KEY POINTS:
DILI- Australian Paul Stewart was just 15 when Indonesian soldiers murdered his cameraman brother Tony in East Timor.
More than 30 years later, he hopes a new film about the slaying of the so-called Balibo Five will be as much about the suffering of East Timorese during Indonesia's
1975 invasion as it is about the newsmen who died.
Stewart is in East Timor's capital, Dili, working as an adviser during the filming of Balibo, the movie, starring Anthony LaPaglia.
LaPaglia plays the role of Roger East, who was killed in East Timor in December 1975 while trying to uncover the truth about the deaths of the five Australian-based newsmen, including Tony Stewart and New Zealander Garry Cunningham, in the town of Balibo two months earlier.
No one has ever been tried over East's death but witnesses have said he was shot after being captured by Indonesian troops.
Few in Australia would be unfamiliar with the Balibo case.
Just last year a high-profile coronial inquest in Sydney found the newsmen were deliberately killed by Indonesian forces to stop them from covering Jakarta's invasion of East Timor.
But Paul Stewart wonders if Australians have a true sense of the horror East Timorese experienced during the invasion.
For him, that story is as important as the loss of East, and his Channel Seven cameraman brother alongside newsmen Brian Peters, Greg Shackleton, Gary Cunningham and Malcolm Rennie.
He said the legacy of the Balibo Five was their determination to inform the world of what went on in East Timor more than three decades ago.
Indeed, the last piece of footage shot by the group captures the journalist Shackleton explaining how he will forever remember the plight of the Timorese. Very soon after, he was dead.
"Their story is everybody's story because they set it up like that," Stewart said of the slain newsmen.
Part of the film is presented through the eyes of a young Timorese girl who witnessed East's death.
Stewart says it's vital for the grieving process of Timorese for that perspective to be told.
"I don't think they acknowledge their own losses well," says Stewart, who after his brother's death became an activist fighting for the independence East Timor now enjoys.
"I'd get taken to demonstrations and I'd meet Timorese mob and they would say 'Paulie, mate, we are so sorry about your brother,' and I'd say 'did you lose anyone?' and they'd say 'oh, yeah, 10 members of my family'.
"This is a bigger picture than just my brother."
Balibo director John Maynard expects the film will be controversial because it graphically depicts the atrocities perpetrated by Indonesian forces, and highlights the role the Australian and US governments played in sanctioning the Indonesian invasion.
"But we are not inventing anything, it is a matter of record now what happened to the Balibo Five and it is a matter of record what happened to Roger East."
Despite the Australian inquest that found the Balibo Five were killed to stop them exposing Jakarta's invasion, Indonesia maintains they were accidentally killed in crossfire.
Jakarta recently stressed that it wants the film to include Indonesia's point of view.
Filming began in East Timor last week.
- AAP