The groundbreaking documentary Burma VJ: Reporting From A Closed Country is an amazing achievement. Taking ra footage from on-the-ground video journalists (VJs) is pieces together the story of the 2007 Saffron Uprising in Burma, and the men who managed to capture it for the world to see. Director Anders Østergaard (AO) is the man who pieced it together and we've captured him to tell us more about it...

 MV: The film looked like it was a monumental task, how did it all get going?

AO: The amazing coincidence was that I was working with these guys, and getting to know them, before the operation when they were quite small time. They were just trying to put together little reports for DVB, the satellite station in Oslo. And I was planning to make a modest film about why they were doing that, just a little kind of existential thing, but as we were producing this the uprising happened and our people, particularly Joshua, were thrown in as kind of a catalyst and was crucial to that operation.

MV: That must have been a real shift of pace.

AO: Absolutely! It was quite daunting, the original film was just a little film about my own interests. It was my own little project. Then suddenly we had this new obligation to do well with this material we had to put together. We almost had a historical role to play.

MV: Did being there at the time make it easier to piece the material together as a story?

AO: Only some of it came that month. A lot of it came fairly organised from Oslo, but a lot came later and unlabelled. Some stuff was dumped in border towns in Thailand and only turned up months later. For instance the situation where the guy is shooting from behind a wall, trying to cover some students being beaten up. That only turned up four months into editing! So there was a bit of detective work involved,

MV: How long did it take to go through all this footage?

AO: Ohhh months! Months. We spent two months just viewing the stuff and trying to put it on a timeline, which was a real challenge in itself because a lot of it wasn't dated and there was no information on who took it, when and how. So a couple of months on that, then we were editing for about four more months.

MV: At one point in the film, someone says "People have to be arrested, people have to die, monks too. Our country is different from the rest of the world." Is that something you felt when you were making this? That you were dealing with a country that was far removed from everywhere else?

AO: First of all I was amazed by the courage and the almost kamikaze spirit of these people to throw in everything that they had just to bring about a little change. Or if not even change, just a little attention from the world. They sacrificed everything. That's what this is expressing and that's very overwhelming, you get very curious about what can lead people to this kind of attitude. But it somehow seems that these guys found it too unbearable to grow old under this regime and threw everything in to make a difference. I think it;s a very human thing.

MV: Another thing I felt had a strong impact was seeing this raw footage, do you think this hits people harder than more professional shoots?

AO: Yeah, obviously this is first hand news and is spectacular stuff in that way. But also because we made an effort, I mean already from the footage you get an idea of the subject - the guy who's shooting this - because it's so shaky, because he's hiding behind the wall, you feel the person and his anxiety, his adrenaline; but of course the way I put the film together was to make it important that you feel the person who is filming this. That's what the documentary could bring to it as opposed to the raw news footage.

MV: Another thing is that when you see news items it can be very easy for people outside of these events to forget. Do you think films like this can contribute to a collective memory of events like this?

AO: Definitely, what I was trying to do was take out the 'exotic' of this and try and show that these people has ambitions that are universal: that you can relate to and you can understand. But also that the way they go about technology is as relaxed as any Westerner would do it. All of this was for me about bringing it closer, so it's not some place far away where monks are chanting and walking down some streets. This is just the surface of a people who really have aspirations you can share and understand.

MV: One thing that interested me though was whether these VJs ever doubted there actions, particularly because at one point a monk tells them 'don't film this, you'll make it harder for us'. Do you suspect there's ever a sense of doubt that appealing to the international community is less important than simply working with the people internally?

AO: Well I'm sure they have these dilemmas all the time. Everyone involved has these dilemmas about 'are we protecting our own people if we put them on TV and send them around the world' or these VJs can ask 'am I protecting these people or am I abusing them by telling their story?' There's an ongoing dilemma but the decision is somehow that this has to be done and somehow it represents this battle with fear. One of the key messages of [imprisoned opposition leader] Aung Sung Suu Kyi is actually that you must free yourself from fear, before you conquer your your can never get anywhere and that is when the Generals are in charge.

MV: It's quite easy to look at it from auniversalist point of view, but where there certain things that you, as a foreigner, found it hard to pice together?

AO: Not besides my simple lack of knowledge of the Burmese language! And also my very superficial knowledge of Rangoon, of course I'd spent some time there but I didn't know which streets were where. Fundamentally though I didn't find it a difficult story to follow, to follow where these people were, what they were feeling, what they were hoping for and fearing. For me it was a very obvious, very direct experience. I've seen that the film has no cultural barriers, that it is equally successful in the West, in Latin America, in Asia because it is talking about such fundamental things.

MV: How has the reaction been to the film?

AO: It's been bigger than I expected. What I didn't realise was that Burma is somehow a dormant issue that is there somehow in the back of people's minds. I didn't feel that I had to promote this film from scratch, I felt that I was reigniting a real interest in the cause. Not least in the [United] States. It's been on the agenda for a while but we're just happy to bring it forward again I guess.

MV: Do you think it makes people question their own situation? Often I find people can be sympathetic to nations that seem much worse and can lose sight of changes that can be made in their own country, and lose a sense of personal political responsibility. Do you think perhaps that this film could help encourage that?

AO: I wouldn't know about that, but I think it reminds you what freedom of expression is about. Why these pictures are so crucial, so fundamental to having a society you can live. So maybe it's a reminder of these values.

MV: When you've been dealing with a subject so powerful, does it make it hard as a filmmaker to move onto another subject?

AO: (Laughs) No I think it's more like I've been caught up in the issue, which of course is an enormous privilege: to have made a film that has such a direct function. I've never made anything like it and probably never will again. So I'm just taking time out to give it the time it deserves. But yes, it's right that it takes a bit of time to re-programme yourself after an experience like this?

MV: It hasn't convinced you to stop making films and start your own political activist group then?

AO: (Laughs) I was never a political guy really. It's more my curiosity, or even my existential interest in why they're doing this stuff that drove me to make this film. I then found it has this political function and I have this political obligation to try to use the occasion to promote the Burmese cause. But I didn't start out of political commitment to be honest.

MV: Do you think that makes it easier to present a view of the situation?

AO: I think it gives you the chance to make a slightly richer cinematic experience. If I was an activist, and that was my entire focus, maybe I would lose some of the finer nuances of the story that I hope is also there in the cinema.

MV: Would you call the reporters activists, or media producers?

AO: That's a very good question. If you look at what they're doing you might say they are activists, that they are PR agents for democracy in Burma because they are getting involved in the news they are covering. They are advising the monks on which route to take through the city to get attention, and they are very consciously working on this media, trying to make this a media revolution. So clearly they do have an activist role, which has been criticised by some people, that institutions like the DVB should not get involved with allying themselves with the demonstrators. But I will say that if you look at it realistically and pragmatically, that's what they need to do here and now because anything else would be absurd. The battle for freedom is so fundamental in burma that you can't expect them to keep out of that. I would compare it to the illegal press of the Second World War, who would expect them to be unbiased in what they do?

MV: One final question, on a much lighter note, if a Movie Vortex was sucking out all films in the world: which two would you save?

AO: Two films to be saved for humanity? 2001: A Space Odyssey and... oh, this is difficult! I guess, for me, just my personal taste, Les Quatre Cents Coups by Truffaut.

The film is out in the UK on Friday 17th July and you can read our Burma VJ review here. If you like documentaries you may want to have a look at our interview with Nanette Burstein, or with the main animator of Waltz with Bashir: David Polonsky.

Also, please do read our Burma VJ-inspired commentary on Movies, Corporations and Politics.

If you want to know even more about Burma VJ, you can BE A VJ WIDGET – http://burmavjmovie.com/widget