‘Burma VJ’ Short-listed for Oscar

The award-wining film “Burma VJ” has been placed on the short list for consideration for one of the movie industry’s top prizes—the Oscar for best feature-documentary.

“Burma VJ,” which tells the story of how Burmese video journalists filmed the September 2007 demonstrations in Rangoon, is among 15 productions on the 2010 Academy Awards short list. The list will be whittled down to five finalists, to be announced in February 2010, and the winner will take the stage at the Oscar presentations in Hollywood on March 7.

“Burma VJ” has already won 33 awards—including the World Cinema Documentary Film Editing and Golden Gate Persistence of Vision prizes.

Most of the material for the film was shot by Burmese video journalists at great personal risk and smuggled out to the Norway-based Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB). A Danish professional film-maker, Anders Østergaard, took over direction of the film, which was released to wide acclaim this year.

Several of the video journalists were arrested and sentenced to terms of imprisonment. Many others are in hiding.

Toe Zaw Latt, DVB’s Thailand bureau chief, told The Irrawaddy on Friday the inclusion of “Burma VJ” on the Oscars short list had come as a surprise.

“We only wanted the world to know how difficult it is for journalists to work in Burma and to show the world how big the uprising was,” he said.

The video journalists whose work created “Burma VJ” fed the outside world with evidence of the brutality used by the authorities to suppress the peaceful demonstrations. They infuriated the regime by slipping by every attempt to close media access to the bloody events on Rangoon streets.

Among Hollywood professionals to hail the achievements of the video journalists was actor Richard Gere, who described “Burma VJ” as an important and credible document.

Toe Zaw Latt said the inclusion of “Burma VJ” on the Oscars short list would give heart to the video journalists still in prison. ‘This will help them a lot. They will be very happy to hear the news.”