Word: joshua
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...like hell to evade the junta's thugs. In a dictatorship, even the simple task of interviewing a subject is potentially perilous. How can you 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...
...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...
...Festival in Amsterdam in November and was screened at last month's Sundance Festival. It closes with a raid by secret police on DVB's Rangoon secret headquarters - also a reconstruction, although the events it depicts are real and tragic enough. Three reporters were arrested, others went into hiding. Joshua is now in exile, but the authorities know his name - they tortured it out of a friend - and keep his family under surveillance...
...imagine Joshua was comforted by the reaction of Rangoon's police chief. "DVB are the worst," growls Major General Khin Yi in the closing scenes of Burma VJ. "DVB are the ones who broadcast most of the false news about us." My brave Burmese colleagues couldn't ask for a bigger compliment, or for a better reason to continue their extraordinary work...
...JOSHUA J. KEARNEY...