by KIM
No one decides what I do. I am king…I am free.’
For Ni Nyoman Kamareni Kiawati, a Balinese woman in her late forties, such freedom is hard-won. Like the other women featured in Bitter Honey, the latest documentary film from Robert Lemelson, Kiawati spent much of her life in a polygamous marriage. But Kiawati is an exception: she is able to escape. For Purniasih, Murni, Suci Ati and the other women whose stories are at the heart of the film, polygamy is an inescapable force that shapes their choices, their emotional and physical wellbeing, and their daily routines.
Investigating the intersections of culture, tradition, and suffering is not new territory for Lemelson. In addition to making films, Lemelson is a professor and research anthropologist at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). While his previous feature-length documentary, 40 Years of Silence (2009), examines the psychological effects of trauma on survivors of the 1965 mass killings in Indonesia, his other works, such as Movements and Madness: Gusti Ayu (2006), The Bird Dancer (2010) and Lemelson’s scholarly publications, draw attention to mental illness and social stigma in Indonesia. Bitter Honey, which was released on 3 October 2014 in the United States, represents Lemelson’s most recent effort to bring typically hidden aspects of Indonesian culture to light.
Inside Indonesia for more