VIDEO
From the Streets of Myanmar’ is a series of films using audio messages received from one Burmese photojournalist. These conversations have taken place over the year following the military coup. All the photos and videos were captured by creatives connected to the VR project.
These are not reports but one persons’ experience of living in a post coup Myanmar.
The military stepped up arrests and beatings of anyone suspected of supporting the anti-coup protests.
EP3: What Future?
After many months of protests, and continued uncertainty about the future, the personal toll of the conflict begins to show.
EP4: Covid-19 hidden Toll
The harsh realities of life in Myanmar during the Covid-19 pandemic under military rule.
EP6: military control
The military is doing everything they can to instill fear in people in Myanmar and crush their spirits.
These episodes were filmed under extremely hostile conditions. You can acknowledge our journalist’s persistence and courage by sharing the videos and following his ongoing work on his page.
April 2024 // Screening at UPFI Film Center, The Philippines, as part of the festival “DIARIES AND DREAMS: FILMS OF RESISTANCE FROM MYANMAR”
May 2023 // Screening and Panel discussion at Cinemata Big Screen: Stories of Solidarity, Chiang Mai, Thailand as part of the Digital Right Asia-Pacific 2023 #DRAPAC23 Assembly.
April 2023 // Selection at the Tampere Film Festival, Finland, in the category “International Competition 3: Stuck in the System”
March 2022 // Screening at the Movies That Matter Festival in The Hague, Netherlands.
December 2021 // Launching at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand in Bangkok during the Burma Spring Benefit Film Festival
“A (p)manel a day keeps democracy away”
Women’s voices continue to be underrepresented, if not denied, in government institutions and processes and in the public and academic arena. One of these seemingly innocuous, but actually pernicious form, is the proliferation of “manels”, i.e all-male panels, and their denial of women as subject-matter experts. Women activists from Myanmar were particularly struck that Manels persisted in the pro-democracy movement fighting against dictatorship in spite of the promises of gender equity and social inclusiveness for a New Burma. And this, often with the support of international organizations claiming to be promoting human rights and spreading democracy.
Since November 2020, Salween Institute (SI)’s Executive Director started to collect documentation of manels involving organizations from Myanmar, which eventually resulted in the first Manels Exhibition in Chiang Mai, Thailand in March 2023 (read our article).
For International Women’s Rights Day 2024, Info Birmanie and Visual Rebellion Myanmar present a documentary about Burma’s Manel Watch fight for equality and representativity. The interviews were conducted during the second Manel Exhibition that was held at SEA-Junction, Bangkok on October 2023. The documentary touches on the lack of representation of female experts, including a focus on the doxxing and online threats against Burmese women activists.
“A project supported by the ‘Staying Resilient Amidst Multiple Crises in Southeast Asia initiative’ of SEA Junction in partnership with CMB Foundation.”
This news video is part of a film made up of six short documentaries, “Burma // After the Uprising”, produced with the support of Mairie de Paris and available soon.
January 2024 // Launching of the feature-length documentary at Forum des Images, Paris during the festival Etat du Monde (‘State of the World’)
March 2024 // Screening of Panels at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand (FCCT) during the event
‘Banish the Manels, The Quest for Diversity”
If you want to screen any of those documentaries, please contact us and request a private link.
“Voices of Women Researching Post-Coup Myanmar”
Five women present the topic of their research, how their work was impacted by the coup and they find ways to complete their study in those challenging circumstances.
This short documentary was produced during our “Beyond Academia: Research Communications Workshop” that was held in Chiang Mai, Thailand prior to the International Conference on Burma in CMU (ICBM24) as part of the Knowledge for Democracy Myanmar’s Knowledge Marketplace, with the support of IDRC. The workshop provided advanced communications training for a dozen young researchers to further communicate their research to the media, policymakers and other researchers.
Five of them, Ngu Wah Win, Yin May Oo, Tin La Pyae Woon, ‘Aye’ and Kasmita Basing, chose to testify in this documentary, while Yin Lae Aung, who initiated the Rangoon-Voice Cast platform, published an article on her experience as a pro-democracy, non-violent and feminist activist forced into exile in Thailand in Minds of the Movement magazine.