Making of Warlovechild in Indonesia [5]

After a broadcast of the NOS 8 o'clock News about our project Warlovechild, a short message appeared on the NOS website from someone called Louis Velleman. He introduced himself as a veteran with a child in Semarang, Indonesia, but he had not left any contact information. We really wanted to meet him because we had not spoken to many daddy soldiers yet. I left a reply  for him with the request to contact us.
Months had passed without any reaction when Annegriet decided to give about everyone with the name Velleman in the Netherlands a phonecall. To no avail. But one day later (was it coincidence or was it telepathy?) out of nothing Louis Velleman made himself known to us through an email! It appeared that he had migrated to Australia long ago and he found my post after a look at the NOS website. He gave us the contact details of his son Luwi, who was the first to be interviewed by us in Indonesia. Shortly after this meeting we traveled to Adelaide, Australia, where we talked to Louis Velleman himself. It was a strange sensation because the physical distance is too large to bridge for father and son while we ourselves had visited both of them as part of our project within two weeks.

Annegriet Wietsma and Jean Hellwig were traveling in Indonesia in October 2009 for the filming of the documentary Tuan Papa, that was broadcast on Dutch television on July 1, 2010. While they were looking for warlovechildren and soldiers' sweethearts in Java and Bali, they filmed each other to keep the audience posted about their production developments.