Burma VJ (2009)

Synopsis: Armed with small handy cams undercover Video Journalists in Burma keep up the flow of news from their closed country. Going beyond the occasional news clip from Burma, acclaimed director Anders... Armed with small handy cams undercover Video Journalists in Burma keep up the flow of news from their closed country. Going beyond the occasional news clip from Burma, acclaimed director Anders Østergaard, brings us close to the video journalists who deliver the footage. Though risking torture and life in jail, courageous young citizens of Burma live the essence of journalism as they insist on keeping up the flow of news from their closed country. The Burma VJs stop at nothing to make their reportages from the streets of Rangoon.

Their material is smuggled out of the country and broadcast back into Burma via satellite and offered as free usage for international media. The whole world has witnessed single event clips made by the VJs, but for the very first time, their individual images have been carefully put together and at once, they tell a much bigger story. ”Joshua”, age 27, is one of the young video journalists, who works undercover to counter the propaganda of the military regime. Foreign TV crews are suddenly banned from the country, so it’s left to Joshua and his crew to keep the revolution alive on TV screens all over.

With Joshua as the psychological lens, the Burmese condition is made tangible to a global audience so we can understand it, feel it, and smell it. The film offers a unique insight into high-risk journalism and dissidence in a police state, while at the same time providing a thorough documentation of the historical and dramatic days of September 2007, when the Buddhist monks started marching. --© Official Site [More]

Director: Anders Ostergaard

Director: Anders Ostergaard
Producer: Lise-Lense Moller
Composer: Conny Malmqvist
Studio: Oscilloscope Pictures