Disastrous mud flow at the heart of ‘Grit,’ Monadnock film festival’s big award winner

April 29-- Apr. 29--Homes, schools, factories, mosques, burial grounds -- all have been wiped away. More than a dozen Indonesian villages are encased in 130 feet of mud covering about two square miles.

The eruption 13 years ago that turned landscapes into eerily flat, barren wasteland is still flowing, and could continue for another decade.

A documentary on the destructive mud volcano -- "Grit," directed by Cynthia Wade and Sasha Friedlander -- received the Jonathan Daniels Award at this year's Monadnock International Film Festival. Sponsored by the Jonathan Daniels Center for Social Responsibility, the award recognizes a film that "demonstrates artistic excellence combined with awareness around a social justice issue," according to the MONIFF website.

After the film's screening Saturday night, Virginia Prescott -- former N.H. Public Radio host and now a host with Georgia Public Broadcasting in Atlanta -- moderated a discussion with the directors.

In 2006, a mud volcano erupted on the Indonesian island of Java. The resulting torrents of mud eventually buried 16 villages in the Sidoarjo regency. According to "Grit," scientists estimate the mud will continue flowing until around 2030.

The documentary follows two families among the roughly 60,000 citizens displaced by the mud flow. Told through the eyes of Harwati and her teenage daughter Dian, who was 6 when the mud erupted, "Grit" traces the disaster's aftermath and the controversy surrounding its cause. Over the course of five years of filming, Dian finds her voice as an activist pursuing compensation for the refugees' losses.

A 2008 international report blamed oil and gas drilling less than a mile from the eruption. According to the report, the company operating the well drilled too deep, which forced pressurized gas and underground mud up through a fault line, creating the mud volcano.

The Indonesian company that owned the well, PT Lapindo Brantas, has repeatedly denied it is responsible and blamed the mud flow on an earthquake that struck in the area two days prior.

At the post-viewing Q&A, Wade said she first heard about the mud flow in 2012, while directing a commercial in Indonesia. She spent a few days taking video and photos at the site, but felt that, to do the film justice, she needed to find a partner familiar with the local language and culture.

At a film festival months later, she watched a documentary directed by Friedlander about sulfur miners in East Java. Friedlander, who's fluent in the native language, spent time in Indonesia as a child and returned after her undergraduate studies to spend three years working as a local journalist.

The pair struck a deal in 2013 to begin work on "Grit."

As documentarians, Wade said, they're conscious of a perception of their genre as "eat your vegetables" films.

"It can feel punitive sometimes, like 'sit down, watch this documentary,' " she said.

To buck that stereotype, Wade said they set out to make a feature-length film that could hold the audience's attention throughout. Their challenge was to do that while telling a political and environmental story that featured mud -- lots of mud.

The solution, Wade said, was to show, rather than tell, whenever possible, and she highlighted a device the filmmakers used in the documentary: the rising mud levels.

One subject in the film, a teacher and an artist, created several life-size statues of people with arms outstretched and placed them in the mud. Prescott called them an "incredible barometer": Throughout the film, shots of the statues show them with mud up to their knees, their hips -- eventually their chests.

"And now, by the way, the statues are under the mud completely," Wade said.

Though the disaster's cause is still technically debated, the directors deliberately decided against presenting balanced arguments on both sides. Wade said the film isn't meant to be unbiased: The documentary blames Lapindo's drilling for the disaster.

"And that was Dian's perspective and the villagers' perspective," she added. "It's also what we personally believe, so we put a stake in the ground."

But the filmmakers still sought input from Lapindo's parent company, the Bakrie Group. For three years, Friedlander said, they got no answers from requests to interview Aburizal Bakrie, an Indonesian politician and principal of the Bakrie Group, one of the country's largest conglomerates.

A response finally came through as they were wrapping up the film and preparing to screen it in 2016. After a couple of meetings with Wade and Friedlander, Bakrie agreed to set aside a day for an interview. The filmmakers were given three weeks' notice, during which time they had to raise money for the trip to Indonesia -- and for the security escort, and the kidnap and ransom insurance.

"It was dangerous," Wade said. "... We eventually got out; we were fine. But it was kind of hairy."

After the interview with Bakrie, they spent another eight months tearing the film apart, re-editing it, and putting it back together.

The directors still follow the situation and activism efforts. Last August, Friedlander said, the drilling company renewed a 20-year contract in Sidoarjo, despite the mudflow.

Wade said Dian, who is in her second year of college, studying law, won an Amnesty International award and spent a week in The Hague training and networking with activists. There are plans to organize underground screenings of "Grit" throughout Indonesia, since the Bakrie Group owns most of the country's television networks, Wade said.

At the end of the discussion, she announced that they are accepting donations for Dian's continued education.

Sierra Hubbard can be reached at 355-8546 or at shubbard@keenesentinel.com. Follow her on Twitter at @SierraHubbardKS.

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