Burma VJ

This film offers a rare inside look into the 2007 uprising in Myanmar through the cameras of the independent journalist group, Democratic Voice of Burma. Anders Østergaard was originally planning to make a small half-hour portrait of a young Burmese video reporter, "Joshua", member of an underground network of activists who daily risk their lives to document the oppressive conditions in the country. Then suddenly, in September 2007, chaotic events involving the rebellion of Buddhist monks against Burma's military junta not only threw the local video reporters into the assignment of a lifetime, it also forced the Danish filmmaker to retool his project. While 100,000 people (including thousands of Buddhist monks) took to the streets to protest the country's repressive regime that held the country hostage for over 40 years, foreign news crews were banned to enter the country 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, broadcasting it worldwide via satellite. Risking torture and life imprisonment, the VJs vividly document the brutal clashes with the military and undercover police — and then they themselves became targets of the authorities.