Tag: Kirsty Sword Gusmão

Alias Ruby Blade, which makes its North American debut this week at New York’s Tribeca Film Festival, is a documentary about “love and revolution.”

The subject of the film, Kirsty Sword Gusmão, grew up in Australia. She had an “ordinary childhood,” but she says her “parents were very special in that they had their eyes open to the world.” 

When she was 4, her father studied Indonesian, and she would study the language with him. She studied Indonesian and began reading Inside Indonesia, which inspired her to get involved in political activism, especially in regard to East Timor.

Sword Gusmão’s story is remarkable, and her life’s work has been driven by her passion for human rights. When she started reading Inside Indonesia, she says “I tried to find out where it was published–how I could get involved.” So she did. She wrote and edited for the publication and met political leaders.

She traveled to East Timor, posing as a tourist, and she worked to get messages sent abroad, translating texts into English, taking documentary footage and collecting photographs from the Timorese people. It was then that she was first given photographs of Kay Rala “Xanana” Gusmão, a rebel leader in East Timor who had a jungle hideout and who was “worshipped” by many Timorese people, including her friends. Sword Gusmão next traveled to East Timor as part of a documentary filmmaking team. The team’s footage was the first time worldwide media broadcasted the violence and human rights abuses in East Timor at the hands of their Indonesian occupiers. 

Sword Gusmão eventually became a spy and courier in Indonesia between freedom fighters and Timorese political prisoners. 

Xanana Gusmão was captured and sentenced to life in prison. “All of a sudden the leader was in the hands of the enemies,” Sword Gusmão remembers. Her alias through all of her covert work? Ruby Blade.

She began playing an active role in taking documents and interviews in and out of the prison. Xanana was still directing the resistance from prison. Sword Gusmão was a “critical link” during this time.

Eventually a relationship between the two grew. She says there was “a sense of shared life together,” although they were clearly in “unorthodox circumstances.” When they finally met face-to-face, she recalls a strong bond.

Through all of this, Sword Gusmão was risking her life for the sake of revolution and, eventually, love. 

The film captures these early days of resistance in East Timor and the relationship between Xanana and Sword Gusmão while he was in prison. Sword Gusmão herself had taken a great deal of documentary footage during her work, which provided a backdrop for the chronology of her story. 

The film does an incredible job at documenting the East Timor’s fight for independence from Indonesia. The human rights abuses (almost 200,000 Timorese people died of famine or murder during Indonesia’s rule from 1975 – 1999) and struggle for independence happened just in the last few decades, yet this isn’t a story that is as well-known as it should be.

But Kirsty Sword Gusmão doesn’t seem to be the protagonist in the film, even though her alias is the title, and her photo is on the poster. Of course, director Alex Meillier acknowledged this: “We’re playing with genres in the film, spy story, love story, three-act structure. This isn’t about one hero coming to save the day, but people coming together and throwing their lot in together. There’s a lot to celebrate.” 

This is true–there is a lot to celebrate in this story. East Timor votes for independence. The UN helps them transition to be an independent state. Xanana Gusmão is elected president. He and Kirsty Sword get married and have three sons.

There is a happy ending, and the audience sees it all through collected and pieced-together footage.

However, it feels as if there is more to Sword Gusmão’s story. While much of the footage is hers, it makes sense that she reads letters aloud that she received from Xanana, and that she has pictures of herself over the years. Too often, it seems as if her beauty is the subject of her story. Male activists and leaders note how they “used” her for covert operations (they say she was “pretty” and “proper in her manners”; she was “very refined, elegant–who would think she can be mischievous?”). Film footage of her swimming doesn’t seem to fit, except in concert with commentary on her beauty. 

Her beauty and femininity likely were key in allowing her access to some of the situations she was able to navigate. True.

But she got there herself. Sword Gusmão begins the documentary speaking about how she’s taken opportunities in her life that have been risky, and how she wants to act with her conscience and truth–she enjoys the risks. This Kirsty seems to be swept away, though, by the revolution and Xanana, so that she’s absorbed by something much larger, and her agency and power in the story fades. The risk that drives her is muted.

Perhaps the filmmakers were trying to celebrate too much and lost some of Ruby Blade in the process.

Sword Gusmão’s activism didn’t end when she became the first lady. She started and runs Alola, a foundation to help women and children in the country, and is active in the educational system. The risks on her and her family’s lives have not ended. Her struggles and her triumphs were not as highlighted as they could have been.

Alias Ruby Blade is a stunning documentary that will do great work in educating people about not only the revolution in East Timor but also the powerful effect that individuals can have when they work toward justice–this, it seems, is definitely the filmmakers’ goal (husband and wife team Alex Meillier and Tanya Ager Meillier say, “… we are even more interested in the power of ordinary people to change the course of history. That’s what this film is really about”).

The film was featured in the Human Rights Watch Film Festival in March and the IDFA (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam). Tribeca granted it the 2012 Spotlighting Women Documentary Award.

As a feminist film viewer, I would have loved to see “Ruby Blade” herself more–and perhaps this story has the potential to inspire a Hollywood blockbuster with a powerful female protagonist. Let’s hope, at least. It could be Eat, Pray, Love: Bitches Get Shit Done Edition. We need to see what we’re capable of, and Kirsty Sword Gusmão is one strong example.