FEATURE: Filmmaker hopes documentary helps improve conditions in Myanmar

TOKYO, May 9 Kyodo -
(EDS: ACCOMPANIED BY ONE PHOTO, ALONG WITH PHOTO CAPTION, FROM KYODO PHOTO DATABASE
TREASURE NUMBERED 2010050700448)
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.
==Kyodo