Biography & History-Diana Andringa
Filmed between March and May 2002, “East Timor, The Dream of the Crocodile” takes a different look at the former Portuguese colony.
The marks of the Indonesian occupation are still there, but East Timor celebrates its independence, achieved after years of struggle that many thought lost – but that the intelligence of the Maubere people and their leaders allowed them to win, using duplicity as a weapon. As Mário Caeiro Alves says, “In the land of horses you have to be like a horse in order not to get kicked. Or, in the words of Xanana Gusmão, “This war was the art of living with the enemy.”
“East Timor, The Dream of the Crocodile” is a documentary about the intelligence of a people, about the joy of victory and reflection on the future of the youngest country. Xanana Gusmão is the leading thread of the short version, although his voice is intertwined with many others, from armed and clandestine fighters, priests and bishops, even those who were sometimes seen as collaborating with the enemy – and were, after all, also an interlocutor of the resistance.
Highlight to the people, those whose names are not in the history books, but deserve not to be forgotten, like the catechist who, during the period of Indonesian occupation, stubbornly continued to teach Portuguese, or the family who gave up their own house to refugees fleeing Liquiçá, after the massacre that took place there.
The photography by Vasco Riobom and the sound by Quintino Bastos do justice to the beauty of East Timor, the most recent member of the Community of Portuguese-speaking Countries.
Click on the picture to watch the video
Ghardaia 