Danish director Anders Østergaard, in an article published in The Guardian, explains that the film started out as a modest, yet still very subservise undertaking. Early in 2007, a young Burmese video journalist known as Joshua decided to do a portrait of life on the streets of Rangoon. That summer, while he was working on the documentary, a few protests grew into an uprising, and the film that was meant to provide for the rest of the world a glimpse of "this isolated, almost forgotten country" became a stunning documentary of "the Burmese people's fight for freedom and the brutality of the military regime."
Burma VJ,
which won the Joris Ivens Prize at the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam 2008, was acquired by HBO for broadcast in 2010, but you can see it before then on the big screen at TSL. Screenings are on July 9 through 11 at 5:30 p.m., on July 16 through 18 at 7:30 p.m., and on July 19 at 5:30 p.m. The film runs for 85 minutes. Admission is $5 for students and members of TSL, $7 for nonmembers.
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