Fast forward two decades after that incident that saw a lone man stand face to face with a tanker in Tiananmen Square, and now the cameras are more in number and those doing the reporting are just as fearless. Oscilloscope Laboratories has picked up a second documentary film in just as many weeks, grabbing the 2009 IDFA and Sundance-winning doc film from Danish director Anders Ostergaard. The company plans a theatrical release this spring.
Burma VJ tells the story of how video 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.
