MartinHafer While "Burma VJ" isn't the easiest film in the world to watch, it is a very important and brave one. Like such documentaries as "The Square" and "Karama Has No Walls", it consists of some amateur filmmakers risking their lives to record efforts to bring democracy to their nations by standing up to the thugs running the government. Unfortunately, while all these are very brave films, the Oscar folks have nominated them and yet DIDN'T give them the Oscars. Lesson learned--such films often seem to get nominated but also seldom win.This particular film is about the freedom movement in Myanmar (Burma) in 2007. After 19 years of being led by a repressive military junta, a mass movement of monks and the public took to the streets to protest. Unfortunately, the government didn't seem to have much problem with arresting and killing these people. Footage of the repressive soldiers doing awful things were secreted out of the country and the film is made up of this footage. The footage is quite interesting. The film's narration, however, seems very impromptu and could be better and less rambling. It could also have used a bit of editing to tighten up the film a bit. Still, it's an exciting film and one that is worth seeing.

poe426 Here in this nation of banksters and their middle men (the politicians), politics is a simple enough equation: Money = Democracy. People here willingly give up the very freedoms that people in countries like Burma are literally DYING for. Unlike this country, where religious leaders (especially televangelists, the guiltiest of the guilty) willingly spread the gospel according to The Party, in Burma, Buddhist monks urge the people to: "Abandon your fear." "People must die" for freedom, someone says at one point. And then the monks lead by example, walking at the forefront of protesting crowds marching into the gunsights of the government goons. The crowd is dispersed by rifle fire and we see the murder of a Japanese photographer. It brought to mind something I saw as a kid, on the telenews (this was back before the news channels were all co-opted and corrupted): a Buddhist monk immolating himself to protest the Vietnam war. The monks in Burma fared no better: we see video smuggled out of the country showing the bullet-riddled corpse of a monk floating face down in a river. There are others. There will be more.

DICK STEEL To create that sense of realism, tension and excitement even, the fad nowadays is for filmmakers to employ the use of the nausea-inducing shaky cam. For the multiple, independent video journalists in Burma documenting instances of oppression and suppression, crying for the attention of the outside world, it's not a technique used for vanity or stylistic reasons, but one stemming from sheer necessity. One can imagine if one is caught with a video camera recording street arrests and such, where the penalty would likely be endless interrogation, to put it mildly, and probably being conveniently forgotten."Joshua" and his crew from DVB – Democratic Voice of Burma – a group of clandestine journalists operating from within Burma, had plenty of footage that they manage to smuggle out of the country, either through online means, or trusted couriers, where news networks had used to tell of the plight of street protesters in September 2007. Utilizing small consumer cameras hidden in bags and whisked in and out for clips lasting seconds, you can feel that real sense of danger that these folks go through just to get actual ground conditions to the outside world.Director Anders Østergaard had assembled various clips from that fateful event where the monks took to the streets, which for days an unexpected non-response from the military government provided that spark of optimism that change was coming. For those familiar with the aftermath from that affair, watching this on hindsight made one feel a little saddened even, because we know what would be coming up next. With some moments re- enacted and spliced together with actual footages, Burma VJ became a riveting documentary where the draw is having to become a witness to what's happening on the ground being in stark contrast to official state media's interpretation, and perhaps to think about how an event as this one shouldn't be allowed to just fade away.And the footages are nothing short of amazing, astounding, and shocking even. There was a progression of sorts technically, probably stemming from collective courage of the masses where temporal point-and-shoot strategies gave way to lengthy unflinching recordings. From the journalists' first hand accounts as seen through their viewfinders, we take to the streets with them in a "people power" movement, even going right up to the villa where Aung San Suu Kyi was held under house arrest, appearing to greet the monks. We also get a sense of how the military's strength in numbers were called upon to cordon off areas and provided a standoff with their weapons locked and loaded, and executions at point blank were all caught on camera, from grainy digital zooming of lens watching from afar.In some ways, the film progressed as per how the movement gained momentum, in a slow brew of relatively smaller demonstrations to a frenetic charge toward large masses, before night time raids and arrests of the protesting monks led to a systematic fizzling of drive and ultimate dispersal, and the flight for cover, as the DVB journalists had to lay low following crackdown by the secret police. For the superstitious as the military junta is touted to be, there's a quick mention of Typhoon Nargis too, which I recall when it struck had many tongues wagging that it was a celestial response to what was done to the monks, here in a scene that I've never seen, a lifeless body floating on a river with a cracked skull.Burma VJ is a powerful documentary, and I do urge anyone who has the chance to watch this, to give it a go.

JustCuriosity I had the pleasure to see this remarkable and inspiring film screen at SXSW Film Festival in Austin, TX. The film is truly unusual and unique. It is the type of film that leads you to appreciate the freedoms that Americans take for granted. However, flawed journalism is in the United States, our first amendment allows journalists to report freely. In Burma, journalism is a crime and those who report the truth are risking their lives to bring the story of their country's repressive regime to the rest of the world. Burma VJ is the story of the efforts of a remarkable group of Burmese photojournalists – with the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) - who secretly videotape during the failed Sept, 2007 uprising against the Burmese military regime. The bravery of the journalists who attempt to report these events and the monks who led the rebellion against the military is humbling and the videos they take are mesmerizing.Sadly, these events made headlines for a few days in 2007 and then the world promptly forgot about Burma yet again. It remains today one of the most isolated and forgotten places on Earth. Its regime remains one of the most repressive in the world, perhaps only behind that of North Korea. This film is a cry for the world not to forget the on-going tragedy of Burma. The story almost tells itself as it gives us the chance to bear witness to the crimes against humanity committed by the military junta. Of course, the video quality of recordings on small hidden cameras sometimes leaves something to be desired, but their very shakiness reflects narrowness of the link connecting us back to suffering of the Burmese.This film is testament to the Burmese struggle and it should be viewed by all those who believe that all humans deserve the right to live in freedom. It is a beautiful eloquent testimony to the human desire to be free and I hope many people watch and rally to the support of the long-suffering people of Burma. Their story deserves to be told and Burma VJ is an unforgettable film of human courage.