The film will be screened in Singapore on July 16. Please see below for details.
“This film BURMA VJ is comprised largely by material shot by undercover reporters in Burma. Some elements of the film have been reconstructed in close collaboration with the actual persons involved, just as some names, places, and other recognizable facts have been altered for security reasons and in order to protect individuals. ”
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.
The screening of the film in Singapore is as follows:
16 July Thursday 7-10pm.
Jubilee Hall Raffles Hotel 3rd Level facing North Bridge Mcdonalds
Screening starts at 7.30pm promptly.
Admission Free.
Seating begins from 7pm.
First-come-first served basis.
Read also: UN chief Ban warned over risky Myanmar visit.
Visit: 64 for Aung San Suu Kyi
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This is an amazing film and also very brave of the Burmese to take to the streets in protest at an inept establishment.
I hope that one day our countrymen will also be that brave to do the same even at the risk of going to jail.
Gilbert Goh, you are right to say the Burmese are brave.
But luckly Singaporeans do not have to go through all this and I believe people like you and those in HDB Kopitiam Ah pek have a lot to thanks your MM LKY. A living legent that bring a whole society from 3rd world to 1st world.
Burmese look up to the living legent LKY, if only we have such a great leader.
any brave one out there who’s prepared to b a martyr? No but..either we have it or we don’t.. otherwise it’s another 50 yes of confinement! Here’s my take..we r a selfish lot!
Singaporean are a castrated lot. Fat hope to think we will march like the burmese. Any individual who dare will be singled out and trash by the PAP secret police and henchmen or thugs.
i think if life is getting very touch and worst, it may. afterall, you are fighting for right and survive. isn’t what MM fought for during the 60′?
so he should know better.
Any of the Asean gov. who support or co-operate with the Myamar gov are also one of the culprit n murderer of the innocent Burmese in Myamar.
i wonder where are singapore’s film talents?
Suggest we welcome more film FT from asia to take up citizenship.
We have run out of ideas for 50 years straight.
I agree that singapore lacks film talents of the world class type.
To be fair, there is 1 or 2 with potential but not yet there.
For this, I also support having new citizens as those born here have a certain mentality nurtured by culture or environment and system.
When people have worked or done business overseas, they know how unique he is as a singaporean.
For 1, we are super subservient and compliant and dare not even utter dissent.
Can these type of people be creative? yes. But be CREATIVE enough to compete internationally where foreigners are nurtured in a different type of environment?
I am not confident that singaporeans are more creative than foreigners , in general of course as there are always exceptions by the 1 or 2′s. but that is not the point.
Creativitiy is what is needed in knowledge economy based on human capital.
I vote of no confidence in locals creativity.
peace.
Gilbert
That may just happen with new FTs when they become disenchanted with things around them.
That’s something the govt must be prepared to deal. Unlike local born S’poreans, these FTs are a very different breed. They come from countries where protests are common. So just wait and watch.
Gilbert, Singaporean are born with No Balls! How to protest ! You must be joking!
Now Singaporean going to be extinct without descendants! No more in 20 yrs time and will be displaced into JB!
We believe in Non violent and Democracy! Let show our quiet capabilities in next election!
There are brave Sing
One of them a trade unionist, albeit for the newsman and that was I think in the 1960s.
They picked him up at night under Operation Storage.
Then they fixed him up.
Till today his mind is gone. His relations are taking care of him.
I probed and they reluctantly told me about Op Cold Storage.
I was in the military and worked for the officers in charge of intelligence -they are lacking in intelligence.
I know what they had done and are capable of doing.
They screwed my mind and I lived overseas to heal my mind.
Then there is spontaneous bravery – like the people who broke down the wall separating East and West Germany and reunited their country and broke up the Russia.
All these damm PAP’s Scholaristic Idea rather than Talent Based already pass history!
In Today, who ever can create Value, whether you got degree or not is doesn’t matter. The World Progress while we left behind. Even those S pass of $1800 also have degree!
Steve Jobs, Bill Gates would not survived in Sinagpore cause they don’t have degree!
2) Myint Mi Khiang
///But luckly Singaporeans do not have to go through all this and I believe people like you and those in HDB Kopitiam Ah pek have a lot to thanks your MM LKY. A living legent that bring a whole society from 3rd world to 1st world. Burmese look up to the living legent LKY, if only we have such a great leader.////
Thank you for your perspective.
Sadly it takes someone from outside to see it.
So many back home here are like “fishes not knowing water”
An extraordinary, moving film that I will definitely watch – moving in the way when courage and selflessness stand up to oppression and paying a heavy price for it.
It is a film Singaporeans should watch. It might inspire us to stand up and speak out after being conditioned to sit down and shut up all our life.
Singaporeans may not fully understand about Burma and likewise 3rd world people coming here may not fully understand the life living here as citizen.
16) Muang Muay Hin Somchai
Singaporeans can only try to understand by what the see through the traditional mass media, and post internet era, “extra-ordinary” films such as this.
Interestingly, such films are always about street protests.
16) Muang Muay Hin Somchai
Appreciate if you can share your perspective.
#2 (Myint Mi Khiang) wrote Sg has a MM LKY who is “A living legent that bring a whole society from 3rd world to 1st world.”
Yes, he brought the Foreign Talent population in Sg from 3rd world to 1st world, and the local bred Singaporeans from 1st world to 3rd world with his policies in the last few years !! Many FTs have jobs here while the locals are unemployed !!
And those who disagree with this fact must be from the elite group who are spared from this 3rd world by this great man, these are his cronies who are paid million dollar salaries, all from tax payers’ money !!!
Sadly people from outside can’t see this … it takes someone from inside to reveal the truth.
Iraq got riot or not ? I mean during dictatorship by sadam?
question only. no flame please.
peace
7) Burma FT welcome on July 3rd, 2009 10.51 am
”
i wonder where are singapore’s film talents?
Suggest we welcome more film FT from asia to take up citizenship.
We have run out of ideas for 50 years straight.
”
I actually think that because of culture and inexperience with at-least-2-fairly-equal-party state like that in usa, UK or elsewhere, singaporeans may not know what is their problem. Maybe foreigners can give a ‘out of the box’ solution to bring change.
The saying goes that ‘a 3rd party sees the situation clearer’. also, ‘dang ju zher mi’.
In short, I also welcome new citizens who can think differently. We have run out of ideas as proven by history.
These evil leaders and their families will 1 day loose all that they have. They will only hear the cries of the dead at their death beds. They will be remembered long into their country’s history. May all the sufferings, the deads and those who are still in prison be relieved of their pain.