BURMA VJ: Behind the Scenes

One of the documentary Academy Award nominees, this film comprises the only on the ground documentation of the Saffron revolution in Burma (Myanmar) in the fall of 2007.  It all began when Buddhist monks decided to speak out against the dire financial and social conditions of the Burmese people which the the repressive military dictatorship refused to address. The monks did not call for government overthrow, speak about the invalidation of the democratic elections and the subsequent imprisonment of winner, Aung San Suu Kyi.  The action by the monks had a domino effect, bringing people into the streets in an eruption of mass action.  The response was slow, at first, but brutal.  Crowds were fired upon, the monasteries raided, and monks brutally attacked, imprisoned or killed.  One of the monks featured in the film, U Gawsita, subsequently made his way to the United States and has been touring with Burma VJ  director, Anders Ostergaard, to promote the film.  I spoke with both of them recently.

FF: Tell us about your experiences during the revolution?

U Gawsita: Monks rebelling against the government had never happened in the history of Burma.  The monks got involved because the people were constantly suffering and mistreated and oppressed by the government.  So we tell the government to do something, the movement wasn’t to take authority.  Since we weren’t trying to overthrow the government, we didn’t expect that they would try to gun us down, shoot at us, use violence, we did  not anticipate that response.  

The monks who were saying prayers, who were walking along the streets, we didn’t have weapons, no arms, we had nothing but prayers and peace.   We did not anticipate that the government would respond so violently against a peaceful act.  But in fact they did use extreme violence by opening fire, killing and also arresting us in the middle of the night.

There were some kinds of unlawful acts like when they opened fire on whoever went out on the streets.   Then they knocked on the doors, they arrested people indiscriminately.  Those things were really despicable, those are really terrible government acts against people.  

The monasteries, dwellings of the monks, are in a huge compound and well fenced so when the monks inside refused to open the main gate, they rammed it with a truck and the soldiers came in with batons and then beat the monks up and arrested them.  

FF: So how did you get out?

U Gawsita: I was under heavy surveillance, the government was following me all the time so I had to go to a rural area, and act like a farmer and then a cowherd.  I decided that I could not hide for long, I’d be arrested, so I decided to leave the country.

I was hiding in my native village.  I slept in the wood.  One night the military intelligence came to the monastery where I was supposed to have slept.  They interrogated the host monk in that monastery and asked if I was there.  He said I was there before but that he had told me to leave.  After that my parents raised the money by pawning their gold rings and I used that money to flee the country.

It was about 8 miles to the bus stop from my village.  I could not move around in the daylight, I had to move at night.  The roads are not paved, it was so muddy because of the rice paddy farms.  I took a bus and then I reached a small ctiy and left for the border from there.

There was a bus to the Thai/Burma border from the city.  Along the trip to the border there was a bridge manned by the military and everybody was asked to get off the bus because they can’t cross the border at night.  They had to sleep on the ground.  About 5am, everyone was asked to get back on the bus and the soldiers came to inspect.

They observed the men and whoever had a strange appearance they picked up all their registration cards.  There were about 30 registration cards confiscated by the military.     I pretended to be part of the bus crew.  I told them I was the conductor.  There were about 10 more checkpoints ahead.  The soldiers were just coming and you had to pay a bribe at each checkpoint so I decided to become a conductor.

FF: How did you get from Thailand to the U.S.?

U Gawsita: I reached Thailand on December 5.  It was the Thai king’s birthday.  There were some old friends who had established a family there.  They came to meet me.  Someone said it’s the king’s birthday so they wouldn’t arrest anyone crossing the border.  But they did arrest us anyway.  There were 17 of us altogether in Thai custody.  They said they weren’t arresting us for any offense, they just wanted some labor. After that they would get some tea for us.  More people were picked up along the way.  They took our fingerprints and then our names.  I did not have any connection with anybody, I was already in the Thai detention.  Somehow they accidently deleted files of all 17 and were then left with nothing.  Our names were not there and they had to refingerprint us.  

By this time the Burmese military intelligence had infiltrated the detention population.  But some other Buddhist groups in Thailand heard that I was in detention and paid to have me released.  And then I came to the U.S.  I spent 2 months and 18 days in Thailand.   

FF: Is there anything else you’d like to say?

U Gawsita: Burma VJ has been nominated for an Oscar.  I want to say that what we see in Burma VJ is what the camera captured but there are things that are much much worse that we didn’t see.  American citizens try to view the film I want to request that they feel like we feel and if you can try to persuade the American authorities, Congress and other authorities to act on Burma.  That is what I want to request from the people of America, what you can do for us.

The Burmese people are simple and very righteous but the government is extremely corrupt.  The government is one step ahead of the international community.  They have figured out already what the UN and the international community will do.  Everybody wants to learn how to cheat or swindle.

FF: Do you work with any activist groups in NY?

U Gawsita: I’m a member of the All Burma Monks Alliance. 

TheFilmfiles spoke with director, Anders Østergaard and his producer, Lise Lense Møller:

FF: How has it been since the nomination?

Anders: Busy.  Great experience, you learn a lot about the American film industry.

FF: Good or bad things?

Anders: I don’t want to judge, it’s just different.  Today (nominees luncheon) was quite nice, it was very collegial.  

FF Do they sit you with the other documentary nominees?

Anders: No, they mix people up a bit.

FF: What’s it been like since the film, have you become a sort of accidental activist?

Anders: That’s a way of putting it.  I never imagined I would be working for a cause as a filmmaker.  But the film has turned out to be very functional, so we tried to roll with it, and adapt.  It was a privilege to be able to do something meaningful.

 FF: But does it inspire you to become an “activist filmmaker?”

Anders:  Lise is the one who finds the issue and is always trying to persuade me to make the film.

Lise Lense Møller: I’ve been so long in the business it’s really important to me that what I do is meaningful.  I’ve become more choosy in the last few years.  But if you ask me if I’m an activist or a filmmaker, I would say filmmaker.  I’m not going to get caught up with any one subject and it is really important that the quality of the film is what matters.  But it is true that I will push the subject.

With Burma, when it first came up, I thought wow, I had forgotten about Burma and I there was nothing in the news, media.  How can you forget a country?  And that was my initial motivation.  And now after the uprising and cyclone and the American swimming across the lake to Aung San Suu Kyi now there is, in the last 3 years it’s been in the media.  But before that when we started filming there was nothing.

Whenever you do a documentary, whatever it’s about, you always have an obligation towards the people involved, to try and follow up on their motivation to be in the film.  For the Burmese VJs and the monks, it’s awareness.  It becomes an obligation to really try and get the film out there.

FF: Have you worked together many times?

Anders/Lise: No, this is the first time.  But we wanted to work together.

Anders: But it never really occurred.

FF: I’’m interested in your creative nonfiction approach, but when you have a subject like this, though, it’s tricky.  So how did you deal with that?

Anders: The danger is to be too careful.  If it’s so important and meaningful the danger is I can’t say anything about it.  At the end of the day you can’t move people with out being personally involved, without expressing a point of view.  So we tried to stay loyal to that principle although it was more tempting to be anonymous and in awe of what was going on.  You always question your right to talk about issues you didn’t grow up with, with issues you just became familiar with recently.  But you just have to jump into it.

Lise:  We were on quite a journey with this film.  We started developing it at the end of 2004.  In the beginning the problem was that there was very little to film, to show, at that point it was a much more creative film.  Then all this happened and for awhile during the editing process it became a chronicle and then at the very end, the two different approaches were able to merge and meet, and that was necessary.  It would have been a completely different film if we hadn’t already developed a language.  But it was really the last 6 weeks that it became Anders’ film again.

Anders: You had to go through the phase of adapting to the new situation and understanding our role, not only as filmmakers but as chroniclers.  We were the only people in the world who had this material so we had an obligation, so we had to find our feet.

FF: So what was your plan before?

Anders: The plan was to make a very personal film about the main character and to go back to, much more human interest, much more micro.  There wasn’t really anything to show.  So it would be a very different film.

Lise: It was an interest in what drove them.  Why did they do this everyday, why did they risk their lives everyday when nothing was apparently happening, no reward? 

Anders: We didn’t want to make a film that was “and then, and then, and then”, we wanted to be almost existential.

FF: If you win the Oscar what do you think that will do for the film?

Anders:  Quite a bit actually.  I think it will help prolong the life as it approaches the end of it’s natural life in circulation.  And it means a lot to the Burmese people, even if they don’t get political change.  And we want people to know.  We’ve gotten a lot of awards (41) but the Oscar is something everybody understands, it’s the most important.

Lise: I didn’t know this but I learned from U Gawsita that they are actually aware of the film in Burma.  He said they were so excited that their struggle was being recognized and also that it’s becoming a symbol for the rest of the world like Iran for peace and freedom fighters all over the world.  

i