Episode #87: Revisiting the Burma Spring
For her first post-coup documentary, Padauk: Myanmar Spring, Jeanne Hallacy’s team employed a technique called “in-depth personal storytelling,” and the results were simply stunning.
For those outside the country, the first few months of the protest movement could only be followed remotely. One had to piece together a news story here, a video there, with perhaps a Facebook post or Tweet thread thrown in. But this left a somewhat disjointed view of what was actually happening day by day, as well as obscuring a deeper understanding of the motivations of those leading the nascent democracy movement.
Padauk fills this gap marvelously, by choosing to highlight not the events themselves, but rather the personal stories of several participants. It allows the viewer a much more intimate look into how the movement—and the ensuing crackdown—developed, since the viewer witnesses it through the eyes of those who were intimately involved. Furthermore, Jeanne and her team selected protagonists who come from quite ordinary backgrounds, so had something of an “everyman/everywoman” quality to them, becoming almost Burmese archetypes that would be familiar to many people with connections to the country.
Padauk is one of many films featured in the Burma Spring Benefit Film Festival, a virtual streaming event with all proceeds going to humanitarian projects across Myanmar. Jeanne, who has a several-decade career as a journalist, author, advocate, and filmmaker in the region, discusses the making of the documentary, which she oversaw remotely, as well as the danger of filming as the military became increasingly unhinged and violent.
Jeanne also speaks about the rise of the armed resistance movement. While she describes her work as rooted in the ethos of non-violence, she also admits she is in no position to judge, noting the past 70 years of internal conflict and civil war in the country, along with the more recent outright theft of the government on the part of the military.
Jeanne heaps much praise on local journalists who are risking everything to continue to share the truth of the military’s aggressions to the world, especially those operating in ethnic regions. She describes one such local media outfit which had its offices raided by soldiers, who had to run away to avoid arrest and are now continuing their reporting from deep underground. “This is an example of the kind of really remarkable and courageous reporting that I'm seeing done,” she says.
Noting a unity she had not witnessed in all her years visiting the country, Jeanne sees a cause for optimism now, in spite of everything. “There's an unprecedented political awakening across Myanmar,” she explains. “[It is] about awareness of the ethnic nationalities and their long-standing plight, the marginalization of the ethnic nationalities, the dire poverty that they have been subjected to, the lack of development, and also the severe human rights abuses they have continued to endure even during this political transition period.”
Indeed, in one of the film’s more powerful scenes, Nant, an ethnic Bamar, expresses her own guilt and regret at not doing more to understand the suffering of the country’s ethnic minority communities before the coup. Her confession is symbolic of a much broader reckoning taking place within the Bamar majority. Jeanne had been closely following the transition period to openness and democracy after the previous election, noting that while all kinds of material benefits opened up to younger generations living in urban centers, the same was not the case for those further afield. She explains that the military had “manipulated social media and manipulated their propaganda tools that were very sharpened from years of control to embed in the minds of non-ethnic people,” she says.
Finally, Jeanne shares something of the Thai response to the conflict, as she is currently on the border. She notes that Thailand also operates as a military government, quashing its own forms of democratic protest, and has expressed its “close ties and support” for the Myanmar military. At the same time, she has been heartened to see how Thai people around the border have supported the ever-increasing streams of Burmese refugees now flooding in, escaping from the Tatmadaw’s brutality.
One of Jeanne’s quotes sums up the silver lining inside the country’s present, very dark cloud. “For the first time ever, I see a much-heightened awareness among the urban sectors of young people, And not just young people, but middle-aged people, civil servants… Burma is comprised of over 135 different ethnic nationalities, of which there are 15 major ethnic nationalities, and one of the ethnic nationalities are the Bamar, who we call Burman. They have been awakened, and they are now willing to take the hands of their ethnic sisters and brothers, Rohingya sisters and brothers, and say, ‘We are one. We are united we are together, and we will end this military rule together. That's what's different.”