''Tong Tana: A Journey to the Heart of Borneo'' is a 1989 Swedish

documentary A documentary film (often described simply as a documentary) is a nonfiction Film, motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". The American author and ...

film about the

Penan people The Penan are a nomadic indigenous people living in Sarawak and Brunei, although there is only one small community in Brunei; among those in Brunei half have been converted to Islam, even if only superficially. Penan are one of the last such p ...

Sarawak Sarawak ( , ) is a States and federal territories of Malaysia, state of Malaysia. It is the largest among the 13 states, with an area almost equal to that of Peninsular Malaysia. Sarawak is located in East Malaysia in northwest Borneo, and is ...

Borneo Borneo () is the List of islands by area, third-largest island in the world, with an area of , and population of 23,053,723 (2020 national censuses). Situated at the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia, it is one of the Greater Sunda ...

, a federal state of

Malaysia Malaysia is a country in Southeast Asia. Featuring the Tanjung Piai, southernmost point of continental Eurasia, it is a federation, federal constitutional monarchy consisting of States and federal territories of Malaysia, 13 states and thre ...

, and their struggle to protect their

tropical rainforest Tropical rainforests are dense and warm rainforests with high rainfall typically found between 10° north and south of the Equator. They are a subset of the tropical forest biome that occurs roughly within the 28° latitudes (in the torrid zo ...

. Central to the film is the story of Swiss environmental activist,

Bruno Manser Bruno Manser (25 August 1954 – presumed dead 10 March 2005) was a Swiss environmentalist and human rights activist. From 1984 to 1990, he stayed with the Penan tribe in Malaysia, organising Indigenous rainforest blockades in Sarawak against ...

, who was targeted by the Malaysian government for protesting the lumber industry's logging operations. Ten years later, the TV crew returned to the area and filmed ''Tong Tana: The Lost Paradise'', which documented their struggle to protect what was left after their homeland was logged. Filmmakers Jan Roed, Fredrik von Krusenstjerna, Bjorn Cederberg and Kristian Petri worked on the first documentary. A 1991 review in the ''Los Angeles Times'' called the first film "as beautiful as it is heartbreaking". In May 2000, shortly after the second film was completed, Manser disappeared without a trace and was presumed dead.

References

External links

* 1989 films Swedish documentary films 1989 documentary films 1980s Swedish films {{1980s-Sweden-film-stub