March 1, 2008 - The death of Japanese journalist Kenji Nagai five months ago in Myanmar (Burma) put the country right in the center of Japan's radar. Irene Marty, a Swiss journalist, hopes the release of her documentary "In the Shadows of the Pagodas" in Tokyo on March 15 will offer residents further opportunity to understand a country that has lived under a military regime for the past 46 years.
The government is accused of atrocities that range from the persecution of ethnic minorities to, according to a 2002 Human Rights Watch report, having the highest number of child soldiers in the world. Myanmar ranked 164th out of 168 countries on the Reporters Without Borders press freedom index in 2006.
Marty, 49, expresses fear for all those who marched last year in the first uprising against the regime since 1988.
Saying the regime uses torture and slave labor as weapons of choice against dissenters, Marty is disappointed by the international community's failure to make a significant effort to determine the whereabouts of the monks and civilians who were arrested in September's clampdown. "What still shocks me nowadays is that there is still so little wondering or questioning about where these monks are now," she says. "Some monasteries are empty--they have been closed down--they are guarded by the military. But where did all these monks go?"
It is this same concern and energy that courses through her documentary, and that over four years helped her gain the trust of those living in the inhospitable rain forest between Thailand and Myanmar.
The freelance filmmaker worked for German and Swiss television networks before setting up her own company, Kairos Film, in 1991.
But of all of her work, Marty says this film is particularly personal. "I have made films of American Indians. I have made films in Africa, in Russia--always covering hot issues, but nothing ever before caught my heart so much."
During her first visit to Myanmar in 1981, she had no idea of the regime's brutality. On her second visit in 1998, she re-encountered a family who now trusted her enough to tell her about the dark shadows that dominated the "land of a thousand pagodas." She says: "I was ashamed that as a journalist and a documentary filmmaker I didn't know what was happening there. I returned to Switzerland and began to do research."
Marty's studies convinced her that as "no one was speaking about the ordinary farmers" in Myanmar, the film shooting, set to take place from 2001-2003, would focus on ordinary people's lives.
The film also moves from the colors and bustle of the country's "tourist corridor" to a more sinister reality. Along the way the narration gives way to intimate testimonies from residents of camps just kilometers from the front line of the world's longest running civil war. It charts the regime's impact on the Karen, Shan and other ethnic groups, who eke out a day-to-day existence of fear and struggle on the edge of the world's attention.
The film is shot in locations so remote that exiled Burmese communities have been shocked to discover the persecution documented by the film. Since it was made, it has been used by the United Nations as evidence of abuse in the region.
Children face the camera and talk about watching their parents' murders and of their dreams to one day become soldiers so they can fight the military. Students talk about their decision to become freedom fighters.
Marty posed as part of a tourist promotion team to get past the ban on foreign journalists, and later undertook frequent illegal visits in the border regions. The film also coincided with her own struggle against cancer, but her determination never faltered, she says.
"When it comes to Burma, the brutality is so huge I found that many times people would not believe me. This gave me strength to go on. The gasoline (that drove me) was my promise to the people and I had to keep my promise to bring it to the world."
If silence and suppression are the tools of this regime, then listening to the oppressed and amplifying their voices just might be the beginning of the cure.
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The film opens March 15 at Uplink X in Tokyo's Shibuya.
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(IHT/Asahi: March 1,2008)
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