Anders Østergaard and “Joshua” of “Burma VJ”

It's easy to overlook "Burma VJ" in the Sundance line-up -- a documentary about Burmese...

I’m sure for anyone who sees the film, the major question is one of where things are now, given that at the end, everyone has had to scatter and contact has been lost with a lot of the reporters you worked with.

J: I got into Burma again to build a new network, and now we have an even stronger one than before. I believe that we sacrificed a lot during September 2007, and it was not a waste.

You express in the film a fear that people outside are forgetting what the situation is in Burma. What do you hope of people who see this documentary?

Joshua: Yeah, it’s all about news. Because I am working with the news, I understand that people will focus on something happening, but when everything is quiet, they have chance to forget. They have chance to forget about what happened. So this documentary is one that can make people remember, and I believe that people will know we are still there and we still need help. A documentary is different than the news. Documentaries are things that makes people think, so they will have more understanding after this, I believe.

Anders, I suppose have the same question for you, what would you hope of people who are watching this film, experiencing that difference between immediate news footage that has made it onto the networks and the more measured experience of a documentary?

AO: It’s all about relating, that you can relate to Burma’s conditions somehow, that we can make the things, the thoughts these guys have and what they’re going through universal rather than being exotic, rather than being about a remote place where some monks are walking about, finding some generals. We get empathy with what it is like to be a freedom fighter, if you like, and also to maybe develop the thought that “Hey, maybe I would do that same thing if I was in the same situation.” It’s not a special breed of people doing this. Normal human beings need freedom so much that they will do these things eventually if conditions force them to it. So I was anxious to make it universal thing and a thing you can relate to.

I apologize for this ignorance on my part, but the monks, who played a major role in the uprising, first became involved in the protests, was there a particular incident that brought them in or had they just decided that it was time to join the political fight?

J: There was a case in central Burma [in which] some monks got out on the street to protest against the military because they wanted to represent the people of that area who were suffering and starving, and they were beaten up by military. They demanded an apology, according to the Buddhist rule. So it was the religious thing in the beginning, but at the time, there were some small groupings already all over the country, so later they organized [made] it to a political move. They knew they really needed to do it because they were getting less and less food. Buddhist monks are the people who get the best things in Burma, but even they were receiving not enough food and other donations, so they realized the country’s situation was getting worse and worse and decided it was the time for them to do something.

AO: Also, they’re the only organization of any kind to articulate opposition. Of course, we have the NLD, which was the official opposition organization spearheaded by Aung San Suu Kyi, but they were out of the game for a good while and have really not many ways to make progress. Somehow the monks, I think, realized they could open a new front by applying themselves to politics. I think that a lot of these monk leaders are quite politically aware, have been for a long while, and are also looking for the moment to do their bit.

J: Yeah, I mean the small groups, they intended to do something like this. They were very organized at the time and just waiting for the spark.

Anders, you’d mentioned that audiences have been asking more about the situation documented in the film than the film itself. It’s often the great debate of documentary film: Is it filmmaking or is it journalism? Where does that meet for you and where does craft come in versus subject matter?

AO: The first thing I would say is ["Burma VJ"] is not journalism because we’re not serving those criteria of objectivity. I couldn’t do the reconstruction thing if I was on a journalistic contract with the audience. To me, creative documentary is there to offer a different kind of insight on top of the news. It’s somewhere in between dramatic film and journalism. I’m a trained journalist myself and I have a journalistic drive, but I really…I try to get as much freedom as I can to take documentary material from the real world from the sort of footage, the kind you saw, to reconstruct how it was to be a reporter at the time, taking the liberties I need in order to offer you that insight. So I’m quite far away from journalism in that respect, because of those liberties I need to take in order to offer you a cinematic experience.

I’ve seen a lot of documentaries lately that end with “For more, visit www… to see how you can help.” Do you see this film as that kind of direct tool?

AO: I don’t know. I didn’t go into this project because I was a Burma activist or even a political activist. It’s not really in my blood really, to be an activist. I was interested in it almost existentially, at least in the fact that these guys are doing it. Why do we need to do stuff like that in order to feel? In order to feel alive, to touch the world, to know you’re here, you have to document it or do something about it. You cannot just grow old with things being the way they are. You have to do something, and that existential drive is really what turned me on to this project beyond politics. But of course, it’s very satisfying to feel that you can do something useful in order to fight this horrifying machine.

[Additional photos: "Burma VJ," director Anders Østergaard, First Hand Films, 2008]

“Burma VJ” will open in New York in May.

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