Backstage at Yangon’s festival of banned films, from Billy Wilder to Battleship Potemkin
Censorship of the visual arts remains strict in Myanmar, but at a recent international film festival, audiences enjoyed the novelty of watching movies that had been denied a showing elsewhere in the world
“You’re not machines! You’re not cattle! Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Soldiers, in the name of democracy, let’s all unite!”
An odd rallying cry to be booming forth from a park in the middle of Yangon, the capital of military-controlled Myanmar, you may think, but the Memory! International Film Heritage Festival, which aims to open dialogue on the heavy censorship that still shackles artistic creation in the country, is itself incongruous.
The powerful voice of Charlie Chaplin, in the 1940 film The Great Dictator, resonates from a giant screen set in Maha Bandula Park, opposite Yangon City Hall, amid a crowd of thousands. When the barber-cum-dictator utters his heartfelt speech about the hardships of a dictatorship and the necessity for the people to unite against oppression, some in the crowd start crying while others loudly cheer and applaud. Few have witnessed such stirring stuff.
“I didn’t know Charlie Chaplin was so political,” 31-year-old Kyaw Thu Zar says. “I had heard about him, I knew the movie was a kind of comedy but when I started to understand his message, I became so emotional. With my friends, we were clapping to every word.”