Anders Ostergaard
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.
This is in fact the battle that we all need to fight in our lives to overcome our fear of doing important things, the most important moments in anyone's life is to battle your fear and just do what you need to do.
- Joshua expresses in the film a fear that people will forget what is going on in Burma so what do you hope that this documentary will achieve?
Obviously it's helping to keep this issue alive, this film won't make any political change in Burma, we have been on the road with this now for six months and it's drawing attention to Burma and keeping the issue alive at a time when maybe things would get forgotten again.
- How did you meet Joshua and get him involved in the project?
I was interested in the VJ phenomenon before the uprising so I had met Joshua in Bangkok in early 2007 where he was coming out of camera training, he was just one of the junior members at the time he was not high profile, but I just felt that he had some special qualities.
He was one of the cheekiest and most daring reporters but at the same time he was very well respected and most of all he was very keen to talk about this story and about Burma, that's what made the film.
- What was the filming process did you shoot in Burma?
I was only there for a week and I wasn't shooting a whole in side Burma. The idea of the film was that the Burmese would get the footage and I would put it together and make a coherent story out of it.
- What were the difficulties that faced then while the revolution was going on?
Well first of all this is a very risky business because if you are caught with a camera you can go to prison for life so for them just to get the footage done and get it out of the country was an incredible challenge.
For us it was trying to deal with very chaotic material that was coming for all kinds of sources. We didn't know who had shot the footage, from where or when so we had to do quite a bit of detective work to piece the story together.
- When was the decision made that the majority of the footage for the film was to come from reporters?
Well that came pretty early on because it was clear from the beginning that what they could get would be so much more interesting than what I would be able to get, a Burmese camera man will not be noticed in a crowd the same way a white guy would be.
They could swim in the sea of people and get to places that I would never be able to get, also because of their local knowledge.
Burma VJ is released 17th July
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw