Review by Jon Land – This is a two-part series looking at how two different individuals begin new lives in East Timor following the August 31, 1999 referendum on independence.

Rosa's Story, which screened on May 23, is a particularly moving account of the hardship encountered by Rosa Martins, a young widow struggling to support her family. Her plight is reflective of the many problems that women in East Timor face.

In the lead up to the referendum, Martins went to the mountains and remote areas of the country to secretly distribute pamphlets urging people to support independence. This often meant going to places where there was a large Indonesian military and pro-Indonesia militia gang presence. To be found with pro-independence material would mean certain torture and death.

Martins was among the hundreds of East Timorese who fled to the UN compound in Dili during the militia rampage that began after the result of the independence referendum was announced on September 4, 1999. She and her children still carry the scars on their bodies from the razor wire that cut into them as they scrambled over the compound wall.

Today, Martins lives in total poverty, in a small shack in the hills behind Dili. Three of her children live in orphanages far away in the eastern part of East Timor. It took her 18 months of saving just to afford the bus trip to take the three children who still live with her to visit the rest of the family.

The second part in the series, Lu Olo's Story, features Francisco "Lu Olo" Guterres, a former guerrilla fighter who is president of Fretilin, one of the main political parties of the Timorese resistance. Fretilin now holds a majority in the new East Timorese parliament, of which Lu Olo is the speaker.

Lu Olo joined the armed resistance when he was 17 years old and remained in the jungle and mountains for more than 20 years. During this time he avoided all contact with any town or village – for many years his family assumed he was dead.

He candidly tells of the difficulties involved in shifting from being a guerrilla leader to becoming a parliamentarian. His family want him to re-marry (his wife Isabel, also a guerrilla fighter, died in the early 1980s in battle). Re-integrating back into civilian life is difficult for most former guerrilla fighters, especially those thought to have been killed. They are seen as ghosts in the land of the living.

Lu Olo's Story follows Guterres on the campaign trail for the Constituent Assembly election held last August. He travels from town to village, with other Fretilin leaders, speaking at meetings and rallies.

The film also touches on some of the political differences and tensions among the East Timorese elite during the campaign period. It does so mainly by featuring the Timorese Social Democratic Association (ASDT), a party led by Xavier do Amaral, once a leader of Fretilin and East Timor's first president (when independence was declared in 1975 just prior to the Indonesian invasion).

Do Amaral has a strong traditional base in the central part of East Timor and his party has many in its ranks who would otherwise identify as supporters of Fretilin. Since the election (in which the ASDT won the largest block of seats after Fretilin) there has been a rapprochement between the two parties. Guterres talks of Fretilin supporting Xanana Gusmao as a presidential candidate for Fretilin, though Fretilin leader Mari Alkatiri, in an informal discussion, remarks that Gusmao "thinks history only started in the 1980s with him".

Amidst the mostly superficial reports from the corporate media covering East Timor's independence, these two films are a refreshing reminder of the very difficult and complex social and political issues confronting the people of East Timor. It is a shame they are being screened so late in the evening.