Myanmar's once-booming film industry gears up for act two
A recent spate of productions by fearless Myanmese documentary makers has raised hopes of a renaissance in the country's moribund film industry, finds David Eimer.
The Myanmar Motion Picture Museum, like many buildings in Yangon, has seen better days. Stray cats mooch around the exterior of the dilapidated structure, which dates back to the early 20th century and the time when Myanmar was a British colony. So decayed is it that the few exhibits normally on show - ancient cameras and lights, old film posters - have been removed to a store room, leaving the building empty.
The museum's decline mirrors that of Myanmar's film industry. It used to be the biggest and most vibrant in Southeast Asia. Now, though, there are fewer than 50 working cinemas in Myanmar, a country of almost 54 million people, and most of the feature films made here are shot in a matter of days on shoestring budgets, before being released straight to DVD.
But if Myanmar's once proud movie industry is a shadow of its former self, the country now leads the region in the making of documentary films. Over the past seven years, there has been an explosion in the number of documentaries being produced here. Now, it is documentary filmmakers who are pushing the boundaries of freedom of expression in a country ruled, until very recently, by a junta that imprisoned its opponents, banned protests and tightly controlled all media.
Film festivals screening those documentaries are flourishing, too. The Wathann Film Festival is now a fixture every September and there are specific events showcasing films made on mobile phones and documentaries and movies with lesbian and gay themes. This year's edition of the annual &Proud LGBT Film Festival starts on January 28, in Yangon.
"Documentaries are much closer to real life in Myanmar than mainstream movies are," says filmmaker Thaiddhi, over coffee in one of downtown Yangon's growing number of shopping malls. "Mainstream movies are still heavily censored here: they're not allowed to show poverty. But we want to show the lives of ordinary people and we can do that in documentaries, so they're the best way to reflect on our society."
Thaiddhi shot his first documentary in 2005, making him a veteran by local standards. The 32-year-old has been joined by an ever-increasing number of young filmmakers turning out documentaries on everything from the marginal status of the disabled in Myanmar to the environmental impact of mining, the effect of land grabs on farmers, the lives of ordinary people doing everyday jobs and the country's obsession with football and the English Premier League.