Burma VJ
March 1, 2009 at 7:46 p.m.
“Obviously the point is to tell the story that doesn’t get told,” says Burma VJ attendee Ken Vail.
The phrase seems deceptively simple, but it basically sums up the meaning of True/False. Jason Mann agrees that he never gets to see hard-hitting but little-known documentary films, such as Burma VJ, except when he comes to the fest. “I don’t really have access otherwise,” he says.
Access itself seems to be one of the main themes of Burma VJ. The audience watches as rough but incredibly telling footage plays out while “Joshua,” the narrator and anonymous member of the Democratic Voice of Burma, explains how the organization has taken illegal footage of militants shooting down or arresting protesters and then smuggled it outside the country, thus providing the only available news footage of the country for most news organizations.
The film, which switches between the shaky, harrowing images taken by the journalists to calmer footage of Joshua who, unable to live in Burma, must help run the operation from Thailand. The balance allows the film to hit hard without reminding audiences (painfully) of the Blair Witch Project.
Hardly anyone could have blamed Burma VJ if it had ended on a sad note; the problems in the country are, after all, far from resolved. But despite an overall serious tone, the movie’s message managed to be both invigorating and uplifting. As the exiting audience dropped money for Burma VJ reporters into collection jars after the film, it was apparent that the energy of the film had emanated throughout the theater.
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