Burma VJ: Reporter i et lukket land

This Oscar nominated documentary tells the story of what happened in Burma in 2007 when the military suppressed 100,000 protesters.

Underground reporters captured what was happening. The footage has been shown on news stations, but this is a collection of the footage showing a complete story.

The reporters faced death or life imprisonment to get this footage. Once the military realized that the footage was being sent by the reporters, and not foreign journalists, they systematically hunted them down.

Those who were not arrested, spread out through the country.

It was a touching story of how the people stood up to oppression. They were not teabaggers, but people willing to die for freedom.

I had the pleasure to see this remarkable and inspiring film screen at SXSW Film Festival in Austin, TX. The film is truly unusual and unique. It is the type of film that leads you to appreciate the freedoms that Americans take for granted. However, flawed journalism is in the United States, our first amendment allows journalists to report freely. In Burma, journalism is a crime and those who report the truth are risking their lives to bring the story of their country's repressive regime to the rest of the world. Burma VJ is the story of the efforts of a remarkable group of Burmese photojournalists – with the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) - who secretly videotape during the failed Sept, 2007 uprising against the Burmese military regime. The bravery of the journalists who attempt to report these events and the monks who led the rebellion against the military is humbling and the videos they take are mesmerizing.

Sadly, these events made headlines for a few days in 2007 and then the world promptly forgot about Burma yet again. It remains today one of the most isolated and forgotten places on Earth. Its regime remains one of the most repressive in the world, perhaps only behind that of North Korea. This film is a cry for the world not to forget the on-going tragedy of Burma. The story almost tells itself as it gives us the chance to bear witness to the crimes against humanity committed by the military junta. Of course, the video quality of recordings on small hidden cameras sometimes leaves something to be desired, but their very shakiness reflects narrowness of the link connecting us back to suffering of the Burmese.

This film is testament to the Burmese struggle and it should be viewed by all those who believe that all humans deserve the right to live in freedom. It is a beautiful eloquent testimony to the human desire to be free and I hope many people watch and rally to the support of the long-suffering people of Burma. Their story deserves to be told and Burma VJ is an unforgettable film of human courage.

To create that sense of realism, tension and excitement even, the fad nowadays is for filmmakers to employ the use of the nausea-inducing shaky cam. For the multiple, independent video journalists in Burma documenting instances of oppression and suppression, crying for the attention of the outside world, it's not a technique used for vanity or stylistic reasons, but one stemming from sheer necessity. One can imagine if one is caught with a video camera recording street arrests and such, where the penalty would likely be endless interrogation, to put it mildly, and probably being conveniently forgotten.

"Joshua" and his crew from DVB – Democratic Voice of Burma – a group of clandestine journalists operating from within Burma, had plenty of footage that they manage to smuggle out of the country, either through online means, or trusted couriers, where news networks had used to tell of the plight of street protesters in September 2007. Utilizing small consumer cameras hidden in bags and whisked in and out for clips lasting seconds, you can feel that real sense of danger that these folks go through just to get actual ground conditions to the outside world.

Director Anders Østergaard had assembled various clips from that fateful event where the monks took to the streets, which for days an unexpected non-response from the military government provided that spark of optimism that change was coming. For those familiar with the aftermath from that affair, watching this on hindsight made one feel a little saddened even, because we know what would be coming up next. With some moments re- enacted and spliced together with actual footages, Burma VJ became a riveting documentary where the draw is having to become a witness to what's happening on the ground being in stark contrast to official state media's interpretation, and perhaps to think about how an event as this one shouldn't be allowed to just fade away.

And the footages are nothing short of amazing, astounding, and shocking even. There was a progression of sorts technically, probably stemming from collective courage of the masses where temporal point-and-shoot strategies gave way to lengthy unflinching recordings. From the journalists' first hand accounts as seen through their viewfinders, we take to the streets with them in a "people power" movement, even going right up to the villa where Aung San Suu Kyi was held under house arrest, appearing to greet the monks. We also get a sense of how the military's strength in numbers were called upon to cordon off areas and provided a standoff with their weapons locked and loaded, and executions at point blank were all caught on camera, from grainy digital zooming of lens watching from afar.

In some ways, the film progressed as per how the movement gained momentum, in a slow brew of relatively smaller demonstrations to a frenetic charge toward large masses, before night time raids and arrests of the protesting monks led to a systematic fizzling of drive and ultimate dispersal, and the flight for cover, as the DVB journalists had to lay low following crackdown by the secret police. For the superstitious as the military junta is touted to be, there's a quick mention of Typhoon Nargis too, which I recall when it struck had many tongues wagging that it was a celestial response to what was done to the monks, here in a scene that I've never seen, a lifeless body floating on a river with a cracked skull.

Burma VJ is a powerful documentary, and I do urge anyone who has the chance to watch this, to give it a go.

Burma (where, ironically, George Orwell was born) is perhaps the country in the world that most resembles an Orwellian nightmare, under the grip of a repressive military dictatorship for over 40 years. In the west, we don't usually hear much about it, which is, one suspects, much as its rulers would like. But this absorbing documentary tells the story of a (sadly failed) revolt that took place in 2007, as well as the story of those who reported it in defiance of the authorities. And it's a shocking film to see: if the monks protest against the government, the government has no qualms about killing the monks. When the army (for whatever reason) refused to break ranks with its generals, the revolution was doomed; fundamentally, no-one want to die. The generals' propaganda would almost be funny if it wasn't backed up by the utter willingness to use lethal force, even in the face of peaceful protest. 'Burma VJ' is an important testament to the grim reality of life in the country; but at the end, even the resistance leaders are despairing of hope.

Burma is an oppressive military state. It's illegal to protest in public. Men with guns will come and take you away if you do it. In 2007 a massive uprising began in the country when fuel prices became too high.

The images of the monks marching in the streets were the defining image of this uprising but this documentary shows a lot more footage, the really important footage which is worth seeing.

The video journalists in Burma (Myanmar) record everything undercover and sneak the footage out of the country so it can be broadcast around the world.

The images are pretty stark, the army shooting unarmed civilians in the street, beating up and carrying away monks, a dead monk floating in a river the day after they were arrested.

This is a very good documentary about the people rising up and fighting what is pretty much an impossibly authoritarian force. The soldiers have guns, the civilians have flags and video cameras. It's not hard to see who will win when you think of it this way. And yet the students, monks and rest of the people in the streets never waiver. They march onward, even saying, "Those who don't fear death, come to the front". That's bravery. Our political fights in North America and the rest of the Western world, while important are a mere shadow compared to the people of Myanmar.

Burma is of course only one story of an authoritarian government, there are many more. Canadian and American companies regularly do business with this regime and rape the land of its resources. It's pretty obvious why Canadian troops are "fighting for democracy" in Afghanistan instead of Burma. We don't don't control the resources there, we do in Burma.