From new SICA-USA Board Member Lawrence Pevec:

Lawrence Pevec

Daniela Moneta, Subud Archivist and Subud Phoenix member, closes her recent newsletter with “In Subud as in other organizations, we have to remember that an organization that doesn’t save its history will end up with no history”.

This is a brief description of the Memories of Bapak; Jerry Chelam Interview Project, of which I am currently the director. I work closely with Daniela and until recently with Kristiana Kalab who rescued the aging video tapes from storage at the Subud New York Center, raised funds and otherwise nurtured the digitizing of the analog tapes and kept the project alive.

Kristiana handed the directorship of the project over to me at the Frieberg World Congress last year. Video recording and oral history are a long time interest of mine and I have made several contributions of my own interviews to the Subud Archives, including several I managed to get in 1990 at Bapak’s 1000 Day Selamatan in Indonesia.

Gratitude goes to Jerry Chalem, the artist and New York Subud member who died in 2012, for being acutely aware of the value of oral history to the Subud community. Jerry began recording these high quality analog video interviews with Subud members of all ages in 1995 and directed the project until his death. He spent many hours recording interviews at the World Congress held in Spokane, Washington in 1997. Several crew members went to England and Indonesia to record the memories of members in those countries. There are two hundred and fifty interviews in various stages of post-production. I’ve been working on editing and assembly of the individual interviews for over a year and likely have another year to get this phase of the project completed.

This project is an extension of my own long time interests. I was attracted to film and filmmaking as an adolescent. My older brother and I made a short comic film as a final project for one of his college courses in 1966. I documented some of my family’s activities on the Kodak 8mm film camera (no sound yet) my mother bought in the early 60’s. I cherish the moving images I have of my mother, grandmother and that brother. . . all now gone. I bought a Sony Hi8 video camera in 1986 in order to make a film of our families first trip to Brazil. Before the camera became obsolete with the change-over to digital recording I captured over sixty hours of family, travel, and Subud activities.

I became involved as a professional in film production in 1986. After Dharma Design, the Vancouver, BC media production company and Subud enterprise I had been working in dissolved, I began working in the burgeoning Vancouver commercial motion picture production industry as an art director. After several years working on feature films, TV series, and Movies-of-the-Week I became a production designer. In ’95 when I heard about Jerry’s project I hoped I could get involved in some way. . . it wasn’t to be. I heard little about the project again until I met Kristiana in Germany in 2018.

Jerry’s plans for the material he gathered included using member’s experiences of the latihan in a short introductory film that could be shown to prospective members. He also considered producing DVDs of some of the sessions to sell via Subud Publications outlets and a book of interview transcriptions. The only one of these uses that got produced was a long interview with Lusana Faliks which is available for purchase on DVD.

Jerry willed the project to the New York Subud Group and the original tapes were stored in boxes at the NY Center. After he died and Kristiana discovered the original tapes it became evident that they needed to be digitized and copies made or the tapes would degrade and the material would be lost. Subud International Cultural Association, USA (SICA) got involved and acquired the funds to have the material digitized. It was decided that the material would be a valuable asset for the International Archives where future researchers might access it. WSA acquired, and now owns the copyright of the entire project. Members can view the interviews we have completed by emailing Daniela at Admin@WSAarchives.org. Daniela will send a form to fill out and once that is returned a password to the archives will be issued. The material has to be password protected. According to Ibu Rahayu, posting the material comes with a responsibility to manage it so non-members won’t be confused by individual memories and views. Disclaimers have been developed to that effect and are included at the beginning of each interview.

The effect of listening to many personal histories related to the Subud Experience is quite amazing. There is a deep happiness and gratitude for Bapak and his mission universally expressed. It is spread over all the interviews and of course expressed in many different ways. The people who were physically close to Bapak and Ibu relate some of the best personal stories but all the interviews I’ve reviewed so far reflect and enhance my own inner understanding of who these extraordinary people were.