The Flying Circus Project, 2013!
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Wathann Film Festival, Third Block, 15:15-16:15!

1/13/2013

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And now five films from the Festival Board! (Thaiddhi isn’t represented as a director, but he co-wrote the script for the last two.)
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5 Beats Before Death, dir Thu Thu Sein and Katrine Philip
We ended up talking a lot about this film. It’s a tender documentary shot in Mingun Nursing Home (we passed by yesterday!), where the old attempt to let go of their attachments, Buddhist-style, before they die. But the truth is, there’s tons of humour and irony in the lives of the residents of the women’s wing, how their nurse is both fierce and tender, how they cling mischievously to their cheroots and Burmese medicine in spite of medical advice, how they mock the one among them who keeps weeping over her coming death, foretelling that she’ll be reborn as a ghost…

This piece was co-directed by Thu Thu with a Danish filmmaker as part of a Copenhagen initiative, pairing up Scandinavian directors with non-Scandinavians.

Thu Thu: When I was studying overseas, I noticed not a lot of people liked to discuss death. And since these people were more willing to talk about it, I decided to present it from a Buddhist viewpoint. my grandfather was also one of the people who openly discusses death with me and we had long conversations with this and part of the influence comes from him.

Kaffe: I just want to say that as a European the fact that you work with old people and ask how you prepare for death… In Europe it would always be about how are you enjoying your life now? The focus would always be about your life now. So your focus really is Buddhist perspective.

Me: How did the Scandinavian audience react?

Thu Thu: It’s a bit of a sad story. I wasn’t involved in the editing process because I couldn’t afford to travel to Copenhagen. I had to communicate via e-mail. I wasn’t able to make it to the premiere either. And I only received the DVD one week ago.  This is the first time I’m seeing the final cut.

(applause)

Kaffe: Are you happy with it?

Thu Thu: Yes, but I don’t really like the music. But the story is good.
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Into the Ring, dir. Aung Ko Ko
A documentary profile of a young boxer trying to fight his way out of poverty – traditional Burmese boxing seems pretty much like Muay Thai.

Aung Ko Ko: I made this film because I personally don’t like sports. I don’t like football, I don’t like wrestling and basically I’m trying to discover why people enjoy watching other people wrestle. I was basically trying to answer these questions: why do people like it, is this the cause of wars. But these did not make it into the film.

Also in 2006, when we were not yet as open, we had a lot of issues [we could not discuss, such] as poverty. So I tried to reveal that as one of the sub-layers within the film. So I tried to show it as one of the wrestlers who was trying to overcome poverty.

Thaiddhi: In 2006 when this film was made, we were not as open. We had a lot of trouble working as documentary filmmakers, and also because it was hard to film on the streets, because we could get in trouble.

We were trying to tell the stories of ordinary people in the streets. Although it may look like we’re skimming the surface, we really tried to show the social issues that affect people in the country.

Behind the word documentary are the two words “truth” and “evidence”, which are two words that the government is very scared of. So we tried to introduce documentary in this country, and get people to understand what is close to them, what they can relate to.    
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Beyond the Light, dir Myo Min Khin
Another documentary profile, this time of a blind guitarist. Personally, I think this territory is a little stale, but some interesting moments: his irritation with songs about colours, the scene where he imprints a piece of paper at lightning speed with a Braille stencil, then reads a Buddhist scripture back to us. He uses the same technique for musical notation.


Myo Min Khin: This was my first film as a director. I knew the character very well: I used to sit with him at a teashop and we were very good friends. I wanted to make a film because the way he thought about the world was very unique. And this is someone who is very unsatisfied with his life even though he can play the guitar in a way that not a lot of people could. Also I could film it the way I wanted.
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Forest, dir Thu Thu Sein
The River, dir Thu Thu Sein
And back to video art again: two brief sequences of women getting swallowed up by reams of red cloth, seduced by another woman wearing too much eye makeup. What’s this really about? China, apparently – the way Chinese businesses are wrapping their tendrils into every recess of emergent Myanmar.

These were school project films, made while in Prague, under certain conditions: the filmmakers could only shoot with 35mm film, had just 3 rolls, and couldn’t use dialogue. To complete their allegory, they actually searched out a location that looked like the banks of the dam-threatened Ayerawady/Irawaddy – a disused mining site.

Weirdly heavy-handed and propagandistic, IMHO. But I couldn’t give my feedback – tomorrow’s our last day in Myanmar, and I was rushing off with some artists to visit the Teak Bridge.

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Sorry, Wathann Film Festival. Circus people gotta go fly trapezes. Have a good second day of the fest!
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Wathann Film Festival, Second Block, 13:00-14:30!

1/13/2013

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Didja know our translator Thet is also a filmmaker? He directed the first of these movies and cinematographed the second (is that a word?)    
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Working Man, dir Thet Zaw Win
A profile of a solid, hardworking entrepreneur: a roast pork salesman. Simple and unpreachy, yet somehow feel-good-inspiring in a salt-of-the-earth way: there are master craftsmen in all fields, and this guy happens to work in pork. (Apparently it’s so good it gets exported to Singapore occasionally. He’s never been to our country, but his pork has been many times.)    

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(TH)INK, dir Lin Sun Oo
A short meditative monologue by a guy about how he likes the pain he receives when he’s being tattooed. Shot in black and white. Not bad.    

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The Clinic, dir Ko Ju, Aung Ming, The Maw Naing
Frankly, I couldn’t get excited about this one. Yet another documentary, about a village doctor, matter-of-factly treating his patients (one of them was a monk). Said he didn’t like studying anatomy as a university student so he hung out with all the poets, but there’s no sign that he’s a better poet than a doctor. Next please.    

Behind the Screen, dir Aung Nwai Htway

This. Ah, this. The entire Q&A ended up being dominated by this film. You see, Aung Nwai Htway is the son of two famous movie stars of the sixties (whose names I’ve carelessly misplaced). His mother acted in 75 films (including Tender Are the Feet by Maung Wanna, whose work we watched last week) and his father in 15 – in fact, they met on the movie set, and later held their real marriage during their staged wedding scene.
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Over 29 minutes, he narrates their story: a tale both of nostalgia (ah, the golden age of Burmese cinema!) and pain. His mother miscarried while filming a scene where she was being thrown in front of a speeding train (she hadn’t known she was pregnant). Later she split up with her husband – just left him one day with the kids while he was recovering from appendicitis. He went into huge depression, only saved by becoming a more devout Buddhist.

His father visited, but he and his sister were scared stiff that he was going to take her away from their mother, who was away on location all the time anyway – he used to cling to her in bed as a child, waking to find her gone in the morning.

The first time he was actually able to stand together with his mum and father in the same photo was on his wedding day. His mum went on acting in her old age – then one day she fell ill during shooting, leading to a lengthy hospital stay which ate up all his family’s savings, ending with her death in 2007…

He spent just six days shooting the film – single takes of him and his father, pouring out their stories – but over two years to edit: collecting posters and films of his mother to stand in for her, splicing up the films to accompany the narrative, and just breaking down every now and then…
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Aung Nwai Htay: During the editing process sometimes I felt so overwhelmed, it was so heavy, that I had to rest for a while. After a while I tried to calm myself down and start again. And then it would feel overwhelming again. So it was a cycle.
This won Best Documentary at last year’s Film Fest. Folks were weeping during this screening. When his father first watched it, he couldn’t sleep the whole night.

One note: a friend noted that a lot of the works seemed to be produced for a foreign audience: titles were often given in English and no other language. Well, Behind the Screen wasn't - it's intensely personal, and it doesn't really bother to explain to foreigners anything about Burmese cinema. It just is. That's worth something.
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Wathann Film Festival, First Block, 10:30-12:00!

1/13/2013

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We’re watching about sixteen films today, so I’m going to give split-second summaries and reflections for most of these films.    
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New Life, dir M.F.C.
A five-minute documentary: we meet Maung, a man who moved into the city to become a novice monk, but dropped out because he couldn’t pass the scripture-memorising exams. Now he works as a video editor. (No delight at having realized his true dreams; more matter-of-face first-person reportage.)    

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Scrap, dir Maung Maung Thya Mint
The only fiction film in this installment. A guy dying of hunger, thirst, and lack of cigarettes, lies on an apartment floor, waiting for a phone call from a guy who’s promised him money. Nice change of pace: bluesy, mysterious.


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Butchery Day – damn, didn’t get the director’s name here.
Experimental collage of scenes and sounds from a butcher shop. I think this was supposed to impress us with the brutality of human existence, but those ribs looked yummy. Transcendent intentions marred a little by the postscript in English: “You can’t be more horrable than life itself! We are running through the butchery social sphere.”    

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Cat Lady, dir Jenny Zhang
Awww. An old woman who feeds stray cats and dogs – even though she’s clearly poor herself, living barefoot in the street, using her bare hands to splatter fistfuls of mixed beans and rice on the pavement for her furry friends.    

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uninterruptedness, dir Min Htin Ko Ko Gyi
More video art than narrative film – the director’s just angling and twirling his/her camera in front of a computer screen full of poetic sentences in Burmese about death. TT said he liked it. Hmph.


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The Dream, dir Khin Myanmar
Interesting stuff: a profile of a Kachin man (or Kayin? or Karen?) who runs a Christian orphanage. Strict disciplinarian, married his wife because “she works like a horse”, has trouble with minority tribe Kachin kids because of their cultural differences i.e. they don’t look you in the eye when they speak to you… a real sweetheart.


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Sweetie-Pie, dir. Sai Kong Kham
This one won the top documentary prize in 2011, and it mos def deserved to! A simple portrait of a crotchety old man who baby grandson is climbing all over him – he calls him motherfucker and sonofabitch (those were the surtitles, but they’ve assured me the Burmese terms he used are just as rude) but just plainly, plainly loves the kid. Heartwarming and gutbustingly funny.


Thaiddhi later explained something in a Q&A session that unified a lot of these films thematically. It’s still sensitive to talk about poverty in Myanmar: these films therefore use it as a backdrop for human stories, rather than focusing on the theme of poverty itself.
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Day 11: Wathann Film Festival

1/13/2013

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Today we’re descending on the Mandalay Contemporary Art Museum: less a museum than a funky art space, full of carven nudes and tubes of paint.
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One of our initiatives for FCP is funding Myanmar’s first film festival to travel regionally. For the first time, there’ll be a two-day set of screenings at MCAM. A few word from the festival director:    
Thu Thu Shein: We started this Wathann Film Festival in 2011. We started with four people, including myself, Thaiddhi, Aung Ko Ko and Myo Min Khim,

With film screenings it was difficult to find places to screen them. With paintings we could show them in a gallery, but with films it was more difficult. We have now found a space for independent filmmakers to screen their films.

We now have the Wathann Film Festival twice: in 2011 and 2012. We call this film festival (“Wathann” because it means “Monsoon Season”, which is when the festival takes place.)

We feel that having a film festival in Yangon is not enough, because Mandalay is a very big city with very great artists. We would like to invite all of them to participate in our film festival in the coming years.

First I would like to thank Mandalay Contemporary Art Centre for allowing us the space to screen the films. Next I would like to welcome Flying Circus Project and TheatreWorks and all the participating artists for joining us. We would also like to thank all the audience members in Mandalay who are joining us today. Thank you.
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(Pictured: the filmmakers and film festival board. Thu Thu Sein is in lavender, second from the right.)

What we’ll be seeing are mostly award-winners from the 2011 and 2012 festivals in Yangon. Usually there’s a discussion after every film, but translation would be so time-consuming that we’ve opted for a more compact program: at 10:30, 1pm and 3:30 they’ll be screening one hour-blocks of short films, following by Q&As. 

FCP artists are free to wander in the meantime. We’re also given full licence to skip the 1pm slot, so we can visit the Mahabumi Paya or something similarly touristy. Me, I’m staying put for the long haul.
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    Author

    My name's Ng Yi-Sheng, I'm a writer from Singapore, and I've been a Creative-in-Residence with TheatreWorks since 2006. I've served as blogger-documenter for two previous Flying Circus Projects: Singapore/Vietnam in 2007 and Singapore/Cambodia in 2009/2010.

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