Burma VJ Receives a Peabody Award!

by Danny Fisher

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

CONGRATULATIONS to the makers of Burma VJ:  Reporting from a Closed Country, who received a Peabody Award this morning for their powerful, important film. The citation reads:

The documentary chronicles the heroic ingenuity of underground video journalists (VJs) who captured the 2007 Burmese human-rights protests – and the brutal government retaliation – on handy cams and smuggled the video out to the web and the world.

You can read my Shambhala Sun Space interview with the film’s Oscar-nominated director Anders Østergaard and the Democratic Voice of Burma’s Aye Chan Naing here; in addition, you can read my interview U Pyinya Zawta, the executive director of the All Burma Monks’ Alliance (who attended the Academy Awards with the filmmakers) here (also for SunSpace).