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Victor de Sousa Pereira: Timor Leste’s first indigenous filmmaker

A young country, Timor Leste released its first indigenous film, Uma Lulik (Sacred House), at the Brisbane International Film Festival in early November

Cynthia Webb (The Jakarta Post)
Brisbane, Australia
Fri, November 18, 2011

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Victor de Sousa Pereira: Timor Leste’s first indigenous filmmaker

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young country, Timor Leste released its first indigenous film, Uma Lulik (Sacred House), at the Brisbane International Film Festival in early November. The director is Victor de Sousa Pereira, a 29-year-old artist and filmmaker.  
Victor de Sousa Pereira: JP/Cynthia Webb

He lives in the village of Fatulia in Venilale district — in the highlands of Timor Leste — with his wife and 7-year-old son.

The first nation born in the new millennium, although small, has 13 different districts, and each has a distinctive culture and different dialect.

In a country beginning from scratch, where everything is new, the subject of the nation’s first film seems quite suitable.

Uma Lulik is about the building of a sacred house, which is a tradition in all of the villages in Timor Leste, as well as West Timor and other islands in Indonesia.

Sacred houses are used for many different things according to village custom, and hold deep spiritual
significance.  

Victor says most of the inhabitants of Fatulia are his relatives: Thirty are direct relatives and some a little more distant. These are the people who felt the weight of their long neglected obligation to build the uma lulik, and the process of this sacred task is the subject of Victor’s documentary film.

David Palazon is a filmmaker who came to Timor Leste because “he thought it would be interesting”.
He is researching the local culture and cooperating with Griffith University in Brisbane as well as with the Secretary of State for Timor Leste, Virgilio Smith. He was teaching at Arte Moris, an arts collective in Dili, when he met Victor, a gifted painter who was studying there.

David began teaching Victor how to use a movie camera and Victor quickly understood the artistic principles of filmmaking and made several short films.

Then Victor received a commission from a Spanish corporation to make a film about the building of another uma lulik by a priest in his own subdistrict, Venilale. This experience was his training ground.  

“I was a taxi driver in Dili and I never dreamed that I would become a filmmaker,” Victor said.

“I had been studying and living at Arte Moris for four years when a new volunteer arrived from Spain, and it was David. When he offered to teach us filmmaking, I was the only one there who wanted to learn.”

The secretary of state heard about his work and called Victor in 2008 to let him know that there
was an opportunity to apply for funding to make a film. There was a competition being run by CPLP (Community of Portuguese Language Countries).

Finding funding to make a film in this struggling new nation was very difficult, but Victor was eager to try. He consulted David and after they discussed the responsibilities involved if he actually won, he submitted his application and won the competition. He also obtained further funding from João Ferro and Tania Correia, two Portuguese people, who have an architecture business in Dili. Victor is now employed by their company, retiring from his previous work as a taxi driver.

Victor was in his home village during the time of the gathering of the materials and the building of the uma lulik and one of his uncles was in charge of the project. Some family members were unhappy because his uncle didn’t seem to be taking the task seriously, and one night while he was in Dili, he was killed in a traffic accident, along with two other people.

The process of building the uma lulik was tragically interrupted for the funeral (featured in the film), and another uncle took the lead in making sure the building was completed.

During the building of the sacred house, a total of six people died. One fell from a coconut tree and four others became ill and died shortly afterward, the nature of their illnesses unknown. The villagers linked these deaths to the fact that they were “late” in building the uma lulik, however none of the deaths actually happened during construction.  There were many problems — lack of funds to pay for building materials and people who had knowledge of traditional building methods.

David Palazon, who is the film’s executive producer, said, “The uma lulik represents the umbilical cord for all the families related to it, and it is also the door between the dead ancestors and the living family — a place of inspiration and prayer. Sometimes food is also stored there between seasons.”

During his life, Victor has had little chance to watch high quality cinema. Between the ages of 7 and 10, he and his friends were the local kids who used to go to the police station or the Indonesian military station to watch sinetron on television, as well as sometimes doing odd jobs such as running to buy cigarettes.

In 2006, at the age of 24, he went to Sydney to participate in an art exhibition, and he also did a three-month stint as artist-in-residence at Brisbane’s Griffith University. Victor paints in acrylics, oils, mixed media and he is also a sculptor.

Although he did not complete high school, leaving at age 17 to work as an assistant on a mini bus, this young man is becoming a community leader in the art world.  

His creativity and intelligence are his qualifications and his passport to becoming a leader in his nation’s future.

Victor says, “I am an artist. In my life, I cannot stop learning and I will try to do many things to promote the culture of my country. I like making documentaries. I would like to become a real film director and a real producer of films.”  

Although he is in fact a real film director now, it seems that he cannot quite believe it.

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