Myanmar Diaries

Myanmar Diaries is a truly remarkable document of creative resistance interweaving ten short films by ten young anonymous Burmese filmmakers. The filmmakers combine mobile phone shot footage of protests and civil disobedience with more poetic reflections of life for ordinary people under the brutal military junta. After a military coup, thousands of peaceful protesters are imprisoned and murdered and a popular armed revolt has grown in resistance. The filmmakers are witnesses and participants in an urgent dispatch of citizen journalism as Myanmar is a low priority in the international headlines around the world.

This regime, I just don’t think they have any idea. They are very impulsive, power-hungry and they are basically just clueless how to respond to the crisis. They were very, very short-sighted when they staged the coup [in Myanmar]. [For us, filming] is about being discreet, being alert and just generally being smart about it….Of course, we have to make the [participants] anonymous. How are we going to cleverly hide their faces in a very aesthetic and artful way without resorting to cheap measures like having them wear a mask…we enjoy the challenge, and each piece is made in complete creative freedom, as far as safety allows us!

An anonymous member of the Myanmar Film Collective, from an interview with Business Doc Europe