Rev. Danny Fisher

"A scene from the documentary 'Burma VJ.'" Image via Oscilloscope Laboratories.

The New York Times‘ The Carpetbagger blog reports on U Gawsita, an activist monk featured in the critically-acclaimed Burma VJ and his thoughts about the importance of the film’s nomination for the 2010 Best Documentary Feature Academy Award.  Here’s a snippet:

If ever you doubted the greater good of an Oscar nomination – if ever you thought this whole awards season stuff was just a bunch of razzle-dazzle designed to give people who already hold themselves in pretty high regard even more cause for self-congratulation, not to mention giving them more money, more glamorous stuff to wear, parties to attend and free stuff to paw through – then perhaps you should talk to a Burmese monk.

Someone like U Gawsita, who is featured in the Oscar-nominated documentary “Burma VJ,” about a group of underground Burmese video journalists who risked their lives to cover an uprising against the repressive regime that had shut down all other news media. U Gawsita, one of the protesters (he’s seen shouting into a bullhorn in the movie), was at a screening at the Museum of Modern Art and a dinner party at Osteria del Circo the other day; he went to the Oscar nominees luncheon, too.

[...]

“People inside Burma feel that this nomination not only represents the Burmese people, but they represent the people around the world who are repressed by the military regime or the oppressed government,” U Gawsita said, through Mr. Win. (That they even know about the nomination is a testament to its status and the reach of alternative global media sources.)

Read the rest here.