When Danish documentarian Anders Østergaard took on the challenge to make Burma VJ, he had no idea how much he would advance the cause of citizen journalism. A collective of 30 anonymous and underground video journalists (VJs) called the Democratic Voice of Burma recorded the 100,000+ protestors (including thousands of Buddhist monks) who took to the streets in 2007 to protest the repressive junta that has controlled the country for over 40 years.
Since foreign news crews were barred from Mynamar (as the regime renamed Burma), the internet was shut down, and domestic reporters were banned unless employed by the state, they used handycams, or cellphones, to document these historic and dramatic events; they then smuggled the footage out of the country. Broadcast worldwide via satellite, these VJs risked torture and imprisonment to show the brutal clashes with the military and undercover police -- even after they themselves became targets of the authorities.
