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'The Journey Back' On Dayak and their stories
Going home: Long Saâan: The Journey Back captures the return of a Dayak man to his childhood home
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Going home: Long Sa'an: The Journey Back captures the return of a Dayak man to his childhood home.
Documenting the life of a Dayak Kenyah man returning to his childhood home, award-winning Indonesian filmmaker Erick Est's documentary Long Sa'an: The Journey Back is a touching tale that is half drama, half social wake-up call.
Taking its title from the area above the famous Bahau River in Kalimantan where many Dayaks settled, Long Sa'an: The Journey Back mixes documentary footage with scripted sequences reenacting its protagonist's childhood.
The film also establishes the importance to indigenous people of sustaining the quality of their surrounding environment.
It is that latter part that Erick Est and his team ' which includes photographer David Metcalf, master-coach Rex Irwin, Heart of Borneo project cofounder Martin Holland and Balinese rockstar Gede Robby from the band Navicula, who also wrote and performed several songs for the film ' want people to truly understand.
Released at a crucial juncture, the film focuses on the increasing damage caused by ever-growing plant plantations, arguing that if any group is truly able to take care of the forest, it is the people who have built their lives around it for centuries.
For Erick and his team, the best way to do this is to make the audience care deeply about the Dayaks, as individuals with very real stories.
'As people of the forest, a big part of their surrounding environment has been replaced by [oil] palm trees,' says Erick.
'While most filmmakers' documentaries would focus more on the palm plantations or the orangutans, I focus on the people who live there, because they have established a strong bond with the forest, both in cultural and in everyday life. I witnessed how they lived their lives.'
The Dayak sustain their environment through farming, family-raising and forest-caring, says Erick, who observed how his subjects' daily domestic lives wore lightly the traditions of centuries.
'For them, the forest is home ' they take care of it very well so that they can live from it. They establish a harmonious relation with the forest, which has become their way of living.
'I can see how much they miss that life, the forest life. When we returned to their abandoned old village, Long Sa'an, they were overwhelmed with joy. If we destroy the forest, the Dayak will also be gone forever, literally,' Erick says.
The journey to the remote area was not without its challenges, taking two days and requiring the crew to walk for three hours to the top of the mountain where the village is located.
For Erick, however, the effort was more than worth it. His goal of showcasing how much of our life is 'connected with culture and [the] surrounding nature' is largely met.
'If we destroy our environment, then our culture will fade away. That's why I think it's important to remind ourselves that life is a product of the causality principle. If we neglect our homeland and nature, then disasters will occur. I created the childhood story of [main character] Philius to show his humble upbringing. I want to remind people that in their lives, they should be humble.'
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For screening info, visit thejourneyback.info
