Movie Review: Burma VJ

John Anderson - New York Times

Monks, Secret Police And Hidden Cameras: Exposing a Regime Documentary Follows Burmese Reporter During the 'Saffron Revolution'

He lives in Thailand now, largely because he doesn't think he could hold up under torture. "I'm not sure how much I could keep secrets," said the slight, shaggy-haired, 27-year-old Burmese video journalist, who is considered a public enemy by his country's military junta.

Should his admission make him seem less than courageous, consider "Burma VJ: Reporting From a Closed Country." Directed by Anders Ostergaard of Denmark and opening Wednesday in New York and on Friday in Seattle, the documentary chronicles the work of the Burmese journalist and his team of guerrilla cameramen during the "saffron revolution" of 2007, in which robed Buddhist monks joined street protests against Myanmar's military dictatorship. The film also opens in Britain in July.

Connected through cellphones and e-mail, shooting clandestinely on minicams and smuggling footage out of the country by courier, the Internet and satellite hookups, the correspondents for the Democratic Voice of Burma (a television station in exile based in Oslo) not only exposed the totalitarian character of the Myanmar authorities to world scrutiny, but also revealed the future of war reporting. It is no wonder that at the recent Hot Docs film festival here, the journalist appeared in a hat, oversize sunglasses and a scarf, seldom looking up and not posing for pictures.

He is under orders from his bosses. "It is also the position of management that he not go back to Burma," said U Khin Maung Win, the deputy executive director of the Democratic Voice of Burma. At the moment the journalist, whose safety depends on his anonymity, is too busy accompanying the film, which has traveled from the Sundance Film Festival to New York, Washington and Toronto.

"Burma VJ," distributed by Oscilloscope (which is owned by Adam Yauch, one of the Beastie Boys), has also been adopted by the Czech leadership of the European Union in its campaign for human rights.

"Vaclav Havel presented the film to Hillary Clinton when Obama was in Prague," a slightly amused Mr. Ostergaard said. "I've just been adjusting to what has been completely unexpected. Mind you, I was going to make a 30-minute portrait of Joshua" - the journalist's pseudonym - "then all kinds of things happened." What happened was the near-spontaneous uprising of summer 2007, incited by a doubling of gas prices, the arrest of the labor activist Su Su Nway and a people fed up.

In an early sequence of the film a taxi driver says he will join whatever demonstrations should erupt, and his candidness is a tip- off. "This never happens," the journalist says. The sense is that a pressure cooker is about to blow, which it does.

For Mr. Ostergaard it was total coincidence. He had been approached by his producer, Lise Lens-Moller, to make a film on Myanmar (the former Burma), and had been put in touch with Democratic Voice of Burma journalists in Bangkok, where they were given camera and situation training. Then events upended their plans.

As explained in an opening subtitle, "Burma VJ" contains certain embellishments, a connective tissue of sorts that sets up and links together the V.J.-shot sequences of monks, marches, police beatings and one point-blank murder of a Japanese journalist.

The street scenes are real; the setups are not. While dramatically effective, such techniques cause documentary purists to recoil. But Mr. Ostergaard offers no apologies.

"I'm absolutely convinced there was no way to tell this story without re-enactments," Mr. Ostergaard said. But "Burma VJ" provides powerful evidence of the new ways in which oppression can be documented and world opinion swayed. "Technology is on our side," said Micheline Levesque, Asia specialist for Rights and Democracy. "Burma VJ" will eventually be shown on HBO ("It's free in Burma," said Khin Maung Win, smiling, "because everyone gets it off the satellite dish"), which will be both a boon to the Burmese cause and a window into a new political world.

** 

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