A new film festival offers directors the chance to express themselves away from the censors’ gaze.

The Art of Freedom Film Festival in Myanmar. Until recently, it would have been a cruel oxymoron, but January 4, 2012, has marked the end of the four-day event aimed at “broadening the essence and concept of freedom among Burmese people through films”. According to well-known Myanmar comedian and political dissident Zaganar, the entries would be selected based on a filmmaker’s “enlightenment about the essence of freedom”.

The short film festival’s main financial supporter will be pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, while Zaganar, who was set free three years into a 35-year jail term in October, will judge the contest along with director Min Htin Ko Ko Gyi. Awards will be given for the Best Documentary and Best Short Film.

As well as the involvement of Zaganar, who was persona non grata as far as state censors were concerned until his release, what is remarkable for an event in Myanmar is the nature of the festival itself, whose theme is aimed at countering precisely those political and social policies for which the Myanmar government has been (and continues to be) so heavily criticised: the suppression of freedom and the abuse of human rights.

“The people of Myanmar are like birds with broken beaks who have been sent to the cage,” Zaganar told Southeast Asia Globe in Yangon. “Now the people need to understand more about freedom, and organising this festival is a step toward reintroducing these concepts, as well as showing artists that freedom of thought and creativity are also important.”

Given the theme, it has come as a pleasant shock that officials are allowing the festival to be held at all, but an even bigger surprise is the government’s agreement to allow the submitted films to be screened without being censored.
For years Myanmar has dwelt near the bottom of press-freedom surveys, earning a rank of 174 out of 178 countries in the Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index 2010.

This is due to the government’s censorship laws, which, among other regulations, require film directors to submit their scripts for approval to the Video Censor Board under the state-run Myanmar Motion Picture Enterprise before shooting starts. The final film must also be turned over for approval before it can be screened in public.

“I’ve already approached the censor board and explained that we don’t want to submit the films for censorship, and they agreed,” Zaganar said. “We will submit a title and synopsis for each film, but we won’t hand over a DVD of the film itself. We’ll be able to show the films at the festival the way they were created by the filmmakers, without any restrictions.”

Zaganar said he expected young, creative people – more so than established directors – to take advantage of this unprecedented opportunity to express themselves freely.
“There are many established directors from our country who don’t want to take part in the film festival because they think they are very skilful in arts creation and are somehow beyond making short films, but in reality they’re not very good,” he said. “It’s the young generation, new faces with new ideas, who are becoming the best filmmakers in Myanmar.”

Zaganar said he hopes the Art of Freedom Film Festival will help improve the quality of films in an industry dominated by feature-length, romantic comedies of such low quality that they are rarely screened outside of Myanmar.
“For the past 10 years I’ve been trying to convince people in our film industry that we should focus on short films and documentaries, but they don’t understand,” he said. “Now, with this festival, I am starting my push to focus [on them] instead.”

One new director relishing the opportunity to make an uncensored film is Thandar Khine, 39, who had never made a movie before November, when she started working on a project for the festival.

“I already had the idea for my story long before the film festival was announced, but when I heard that the theme was freedom, I realised my story was a good fit and this was my chance to show my idea,” she said.
Despite the lack of restrictive censorship at the festival, Thandar Khine admitted that she was having difficulty overcoming the insidious effects of a lifetime of propaganda by the Myanmar government.

“It’s good that the films don’t need to be censored, but my brain and my heart are still not accustomed to such freedom. Even while I’m shooting, I’m still thinking, ‘Will this be okay? Do I need to cover this or cut that out?’ Censorship has become so ingrained in us that it’s hard to think freely,” she said.

“It’s difficult even finding good filming locations. It’s hard to explain what I’m doing without giving away my story line, and some people are afraid to allow independent filming on their property. We still live in a society where creativity makes people nervous.”