BURMA: Despite Loss at Oscars, Film A Testament to Courage

By Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Mar 11 (IPS) - It may have not won an Oscar, but its having been a final contender for the prestigious statue at the U.S. Academy Awards on Mar. 7 has taken ‘Burma VJ’ to heights never achieved by previous films depicting the oppression and courage in military-ruled Burma.

‘Burma VJ’ was beaten by ‘The Cove’, a film about the brutal hunting of dolphins in a Japanese fishing town, for Best Documentary Feature of 2009 at the U.S. Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awards held at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles, and watched by millions of television viewers across the world.

Yet Sunday’s disappointment for ‘Burma VJ’ comes on the back of the remarkable story behind a documentary that was released in May 2009 in a single theatre in the United States to little applause and few earnings.

It then blazed its way through the international film festival circuit, winning 40 awards by the night of the Oscars, including for a prize for documentary film editing at the Sundance Film Festival and the Vaclav Havel prize at the Czech Republic’s One World Festival.

"This film made the world aware of the brutality inside Burma," Aung Zaw, editor of ‘The Irrawaddy’, a magazine on Burma produced by exiled journalists, says of the pulsating, edgy work of cinematography that captures the violent crackdown of anti-government protests led by unarmed Buddhist monks three years ago.

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