Watertown, MA: Documentary Educational Resources, 1 video resource (90 min.) in Burmese with English subtitles.
A Thousand Fires is a documentary film by Saeed Taji Farouky, a filmmaker whose previous work has featured careful portrayals of people in violent conflict and political crises around the world: their lives, their aspirations, and their adaptation to surrounding insecurity. These films have connected the audience with stories of a long-distance runner in Western Sahara (The Runner, 2013), national battalion soldiers in Afghanistan (Tell Spring Not to Come this Year, 2015), and a Palestinian father in London and his life memories (Strange Cities are Familiar, 2022).
In A Thousand Fires, a family in Central Myanmar is at the story’s core, set in the Magway region (those familiar with the country would guess the location to be near Chauk and Yenangyaung, towns historically famous for crude oil production since British colonial rule). Thein Shwe and Htwe Tin form a husband-and-wife duo raising a family and making a living from artisan oil wells, as do many in their local community. The film emphasizes the vast amount of time devoted to extracting oil from the hand-dug wells in the backyard, pouring oil into barrels, conversing with dealers, and tending to work injuries; oil seems to seep from and stick to many frames of the film. Farouky balances this by interspersing quotidian, intimate moments of family bonding and aspirations for a better life. The couple makes trips to astrologers to ask whether they will be able to afford a motorcycle by the end of the year or whether one son’s professional football career will take off. To take action on dreams is not only extracting and selling barrels of crude oil; it is also making trips to pilgrimage sites and to their son’s soccer practices.
Such scenes push beyond the narrative that one might expect from the film title, especially given its release in 2021, the year the Myanmar military staged a coup against the civilian government, ended a decade of progress towards democracy, and triggered widespread resistance and conflict throughout the country. Granted, the scenes still reveal the family’s financial challenges and the hard life of an artisan oil digger. Rather than explaining the history of government treatment of oil diggers, Farouky’s film shows how the government’s actions impact their lives, past and present. Thein Shwe recounts how in the past oil workers like him had to run away from authorities as they would raid the settlements and attempt to arrest the workers, many of whom did not have legal protections for their business. The family watches soccer games and military recruitment ads on television.
But the “thousand fires” here also represents the deep desires and the drive of Thein Shwe and Htwe Tin to better their lives. This is evident in the story of their son, Zin Ko Aung, as he pursues his dream of becoming a professional soccer player. In their support for his dreams, the family discusses how this may be the ticket to financial security and an escape from their reliance on extracting crude oil. This desire for better lives and financial security is a metaphorical fire that drives the family—and manifests itself in other forms in many families in the community and the country.
Beyond a metaphor, though, fire serves as a visual aid for storytelling. Motifs of flame and smoke appear throughout the scenes, whether it is smoke pouring out of soil covered with oil waste, flames bursting from digging wells, or the bubbling mud volcano local communities worship as the purported abode of nagas (creatures in Burmese mythologies that resemble serpents). This is where Farouky’s storytelling goes beyond expectations of the documentary tradition. The scenes of crude oil flows and mud volcanoes seamlessly transition into visual imaginations of nagas sporting black scales resembling crude oil. These moments exceed elucidation of events in a documentary way to make resonant the underlying faith, imagination, and desires.
While the film was released in 2021, there is not much discussion on how working-class families like that of Thein Shwe and Htwe Tin are surviving under the military coup, or how their aspirations have changed in response to growing violence and economic instability (possibly due to production timelines). These discussions would have added richness to the story, as numerous stories of tragedies since the coup have left little room for exploring many families’ goals and aspirations as they survive under violence and repression. Nevertheless, the film provides a much-needed and intimate portrayal that goes beyond survival and towards dreams and aspirations despite the many challenges of life in the Global South.
Htet Thiha Zaw
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor