TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Jan Krogsgaard never imagined he would have to rearrange almost everything at the last stage for his film on video journalists working undercover in Myanmar until it became reality in the fall of 2007, with a major civil uprising against the military government.
The 51-year-old Danish video artist scrambled to change the film's concept from a psychological portrait of the journalists to focus on the anti-government protests they shot in Yangon and apparently elsewhere in Myanmar in September 2007.
But all the hard work by him and his colleagues seems to have paid off.
The Oscar-nominated documentary "Burma VJ" has received more than 40 international awards and will be screened at the Theatre Image Forum in Tokyo from May 15 and in other cities such as Osaka and Nagoya from June and later.
"We knew it was important to create something powerful as a movie which could touch people," Krogsgaard told Kyodo News in a recent interview in Tokyo. "I hope lots of people around the world will focus energy and attention on Burma after watching this humble little film, which could help change the situation."
The 85-minute film portrays the work of a group of video journalists, or VJs, in Myanmar, who succeeded in capturing the 2007 uprisings of monks and civilians, including the scene of the shooting death of Japanese journalist Kenji Nagai, using smuggled camcorders.
Krogsgaard and "Joshua," a leading member of the VJs and the main character of the film, compiled and mapped times and locations of all the fragmented images and stories collected by the VJs at a safe house in Thailand, he said.
They wove the fragments also with images taken afterward to reconstruct "true stories" which have not been recorded, Krogsgaard said.
Krogsgaard said he has come to be involved with issues in Myanmar as he witnessed his father suffer from the aftershocks of living in Nazi-controlled Germany during World War II, and also as he was impacted by images on TV of the Vietnam War, which inspired him to settle in Vietnam after growing up.
Before his latest film, Krogsgaard produced and directed "Burma Manipulated" between 2002 and 2004, and interviewed asylum seekers, people who once were detained as political prisoners and a former high-ranking junta officer around the Thailand-Myanmar border for six months.
He approached the VJs after learning about broadcasting to Myanmar by the Oslo-based media organization Democratic Voice of Burma, which he said is the first programming in the Burmese language aired from outside the country, to which the VJs provide footage.
He was fascinated with them and their work because "they choose to take risks to be VJs," risking their own lives and the safety of their families since they "can end up in jail for 20 years, 30-40 years if they are caught by military intelligence," he said.
The documentary shows scenes of the VJs fleeing from government authorities or being captured and taken away while shooting in the country.
Thousands of people, including journalists, were arrested during and just after September 2007 in connection with political issues, according to Krogsgaard.
To avoid arrests and detentions, the VJs usually bring the video clips out of the country as the safe line of communications in Myanmar is very limited, according to Krogsgaard.
Ordinary people are not allowed to access the Internet at their homes, and Internet cafes -- though there are some -- are tightly monitored with surveillance cameras recording images of users and content on computer screens, Krogsgaard said, adding soldiers and military intelligence conduct random raids of the cafes.
"Therefore," he said, "they (the VJs) usually take out materials they shot to Thailand first, pre-edit them in Thailand and post or upload them to Norway." Then in Norway, they complete work on the footage as a broadcasting product and send it to another European city or to a Middle Eastern city, from where they broadcast it by satellite link back to Myanmar, he said.
While screening of his documentary will probably not be allowed in Myanmar, he said DVD copies of the film have been spreading underground in the country.
"It is giving people in Burma a lot of hope and many of them have found a new role model in the VJs. And it has also encouraged people inside the military system, who have now started to leak information," said Krogsgaard, adding some local people have joined the team of VJs after seeing the film.
"Today, more than 100 people are working in the team...while there were only about 40 in 2007. So it is building up," he said.
Referring to Myanmar's coming general election, expected for later this year, Krogsgaard said it was a "joke" because of the absence of Aung San Suu Kyi and other opposition leaders but he said the VJs are preparing for the national event.
Suu Kyi, pro-democracy icon and the 1991 Nobel Peace laureate under detention for more than 14 years, and her National League for Democracy colleagues decided to boycott the election on the grounds that the junta-sponsored Constitution and its election laws, barring them from running, are "unjust," and the NLD became invalid under the new laws after declining to re-register as a party by May 6.
"(VJs) know it is time to expose what is happening inside Burma as much as possible up to this election, but the regime is also really trying to tighten the grip at the same time and arresting many people," he said.
Source :http://mdn.mainichi.jp/features/news/20100510p2g00m0dm015000c.html
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