Abstract:

"When photographer Elaine Briere visited Portuguese East Timor in 1974, she found a highly developed, centuries-old culture with a refined esthetic and social sensibility. Her photos would become the last record of a people about to face virtual annihilation, because, when Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975, the world looked the other way. Today, UN resolutions condemning the invasion are ignored by Western countries who continue to develop business ties to the corrupt Suharto regime, one responsible for the deaths of over 200,000 people on this tiny island. BITTER PARADISE tells the story of this shameless international support for a predatory military regime and also chronicles Briere's twenty-year personal political journey, from the villages of East Timor to the corridors of the United Nations, from political innocence to political activism."