At the moment, Myanmar (Burma) seems to be opening up slightly. Just before it did so, the young filmmaker Midi Z returned to his country of origin to shoot a small but remarkable film. In poor countries it’s all about money - to the point of being tragicomical.
Wang Xing-hong has been a Burmese guest-worker in Taiwan, but now there have been elections in his country, he decides it’s time to return. During the journey from Rangoon to his birthplace, we hear propaganda songs on the radio about the blessings of democracy. When he sees his mother again after 12 years, she asks: 'Have you eaten?'
With those same words, the mother of filmmaker Midi Z welcomed her son when he returned in 2008 after an absence of 10 years. In early 2011, soon after the elections, Midi Z went back again. This time he brought his camera, to shoot Return to Burma.
Xing-hong has the sad duty of returning the ashes of a friend who had a fatal accident in Taiwan. But there’s also the joy of seeing friends and family. Young people still gather together to sing romantic songs and dream of working in China or even America. Xing-hong's younger brother is about to leave for Malaysia. Xing-hong himself would prefer to stay and goes to markets and smuggling centres to see if there are any opportunities for him.
Return to Burma reflects a poor yet hopeful society in images that follow the countryside and the people's movements and often have a documentary approach. A rare Tiger too, because we don’t see many films from Burma at all.
Programmer Note by Gertjan Zuilhof:
Of course this is a documentary/realistic film about the least-known land in Southeast Asia. Or course the film is also autobiographical. The young filmmaker also lived in Taiwan for ten years before returning to Burma. The film was of course shot partly clandestinely and that is enough to make it a special monument. And of course the filmmaker learnt in Taiwan how to make a beautiful and sensitive film with long static images.
But this film, which is clear, simple, realistic and authentic, also has an underlying and unexpected aspect - humour.
At moments when the dialogues in the film most resemble basic lessons in economics or consumer research - protagonist Xing-hong investigates minutely how he can build up an existence in his poverty-stricken land - a dry humour infiltrates the reasoning. Right in the middle of the film there is the most bizarre detailed conversation between the protagonist and the owner of a tuk-tuk. A comic question and answer session that may not have been intended to be humourous, but which is made comical by the filmmaker. Very funny.
Before the film started we were told that this is the first feature film ever shot in Birma. A logical question for the Q&A afterwards was about particular problems in making this film. Three challenges were mentioned: (a) censorship, being avoided but I missed the details, (b) crew of only three persons, and (c) emotions when filming in own home town, making it difficult to stay objective.
The final product can very well be of interest for people from Birma living abroad nowadays, if only to let them see what changed in the mean time. An initial form of democracy is one aspect, but we see and hear only the official promotions around the elections. A second phenomon we see is the advent of western style pop music, though a-typical for local folks, yet serving as an explicit escape from the past.
The end result has all the appearances of a documentary. The home coming after many years is only a means to an end, namely to show contemporary Birma. For this purpose we see our main character asking about wages and prices, which is the best way to get information that is particularly useful when coming from a different country with a much higer standard of living. He was used to wages 10 times as high as what was normal in current Birma.
What struck me most was the difference between the village where our main characters originally came from, compared with the city that we visited at a later stage. In the village we saw no electric devices, to name an example, while the village appeared to be full of them. The latter is shown explicitly by visiting a shop that sells micro waves, phones, and more such devices. All this was also relevant for us, living under very different circumstances. We could easily consider it a sightseeing tour in Birma, covering the old ways (the village) as well as the modern ways (the city) next to each other.
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Webreview from JvH48 on 31 January 20:25
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Mark as improper
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