Korean Jinbae Choi receives photos and videos from Myanmar, and they show the devastation in his neighbourhood. The people of Myanmar asked him to show the world what was happening in their land. A month before Choi received the photos, a coup d'état took place in Myanmar.
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When the Chinese Communist Party backtracks on its promise of autonomy to Hong Kong, teenager Joshua Wong decides to save his city. Rallying thousands of kids to skip school and occupy the streets, Joshua becomes an unlikely leader in Hong Kong and one of China’s most notorious dissidents.
Into the Current tells the story of Burma's unsung heroes -its prisoners of conscience -and the price they pay for speaking truth to power in a military dictatorship.
Street art, creativity and revolution collide in this beautifully shot film about art’s ability to create change. The story opens on the politically charged Thailand/Burma border at the first school teaching street art as a form of non-violent struggle. The film follows two young girls (Romi & Yi-Yi) who have escaped 50 years of civil war in Burma to pursue an arts education in Thailand. Under the threat of imprisonment and torture, the girls use spray paint and stencils to create images in public spaces to let people know the truth behind Burma's transition toward "artificial democracy." Eighty-two hundred miles away, artist Shepard Fairey is painting a 30’ mural of a Burmese monk for the same reasons and in support of the students' struggle in Burma. As these stories are inter-cut, the film connects these seemingly unrelated characters around the concept of using art as a weapon for change.
In this special Clarkson, Hammond and May don’t just buy three knackered old lorries and drive miles through the beautiful landscapes of Burma. Oh dear no. They actually have to use their lorries to do something useful. They have to build a real, use able bridge over the River Kwai. On their way to the river they almost bring down Burma’s power supply, encounter the world’s least relaxing truck stop, race around the streets of a deserted capital, saddle up a trio of unhelpful horses and attend a completely deranged party.
This is the original version of the much heralded "Raising The Bamboo Curtain" narrated and produced by legendary travel filmmaker Rick Ray. (Rick later sold partial rights to this program to another producer who hired Martin Sheen to narrate - that cut down and rewritten version is not the same). Sneaking his cameras past Burmese and Cambodian customs officials and getting around the country to produce one of the best travel docs ever made, Rick has outdone himself - again!
Moving to Mars charts the epic journey made by two Burmese families from a vast refugee camp on the Thai/Burma border to their new homes in the UK. At times hilarious, at times emotional, their travels provide a fascinating and unique insight not only into the effects of migration, but also into one of the most important current political crises - Burma.
Insein Rhythm portrays the sights, sounds and rhythms of Yangon’s Insein train station which is also a stone’s throw away from the country’s infamous Insein prison.
Born in 1918 in the ideal village of independence activists in the northern part of Manchuria, pastor Moon Ik-hwan lost his childhood friend Yun Dong-ju under Japanese oppression and Chang Chun-ha during the Yusin regime. Moon survived the mass of modern Korean history, giving hope everywhere suffering.
I AM GOLDEN KAREN is a coming-of-age story of Thaawa, a Karen refugee in search of his identity as a migrant in Thailand. In between puberty and adulthood, he nurtures a strong desire to return to his motherland, Karen State, Burma.
On the 1st of February, 2021, Myanmar’s Military launched air strikes against the Karen minority group. The news reminds K of his time in Karyn State 4 years back. K thinks of General Neda who wanted to build a community for Karen refugees, Khun from Thailand and the village children who helped him. He promised to fight for peace when General Neda sang “Wonderful Tonight” for him. Reminded of his forgotten promise, K roams the street aimlessly. Still, time eats away at his memories.
The expressions of democratization are usually interpreted by elites from two different parties but neglect the real faces/ life of every individual among the resistance rally. The director (a confused twenty-something) looks back upon the 40-year-history of democratization of Taiwan through the life experiences of two old-timers (who are grass-root rebels). He attempts to discover what causes their actions and decisions to be lefties, and what are their limitations.
In this revealing program, noted author and economic activist Naomi Klein offers a lecture and a candid interview in which she expounds on the ideas at the heart of her best-selling book.
Two young Swiss bankers decide to break out of their gilded cage. They leave their promising careers as managers behind and found a relief organisation for underprivileged children in Southeast Asia. In order to finance their humanitarian projects, they put to use not only their know-how from the world of finance, but also the international network they developed as bankers. The glamour world of European metropolises meets the jungle in the Mekong Delta. A reflection on the meaning of life and happiness in life.
This film records the Japanese military's efforts to capture the Burma Road,one of the major supply lines to China, from the British beginning in December 1941. The film ends with the fall of Mandalay in May 1942.
Ashin Yevata, a humble monk from Burma (Myanmar), helped lead the massive protests that spread throughout the country calling for change. Burma is one of the poorest countries in the world, strangled by its own despotic government. Forced labor, torture and systematic genocide are practiced by the ruthless Junta. Ashin was able to escape to the Burma-Thai border, where thousands of Burmese refugees live in fear of deportation and at the will of a corrupt police. He gathered footage from what he and his friends had as well as what he could find on the news.
Wang Shin-hong is suffering from insomnia. A fortune teller advises the Mandalay businessman, whose car and bulging wallet suggest that business is going pretty well, to spend 14 days in a monastery, living life as a monk and eating an apple a day. Such a thing is possible in Burma today. Wang Shin-hong arrives at the rural monastery, has his head shaved and dons a red robe, in which he instantly becomes an authority. During the welcome procession, the village women, their poverty clear from their clothing and the huts in the background, put more than they have in his alms bowl. During his fleeting role as their advisor, Wang Shin-hong soon learns of the villagers’ attempts to survive and make a living as legal or illegal migrants in China, Thailand or Malaysia. He also finds out how the other monks try to generate profit and additional income.
A fascinating documentary, shot in the mountainous north of Burma. No filmmaker is welcome there, because, against the background of a civil war, the jade miners enter the deserted mines illegally. With the aid of filming locals, however, Midi Z was able to compile this portrait. Getting rich quick turns out to be hard and risky work Jade has always been a valuable commodity in Asia. In the mountains in the north of Burma there are valuable deposits of jade. The area forms part of Kachin State, inhabited by many ethnic groups which found themselves embroiled in the Civil War in 2010 with the Burmese government. Jade mining was halted because of the conflict. Thousands of workers, however, went to the war zone in order to dig for illegal jade. It turned the region into a no-go area and the filmmaker Midi Z, who had so far made feature films in Burma, saw no opportunity to go and film there. It was far too dangerous. © iffr.com
Names of Revolution recalls the memories of those who participated in the struggle to rewrite the history of the “Busan-Masan Democratic Protests,” which has been under-represented in modern Korean history. As the then college students, seamstresses, mold technicians, combat police, workers, bus drivers, advertising planners, and photojournalists pour out their memories from over 40 years ago before the camera, vivid words come to life.
They’ve become the human face of inhuman barbarity. Leaders like Hitler, Idi Amin Dada, Stalin, Kim Jong Il, Saddam Hussein, Nicolae Ceausescu, Bokassa, Muammar Kadhafi, Khomeini, Mussolini and Franco governed their countries completely cut off from reality. These paranoid leaders were driven to abuse their power by the pathology of power itself. Dictators are driven by a relentless, thought-out determination to impose themselves as infallible, all-knowing and all-powerful beings. But they are also men ruled by their caprices, uncontrollable impulses, and reckless fits of frenzy, which paradoxically render them as human as anyone else. The abuses they committed were clearly atrocious, yet some of them were as outlandish as the characters portrayed in the film The Dictator. They sunk to depths worthy of Kafka: so incredibly absurd, they are outrageously funny.
When US-raised Jaden returns to his birthplace Myanmar, to search for his roots, he discovers a shocking truth, a new love and ultimately a possible future in his homeland.