Word: burma
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...tell if your subject is an informer? How do you convince them that you're not one? When one of Joshua's colleagues tries to film an early protest march, a monk shoos him away, perhaps suspecting he's a spy. With its haunting score and slick editing, Burma VJ not only captures the fear, paranoia and exhilaration of the undercover reporter, but also gives a bruising idea of how precarious life is for millions of Burmese...
When I recall reporting Burma's doomed pro-democracy uprising for TIME in September 2007, one image stands out. Amid cheering crowds, a monk holds aloft an upturned alms bowl to indicate his brethren's refusal to accept offerings from the military. It's a powerful gesture in a devout Buddhist country, but what strikes me is not the monk but the ordinary Burmese holding aloft cell phones and cameras to record his protest. Images like these were then transmitted out of Burma via the Internet, where they were picked up by major broadcasters and shown to the world...
...those cameras perhaps belonged to a video journalist, or VJ, from the Oslo-based broadcaster Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), whose courageous work is the subject of Burma VJ, a documentary by Danish director Anders ?stergaard. It is narrated by Joshua, a soft-spoken 27-year-old who, after being fired from a Burmese government newspaper, joins DVB's small but tenacious team. Founded in 1992, DVB is a nonprofit media organization that broadcasts news in English and Burmese via radio, satellite television and the Internet. Sixty of its 140 staff are undercover reporters in Burma. Despite the risks...
...central event of Burma VJ is the 2007 uprising. "Film them! Film them all! So many! So, so many!" cries one protester into a DVB camera, which then pans upward from the crowded streets to show rooftops and balconies packed with more cheering Burmese. It's moving to watch, not least because we know how it all ended. Within days, perhaps a hundred or more people were killed by the junta and thousands arrested. Those carrying cameras were singled out. (See pictures of Burma's aftermath...
...there's a but. Burma VJ is pitched as a documentary, when it is actually a docudrama relying heavily on dramatic re-enactments. It begins with a disclaimer: "This film is [composed largely of] material shot by undercover reporters in Burma. Some elements of the film have been reconstructed in close co-operation with the actual persons involved." Mixing documentary footage with dramatic reconstructions is said to be a hallmark of ?stergaard's films. With Burma VJ, that hallmark is a handicap, undermining the film's credibility and dishonoring the very profession its subjects risk their lives to pursue...