'Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country' signals a move to the future for documentary filmmaking and may be the most important political film of the year.
There is no need to say that anyone can capture events on film nowadays and share them with the world via the internet in a few minutes. We all have seen it countless times, most recently with the protests in Iran. Though 'Burma VJ' may be the first feature length documentary to stress how vital this can be to the state of the world and to particular countries.
The film relates the events of uprising in September of 2007 through the footage taken by journalists from the Democratic Voice of Burma, a secret resistant organisation who strives to keep the world and Burma informed. The film progresses from the first, easily squashed public protest to the Monks uprising to the early optimisim to the bloodshed of the final days, using the only journalist to have escaped Burma as a narrator.
With a country that feeds propaganda to its citizens and lies to the world, the film upholds an ethic for truth that the journalists themselves embody. The filmmaker Anders Østergaard never betrays his subjects in the way more and more American documentary filmmakers. Østergaard understands the importance of the videos and the risks taken by the journalist, and in a sign of respect lets the video and the journalist speak for themselves.
The footage filmed as soldiers moved down the street, carrying beaten and broken bodies, from behind a fence is nerve racking and the quick gestures of the camera express the fear that would have been going through this man. These men would serve life sentences if caught and the very existance of this footage speaks volumes of their need to resist.
The film develops a through-thread with 'Joshua', a journalist exiled to Thailand after arrest, recounting his experiences as he managed the field journalists in Burma itself. Phone calls to others are staged but provide a structure to the film that would have been otherwise missing. Østergaard leaves this to 'Joshua' to lead.
The film is inspiring, the resistance shown by these journalist themselves and the public shows bravery and hope. The line shouted by a passerby, 'Film them. There are so many', referring to the lines and lines of protesters, while simple, gives hope that the human spirit cannot be entirely crushed.
With Burma, North Korea, Iran and others consistently giving reason to believe that there is no hope, this film is an important reminder that the fight will go on and the hope that one day things will change.
