By TODD PITMAN
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
YANGON, Myanmar (AP) _ When Burmese filmmaker Htun Zaw
Win decided to make a short comedy about the tragically bizarre process of
getting movies made in his oppressed homeland, he knew exactly what to base it
on—real life.
“Ban That Scene!” makes a daring
mockery of Burma’s dreaded film censorship board, whose members are cast as
comical guardians of a tyrannical state’s idealized image of itself.
Sunk into the faux-leather chairs
of a government screening theater, they face off against a sputtering film
projector that bathes them in the dim reality of their own fallen nation. The
officials are offended at everything that appears on screen—beggars,
corruption, power outages, even a street fight—because they all allegedly make
the state look “undignified.”
“Ban that scene! Remove it!” the
bespectacled censor boss bellows over and over, jabbing an index finger
through the twilit darkness with a triumphant, lips-pursed “hrrrrummph.”
Beyond its highly satirical take
on modern day filmmaking in Burma, what’s most striking about the movie by
Htun Zaw Win, who goes by the name Wyne, is that it was made at all.
Its existence, coupled with the
fact that Wyne has seen no jail time, offers proof that some artists are
growing brave enough to criticize the establishment as the nation’s new
reform-minded government begins allowing a level of free expression that was
unheard of here during decades of suffocating military rule.
But the film also proves just how
much here remains unchanged. Wyne says he never submitted “Ban That Scene!” to
the government’s Film and Video Censor Board for approval because they would
almost certainly have, well, banned the entire thing.
The board’s mandate is limited to
screening films made for sale, and Wyne says he chose to forgo all profit to
ensure it would be produced uncut. The sacrifice was essential, he said, “to
show the public both at home and abroad what barriers filmmakers are facing.”
The 18-minute short was first
shown in the former capital Rangoon in January during a film festival dubbed
“Art of Freedom” that was hosted by opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and the
prominent local comedian Zarganar.
It has been posted on YouTube and
Wyne has so far distributed about 10,000 copies on DVD for free. But the
movie’s impact has been limited. It cannot be shown in local cinemas, and the
vast majority of Burma’s 60 million people are out of reach—living in thatched
huts without electricity or internet lines in a rural countryside that’s
remained almost untouched for hundreds, maybe thousands, of years.
Still, the work is remarkable for
what it contrasts brilliantly throughout—on one hand, the sanitized image of
Burma that the nation’s xenophobic former regime once wanted to portray to the
world; on the other, the tumbledown reality of just how far this place fell
under their rule.
In one scene, the main government
censor’s eyes widen in horror as a disheveled, limping man appears on screen begging
for money to look for a job abroad.
“That makes the state less
dignified,” the censor growls. “If people abroad see it, they would think that
beggars exist in Burma!”
When another bespectacled
censor—acting as a muse of commonsense—timidly suggests that everybody knows
beggars do exist here, the boss gives up only the slightest ground. They “just
exist in real life! Not in this movie!”
In another sequence, the censors
are taken aback when the power goes out during a love scene—an affront, they
say, to the Ministry of Electricity.
When another official notes that
outages are commonplace, the boss trumpets the government line—Burma is not
short on power; it has so much, it has to sell it abroad. (The sad reality is
around 75 percent of people here spend their nights in darkness. The country
exports much of what it produces because so little infrastructure has been
built to channel electricity to those who need it).
Amid the debate, the movie shows
the screening theater’s lights promptly dying—by the time a generator sputters
to life, the boss is snoring loudly.
Wyne, 39, said he has been
surprised at the positive response to the film he has received from a few top
officials in the country’s post-junta regime, which is made up largely of
military officers who retired to join the civilian government.
Wyne said one told him: “This
needs to be shown in public. People need to know what’s happening. Because if
we keep banning scenes like this, we’ll have nothing left to watch.”
Wyne declined to identify the man
or any others who’ve offered praise, however, underscoring the sensitivity of
the subject.
The censor board itself could not
be reached for comment. Zarganar, the comedian, called the satire “an
important work” that shows artists are truly becoming independent again.
For now, though, getting movies
made requires a lot of cash, and not just for production expenses.
Transparency International ranks
Burma the third-most corrupt on Earth, and Wyne says that even banned scenes
can be still get made if substantial bribes are paid.
In one of the movie’s final
skits, the censors are aghast at a sequence showing a civil servant accepting
a box of withered currency bills; their horror turns to delight when baskets
filled with flowers and whiskey are brought into the screening room—a gift
from a desperate producer.
Wyne ends the movie with three
hopeful words: “We can change.”
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