Burma VJ turns Sundance's eye toward government protests

Burma VJ, a documentary comprising smuggled footage of the uprising against the military dictatorship in Myanmar, debuted in North America over the weekend at the Sundance Film Festival.

Myanmar, often referred to as Burma, has been under military control since 1962. The film offers a firsthand account of the protests in the capital city of Rangoon that began in August of 2007 led mostly by students and women. By September, mostly Buddhist monks led the protest.

These are not the first demonstrations against the military junta. August, 8, 1988 (8-8-88) kicked off massive demonstrations by hundreds of thousands of Burmese citizens to end the dictatorship. As a result, the military reportedly quashed the protests by indiscriminately killing thousands of protestors.

All media in Burma is filtered through a censorship board and the content available online to citizens is restricted. Following the demonstrations that began in August, Internet connections were down entirely. With the preponderance of more compact technology for recording video such as camera phones, citizen journalism has been on the rise. Burma VJ is an example of the use of this technology to turn the public eye toward human rights abuses.

Burma VJ will open at New York's Film Forum this coming May.