many films where that’s being done in the right way. Especially what I call anthropological films, they’re always so distanced. I don’t like that. I wanted to make it recognizable for the audience.

HRW: You don’t use any voiceover narration.

Helmrich: I wanted to keep things open for the interpretation of the audience. And when I really focus on issues, using narration creates distance. I wanted to stick to the tradition of cinema verite.

For me the subject is just as important as the way I film it. If the image is not good, I will not use it. For me, it is one. I call it a kind of single-shot cinema. When I film a situation, I always try to capture the whole situation in one shot and express the emotion of the moment in that one single shot. Afterwards, maybe the moment is too long, and I have to cut it. But because I have always focused on that one shot, every second of that shot should be usable. That’s why I can make it shorter. Every cut will be in the camera movement, and that makes the film smoother and gives the feeling that you’re really there.

HRW: You got into some trouble with the Indonesian authorities.

Helmrich: It was in 1995, when I was doing some research for the film. It was just a few days before a big celebration of 50 years of independence from Dutch occupation. And it was just a week before the Queen of Holland was going to visit Indonesia. The students organized a demonstration, and I was filming it for my research. They arrested me and put me in prison for four days. They brought me to Jakarta in the middle of the night. It was very scary, even though I was not tortured. They tried to make me exhausted by questioning; all the time the same questions.

Helmrich was released after the Dutch embassy intervened, but was declared persona non grata by the Indonesian government. Two years later he was able to return and began filming his documentary.