A Loving Friend

Описание: 'A Loving Friend - Documentary – where the talented artist is allowed to inhabit a different moral landscape from the rest of us.

Kerry Negara exposes an active culture within the art world that unashamedly believes in a benevolent form of pedophilia. The artist’s crimes are excused, diffused and denied. On the contrary they are viewed as kind, caring and nurturing, unlike ordinary pedophiles who are seen as despicable.

With a focus on the published diaries of Australian artist Donald Friend, we hear explicit descriptions of sex with children and adolescents from the artist's own written word. Friend lived on the Indonesian island of Bali for 12 years with a household of 20 or so ‘houseboys’.

Kerry Negara interviews these houseboys, now middle aged men who tell us a less romantic version of Friend's lifestyle and their experiences as Friend's houseboys; a perspective that is unsurprisingly very different to that of Friend’s protectors.

'A Loving Friend' widens to reveal a circle of other feted Western artist pedophiles who set up in Bali earlier than Donald Friend and who have operated in vulnerable communities across Asia and Australia since the 1930s. German Walter Spies and Canadian Colin McPhee successfully groomed and seduced not only the communities they exploited but also the arts establishment who have bought into the romanticised versions of their lifestyles.

Filmed over four years and with access to communities in Bali and the art world in Australia, director and presenter Kerry Negara brings previously off limits conversations to the screen with an insight that will unsettle.

www.negarafilmtvmedia.com