Amsterdam: ZINDOC; Nesodden: Ten Thousand Images [co-producer], 2022. 1 online resource (70 min.). In Burmese and English with English subtitles.
Watertown, MA: Documentary Educational Resources [distributor], 2021. 1 video resource (56 mins.). In Burmese and English with English subtitles.
Two years have passed since February 1, 2021, when the military staged a coup d’etat against the civilian government in Myanmar (Burma) over claims of a flawed election in 2020, effectively ending a decade of experimentation with partial democracy. People’s initial shock toward the coup was quickly followed by resistance in many forms: street protests across cities, strikes by government employees as part of the civil disobedience movement (CDM), a parallel civilian government and, after a brutal response to peaceful mobilization, armed resistance. This democratic breakdown and the ongoing violence have impacted millions of lives in the country and abroad, with arbitrary arrests, killings, and destruction of property. Recounting the events starting from the early days of resistance, Padauk: Myanmar Spring and Myanmar Diaries allow their audiences a closer look at resistance from ordinary citizens and the atrocities they endured while also helping them imagine the future of civilian resistance against a brutal institution that has dominated Burmese politics for decades since independence.
Padauk: Myanmar Spring is a documentary film by Jeanne Marie Hallacy and Rares Michael Ghilezan. The filmmakers form part of Kirana Productions, the team behind several recent films of insightful stories from political prisoners and marginalized communities in Myanmar, such as This Kind of Love (2015), Sittwe (2017), and Mother, Daughter, Sister (2018). The film, the team’s first in Myanmar after the coup, tells the story of civilian resistance against the coup through the words of ordinary people who came together to help make the massive grassroots mobilization possible.
The film reveals how the coup shaped political awareness among youths; in fact, many protest organizers did not have prior experience with political activism. “I am 19 years old, and this is my first political experience,” answered one protestor, as scenes showed her rallying around the crowd with a megaphone. Nant, a 26-year-old office worker from Yangon who appeared frequently and narrated throughout the film, believed she became an adult during this experience, admitting it was her first time “raising [her] voice against the military.” Yet, this lack of experience did not deter the participants’ ability to coordinate protests. Originally from Taunggyi, Yin Nyein worked with other migrants, students, and union workers in Hledan, a township in Yangon known for its student population and private education centres. Some protests also took creative forms, as was the case with Zaw, a public school teacher who used his music skills and organized a “drum revolution.”
The film also suggests the youth-led resistance movement has goals beyond overturning the coup and transferring the country’s leadership back to the popular National League for Democracy (NLD) based on the 2020 election results. Instead, the interviews show a growing recognition of historical state violence against ethnic and religious minorities as well as demands for justice and equality; in Zaw’s words, “We are fighting to unveil all the injustices in our country.” The audience can find a clear description of the sentiment in an interview with Maung Saungkha, a poet and member of a multi-ethnic protest alliance named General Strike Committee of Nationalities (GSCN), Yin Nyein’s descriptions of her conversations with young people regarding the human rights violations against Rohingya people, and the narrator Nant’s reflections on learning from her previous prejudices and ignorance regarding the rights of ethnic minorities. In its later parts, the film also discusses the transition to armed resistance, which some interviewees later joined, and state repression in the borderlands.
While the film provides rich contextual information for those unfamiliar with Burmese politics, it does not cease to be personal. The narrative by Nant ties together the interviews as she recalls her memories of meeting and working alongside fellow activists like Zaw and Maung Saungkha. In one scene, Nant, who has continued her resistance work abroad, checked in on the phone with Zaw, who by then had escaped from Yangon to receive armed training in the borderlands; we get to hear of Zaw’s hardship in Kayah State, with the images of him in military gear. This interaction shows Nant and Zaw as interviewees and as people working together and making personal sacrifices for a cause they believe in. Another scene that stands out is Maung Saungkha’s emotional retelling of the violent repression of peaceful protestors, including some protests he was encouraged to join. The pain in his words, impossible to understand for anyone who was not in the protests, provides a glimpse of the emotions felt by protestors and organizers as they stood against the military.
Compared to Padauk, Myanmar Diaries follows a rather unconventional format, produced by a collective of anonymous young filmmakers. The audience may struggle to string together a cohesive story from all the scenes, but that does not seem to be the film’s aim. Instead, the film fuses video recordings of real-life events by citizen journalists, dramatic re-enactments inspired by personal stories, and performance art to interpret the collective raw emotions of the people since the coup. Sometimes emotionally rattling to watch, the scenes translate what the audience may have heard from news about the country into something they can relate to at a personal level: family members taken by soldiers, broken relationships, government workers deciding to strike at great personal expense, activists avoiding arrests, ordinary people escaping to borderlands to participate in armed resistance.
The film’s narrative format successfully captures the gradual progression of collective emotions as the events since the coup unfolded. The first scene shows an aerobics instructor in Naypyidaw recording her exercise, oblivious to the barricades, soldiers, and coup operation in the background (this video clip understandably went viral later). Absurd as it is, the scene represents the reaction of many people to the coup in its early first days. Recordings of civilian resistance and state violence quickly followed, and so did their emotional heaviness: children crying as soldiers and police took away their parents without a warrant, brave civilian journalists recording beatings and killings from their apartment verandas, and a performance art scene that visualizes suffocation under military rule. Hybrid fiction and non-fiction, at certain points, converge in their ability to demand from the audience raw emotions of anger and sadness as well as a deep perception of injustice.
All individuals in the film’s fictional re-enactments and armed resistance scenes are anonymous, with their faces either blurred or placed away from the camera. This decision is practical (it protects the identities of actors, most of whom were inside the country at the time of filming), but it also has the effect of abstractifying individual stories into the common experience many shared under the coup. One such shot records a government employee’s decision to participate in CDM at the risk of losing his public housing, an example of the real costs to personal lives that came with standing up to the military. Another scene shows a young woman making difficult decisions on an unexpected pregnancy while her partner joined the armed resistance in the borderlands. Scenes like these throughout the film show a complex, human side to the news stories of government employees joining CDM and youths running away to join armed resistance.
Another feature that stands out is the use of up-close, point-of-view shots, which bring the audience into the world of resistance fighters and their lives. This artistic choice becomes more important in the later scenes that follow the lives behind armed resistance: one learned to hold a gun for the first time, some trekked in the borderlands with all their belongings, and another grieved next to a loved one’s casket. These shots establish a necessary, intimate ambiance that leaves the audience with anger and frustration as well as a sense of admiration for the difficult decisions many had to make in their acts of resistance.
Although not explicitly discussed, the two films also hint at how the path of current civilian resistance could be different from previous events of civilian resistance, such as the 8888 Revolution or the Saffron Revolution. One key message is that economic transformations since 2010 have created a new generation of tech-savvy youth who grew up under widespread use of Internet technology, experience with free speech and, although flawed and short-lived, a taste of democracy. In Zaw’s words from Padauk: “We are not from the era of no electricity and no internet.” This is also reflected in both films’ prominent use of mobile-phone recordings by citizen journalists, which would have been much more difficult under previous protests. This difference allows for a well-connected network of civilian resistance and detailed recording of atrocities under military rule.
Admittedly, the films do not explore in detail certain important questions about post-coup politics, for example, the National Unity Government (a parallel civilian government set up by former legislators) or response to the coup and support for resistance by the country’s many ethnic organizations. However, the films will leave viewers with a deeper understanding of Myanmar youths’ role in sustaining passionate resistance against the military rule and a sense of admiration for their many personal sacrifices.
Htet Thiha Zaw
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor