•    HOME   
•    NEWS   
•    BUSINESS   
•    INTERNATIONAL   
•    TECH   
•    SPORTS   
•    LIFE & TIMES   
•    OPINION   
•    MY JAKARTA   
•    BLOGS   
•    EYEWITNESS   

The filmmakers behind “Cowboys in Paradise” shared their controversial film with the Jakarta Globe in Singapore on Friday and expressed their sense of dismay over the “horrible misunderstanding” surrounding the documentary.

The private screening, the first time any member of the Indonesian press had seen the film in its entirety, coincided with Bali Police ramping up efforts to form a case against Singaporean director Amit Virmani.

Seah Kui Luan, one of the film’s producers, said there “are several misconceptions about the film that are fueling the controversy and need to be rectified urgently.”

“After repeated efforts to redress some false assumptions, we felt that the film was its own best defense. Since the Jakarta Globe has actively covered the controversy since it first broke we invited them to a private screening of the film.”

Also present at the screening was Amit. “We worked hard to make a distinction between the cowboys and male prostitutes,” he said. “And the more I’ve stressed the distinction in recent days, the further we seem to be moving from that truth. A film on male prostitutes is not what we sought to make and is not the film we’ve made.”

The stars of the documentary on Bali’s Kuta Cowboys were rounded up and questioned by Bali Police as witnesses on Thursday.

But Bali Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Gede Sugianyar Dwi Putra said they were being questioned so they could serve as witnesses in the case being prepared against Virmani.

“All three admitted to knowing Amit. This [questioning] has only to do with their identities and the fact that their faces are similar to those featured on the film clip on YouTube,” Sugianyar said.

He said that even though no official report had been lodged with police, they had taken the initiative to form a team of detectives from the cybercrimes unit to track down other witnesses linked to the case.

Virmani, Sugianyar said, did not have the proper filming permit and could face up to one year in jail and fines of as much as Rp 40 million ($4,440) for violating the country’s 1992 Law on Films.

Amit declined to comment on the ongoing investigation. “I can’t say anything about it at the moment. I think I’ll just wait and see,” he said.

The documentary itself never refers to its subjects as gigolos or prostitutes. In fact, it clearly states that the cowboys never charge for sex.

The beach boys spoke to the camera, with clip-on microphones, about their hard lives working regular jobs from selling drinks at the beach, to becoming surf instructors and tour guides.

One of the cowboys who appeared in the film, Arnold, a surfing instructor, said Virmani appeared at Kuta Beach with a camera in 2007.

“I thought that with that big camera, the quality of the footage taken would be good. When I asked him what the footage was for, he said it was for personal documentation,” Arnold said. His real name is Suwarno and is from Banyuwangi in East Java.

He told police that he had been married to a foreigner for two years.

Vendi, another of the beach boys, said: “We are actually the victims. We plan to file an official complaint against the director for defamation.”

Virmani denied the statements.

“No-one that has seen the film would believe that the boys did not know we were making a film or that they didn’t know what the film was going to be about,” Virmani said.

“For instance, one of the boys, Vendi who said he didn’t know what the film was about, was interviewed with his girlfriend and she questioned him about his other girlfriends, on camera. So how could they possibly not know what the film was about.”

In the film, Vendi was pictured with his German girlfriend. She asked him about his other girlfriends from France and Norway.

Commenting on the unusual nature of the private screening, the director said, “The film won’t be out for a while, at least not till after the Melbourne International Film Festival. So in a sense, a press screening is premature.”

“But we can’t have people who agreed to be in the film think they’ve been called prostitutes until then. It’s a horrible misunderstanding that has put both the Bali government and a lot of our friends on the beach in a terrible position,” Amit said.


The full interview and feature article will appear in Monday's Jakarta Globe.