Bad moon RISING
Author: BY MICHAEL GADD
Date: 19/05/2006
Publication: Newcastle Herald

AN Australian Federal Police officer (David Wenham) volunteers to join the United Nations mission in East Timor and assist with the registration of its people to vote for or against independence from Indonesia.

He is put in charge of the Civilian Police at the UN base in Nunura where he meets a French-Canadian policewoman (Isabelle Blais) on her first overseas mission.

They are two deep and important characters played by outstanding actors.

But Answered By Fire, a two-part miniseries based on the events leading up to 1999's dramatic end of 25 years of forced occupation in East Timor, is not their story.

The plight of the East Timorese captured the hearts of Australians as it was so close to home.

But as Wenham points out, despite geography the real story was worlds away.

'Our characters' primary purpose is to lead the audience into this world they know little about,' he says. 'But once we get there the story is that of the East Timorese.'

Wenham's Mark Waldman and Blais's Julie Fortin are unarmed and unprepared for the brutality the Timorese face from Indonesian military and militia.

Their young translator Ismenio Soares (Alex Tilman) is justifiably cynical about what the UN can actually do to protect his people.

A multiple AFI award-winner and recent star of the Lord of The Rings trilogy, Wenham says there's no drama like that based on reality.

'It's a story that certainly moved me and one that I made a point of finding out more about when it was happening,'

Wenham says, making particular mention of John Pilger's eye-opening documentary Death of a Nation: The Timor Conspiracy. 'That really affected me and I made it my business to read as much as I could about what had happened. It seemed so close to us but we seemed to be doing nothing.'

Wenham says East Timorese-Australians were enthusiastic when given an opportunity to be involved in the project, which was shot largely in the Gold Coast hinterland, a landscape the cast commended for its similarity to the region.

The cast subsequently filled with firsttime actors who Wenham soon found were natural story-tellers.

'Most of them didn't need to look too far to find their characters,' Wenham says. 'The stories weren't far removed from themselves in many cases.'

Tilman is one of the mini-series' standout performers and among those with a particularly close link to Timor's violent history.

He lived a nomadic childhood. His father was part of the Fretilin resistance in the 1970s and was arrested before disappearing in 1978. His family became refugees in Portugal then two years later in Australia.

Tilman became an activist for Australia's East Timorese community and after the referendum returned to Timor as an interpreter in the Serious Crimes Unit, where he spent time with David Savage, the Australian police officer Wenham's character is based on.

He found the filming process 'hard but fulfilling'.

He understands the way UN workers would have felt when they were forced to evacuate after the country was set alight following the vote for independence.

In Answered By Fire, Mark and Julie must abandon ship, leaving Ismenio and his family, which is central to the story, to an inevitable nightmare haunted by murderous militias.

Guilt drives the UN contingent to return and make amends to the people they couldn't protect.

'The audience will really be able to connect to this story,' Wenham says proudly. 'And respond to it. Hopefully this returns Timor to the social conscience. It's a story we should never forget.'