Burmese video journalists capture brutal crackdown in new documentary

Danish director Anders Østergaard says that when he was making his upcoming HBO documentary, Burma VJ, the challenge of finding ways to make a powerful film without exposing the protagonists to further risks led to gratifying creative solutions.

Østergaard also got satisfaction, he says, from promoting awareness about what has been dubbed the Saffron Revolution. Burma VJ is the story of how 100,000 Burmese, including thousands of monks and nuns, protested the country’s repressive regime in 2007. Risking torture and imprisonment, a collective of thirty anonymous video journalists (VJs) recorded the government’s brutal clashes with protesters on handycams and smuggled the footage out of Burma. The film is political, yet it has an intimate feel as it focuses primarily on one VJ—a twenty-six-year-old with the pseudonym Joshua.

Burma VJ had modest beginnings. Four years ago, Østergaard started work on a short documentary about Burmese living conditions. While looking for a way to frame his film, he discovered a TV station in Norway that was broadcasting reports smuggled out of the closed country. He went to Thailand to connect with a group of Burmese reporters who were being trained there, and met Joshua. The two began working together, still having no idea that a tragedy was soon to unfold which would give new significance to their project.

Among other honors, Burma VJ won the World Cinema Documentary Editing Award at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. Below is the trailer for the documentary:

The Shambhala Sun recently posted related material on the struggle in Burma on the SunSpace blog. That post can be read here.