Dear Joey,
It's yourself. HI. Today you (meaning "I") went to have a burger and fries. You bought the paper and read it while waiting for your order. Where did you eat your wondering Joey? An Irish pub (always the best burgers, duh). You checked out the movie section, mostly all crap. BUT then you noticed an oddity. Some obscure documentary about video undercover journalist filmmakers shooting the atrocities of their government. Basically kinda like Yoanni Sanchez in Cuba with her secret internet blog casts (secretly going to cuban hotels disguised as a tourist to get internet access to write and digitally publish over the internet, her social commentary about the deplorable situation of communism. Castro still wont let her go to Spain to receive her award for journalism). Whatever, she is one of my greatest hero's, a true artist and writer who just will stop at nothing to do "her thang". The BURMA movie was decent, and just seeing hundreds of religious Monks protest the government, and then see them get beaten and killed by their own buddist military was unreal. One image will haunt me forever, a monk found floating in a river, burned and shot, and a video journalist going to get the "shot" secretly for this film. Brave. Terrible. How lucky we all are, despite our recession.
BURMA VJ, FILM REVIEW:
It's Anders Østergaardʼs award-winning documentary and shows a rare inside look into the 2007 uprising in Myanmar through the cameras of the independent journalist group, Democratic Voice of Burma.
While 100,000 people (including 1,000s of Buddhist monks) took to the streets to protest the countryʼs repressive regime that has held them hostage for over 40 years, foreign news crews were banned to enter and the Internet was shut down.
The Democratic Voice of Burma, a collective of 30 anonymous and underground video journalists (VJs) recorded these historic and dramatic events on handycams and smuggled the footage out of the country, where it was broadcast worldwide via satellite.
Risking torture and life imprisonment, the VJs vividly document the brutal clashes with the military and undercover police – even after they themselves become targets of the authorities.
The film is well-timed as the media has been shut out from the trial of Aung San Suu Kyi - being tried after an intruder broke into her home that is also her prison.
