Anders Ostergaard Talks Burma VJ

4 months ago 13th Jul 09:30

Anders Ostergaard is a filmmaker who has made his name in documentary movies, with the likes of Gasolin already under his belt.

He returns to the big screen this week with the release of Burma VJ and Icaught up with him to talk about how he got involved with the project and where his fascination with the VJ reporters in Burma came from.

- Your latest movie Burma VJ is about to be released here in the UK so can you tell me a little bit about it?

It's a story about the phenomenon of VJ, citizen reporters, who are trying to show things to the world that could not have been show before because of the proliferation of little handicams and the fact that you can upload films onto the internet and get it out of your country this has allowed them to cover revolution that otherwise would never have been known.

- For those who don't know what happened in Burma can you just explain about the uprising?

Burma has suffered from an extremely repressive military regime for forty years, one of the cruellest regimes on earth that can only be compared to North Korea, and they have been living on the fear because of the very big threat of secret police and informers on every street corner.

They dare not talk about politics, if you go to Burma you cannot talk to anyone about politics as they are too scared of that, but at the same time they have the same aspiration as the rest of us for freedom.

And that resulted in a big uprising led by the Buddhist monks, which is a big important factor in social life in Burma, they suddenly got on their feet and demanded their freedom and democracy. So that was a massive event when suddenly the fear was broken and masses of people went out onto the streets to spread what they wanted. 

- How did the film project come about?

It was quite a coincidence because I was trying to make a film about Burma right before this event happened and I had decided that I had wanted to make a film about these VJ reporters at a time when they weren't doing anything spectacular, they were just trying to make day to day stories about life in Burma.

But the amazing thing was as I was working on this the revolution happened and these relatively young guys, twenty six and twenty seven, were thrown onto the world scene so to speak. They were suddenly the only ones who could deliver footage to CNN and the BBC and the other big media so that was as incredible coincidence.

- What was it about this country's story that interested you?

Deep down it's a battle of your own fear because these people have been so heavily oppressed that fear is totally inside them they are afraid of any political statement and then suddenly everyone gets together to fight this fear they all get into the streets and exert themselves.