(JP/Sri Wahyuni)
The first time he arrived in Bali as a tourist in 1993, American researcher, philanthropist and documentary filmmaker Robert Lemelson from the University of California, Los Angeles, (UCLA) promptly felt a great affection and affinity for the country and its people.
"I liked the warmth, kindness and hospitality of the people I met," Lemelson told The Jakarta Post during a recent visit to Yogyakarta for a project with Gadjah Mada University's (UGM) School of Psychology. And then when he returned to live there for two years as a Fulbright scholar conducting a research dissertation on mental illness, Lemelson developed an even stronger bond.
"I felt that Indonesia's rich and diverse cultural tradition made it an ideal place to work and study for an anthropologist," said the research anthropologist at UCLA's Semel Institute for Neuroscience.
Specializing in Southeast Asian studies, psychological anthropology and trans-cultural psychiatry, Lemelson explored the relationship between culture and mental illness in Indonesia and worked for the World Health Organization (WHO) on issues facing the country.
"I have done research on schizophrenia, neuropsychiatric disorders and post traumatic stress disorder, among others."
One of his projects was to examine how the neuropsychiatric disorders - obsessive-compulsive disorder and Tourette's syndrome - affected people in a Hindu culture in a small village in Bali.
This later led him to the production of his first documentary film, which tells the story of a young Balinese girl named Gusti Ayu who suffered Tourette's syndrome.
Entitled Movement and Madness: Gusti Ayu (Lemyng Films, 2006), the film was jointly produced with his fellow documentary filmmaker Dag Yngvesson, and was the culmination of six years of footage first shot in 2000, tracing the development and personal evolution of Gusti and her disorder.
Lemelson has filmed other areas and people in Indonesia, especially in Bali and Yogyakarta - the two places where he has spent the most time during his frequent visits to the country, since 1997. His works focus on personal experience, culture and mental illness in Indonesia and the US.
Lemelson's latest documentary work is 40 Years of Silence: An Indonesian Tragedy (Elemental Productions, 2009), a film about four families who survived the mass violence in 1965-1966 following a failed coup attempt, known as the Sept. 30 Movement (G-30-S/PKI), and the purges of purported communists by the emergent Soeharto regime.
"It is a powerful portrayal of survival and resilience," said Lemelson, who is also CEO and founder of Elemental Productions.
The film, he said, primarily aims to tell the story of how individuals and families deal with fear, violence, oppression and the forced silencing of memory and how this affected their lives and experience.
"I am very aware that this remains an extraordinarily sensitive issue in Indonesian society. But I would like to see it otherwise," he said.
"An event of such magnitude, where *all historians agree* hundreds of thousands or even a million of people were killed, needs to be understood, debated, explored, narrated and memorialized."
Currently in the post-production stage of another series of documentary films on mental disorders of three Balinese individuals, Lemelson is also working on research and a film project in collaboration with UGM.
"This project concerns the *outcome question' in trans-cultural psychiatry," said Lemelson, who is also a lecturer at the UCLA's departments of anthropology and psychology.
From the 1970s to the 1990s, Lemelson said, the WHO conducted the largest trans-cultural psychiatric epidemiology project in history. A major finding was that outcomes or recoveries from serious mental illness such as schizophrenia, were better in the developing world.
For example, if a person develops a serious mental illness, they were more likely to return home to their families, more likely to return to work, less likely to have return hospitalizations and further episodes of their illness if they were living in Indonesia rather than in America.
"I have been conducting research on this issue since the 1990s and will continue this and a documentary film project comparing the lives of the mentally ill in Indonesia with those in Los Angeles."
In terms of philanthropy, the stand of the New Jersey-born Lemelson is unquestionable, including his work in Indonesia.
After the tsunami devastated Aceh in 2004 and a powerful earthquakes destroyed Yogyakarta and parts of Central Java in 2006, Lemelson was among the first foreigners to send emergency aid.
He was also involved in and provided financial support to some local non-government organization in the recovery process, especially through the trauma healing programs for survivors, which was within his area of expertise.
"When the different philanthropic foundations I direct wanted to do programs in the developing world, in the areas of economic development, health care and mental health treatment, I immediately thought of Indonesia and the great needs here," he said.
Lemelson usually comes to Indonesia several times a year, and stays for a month or so.
"I would like to return at some point in the coming years for a longer period, to engage in more extensive research and participate more fully in our philanthropic enterprises."
He also frequently comes to evaluate the multi-million dollar Recognition and Mentoring Program (RAMP) here, which he helped initiate in 2006, and which is funded by the Lemelson Foundation, where he is co-vice president and secretary.
The Lemelson Foundation began this program to promote invention, innovation and entrepreneurship for basic human needs and sustainable development, he said.
The program, run in partnership with the Bogor Institute of Agriculture (IPB), the Technology Innovation Foundation (YIT) and Indonesian field partners, helps poor people gain access to technologies that improve their economic status and health.
"The Lemelson Foundation is deeply committed to our RAMP program in Indonesia," said the son of one of the US most productive inventors of the 20th century, the late Jerome Lemelson, who had over 600 patents ranging from barcode readers and crying baby dolls, to machines of everyday convenience including computer hard drives, ATMs and fax machines and cassette mechanisms found in the walkman.
"We have one of the largest programs in the world to promote invention and innovation as a solution to the problems of poverty eradication and wealth generation in the developing world," he said.
The foundation, he added, had been working in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, South and Southeast Asia (among other places), funding inventors and inventions that address basic human needs.
"An example of success is Kickstart," he said, referring to a non-government organization in Kenya and Tanzania that produces what he calls the "money maker" pump, a simple and cheap treadle pump designed like a "stair master" exercise machine in the gym, which allows subsistence level farmers irrigate their crops.
"Farmers can now grow food year round, instead of relying on rainfalls, and typically go from $1 a day to between $5 and $10 a day. This invention, in its marketing, sales and distribution, now accounts for between 0.5 and 1 percent of Kenya's entire GDP!"
RAMP Indonesia, he said, aids grassroots and student inventors in developing, commercializing and marketing their innovations, and offers access to more affordable technologies that enhance entrepreneurship and improve the lives of those in Indonesia living on less than $2 a day.
"The program facilitates the development of invention and innovation-based technology in the WEHAB (water and sanitation, energy, health, agriculture, and biodiversity) fields," he said.
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