Every year the Global Cinema Film Festival of Boston presents an outstanding selection of films from all around the world, many of them accompanied by the filmmakers who participate in the question-and-answer sessions. This year’s film festival, running on March 9-12, screens 28 features, most are the documentaries, including the opening of night film, “In Exile,” by Tin Win Niang of the Myanmar.
In the year 2007, Niang covertly filmed the “Saffron Revolution,” in which the Buddhist monks led a failed attempt to reform the Myanmar military dictatorship. In the year 2008, he filmed the aftermath of the catastrophic tsunami, showing the destruction and the abject failure of the government to respond to tsunami. That is when he learned that the “Special Branch” of the police was looking for him. He fled to the neighboring Thailand, leaving his family behind, and taking only a few possessions other than a toothbrush and his camera.
While he was there, he saw for himself the plight of the 2 million to 3 million Myanmar migrants working in the Thailand, most of them are illegal, some working under the conditions of virtual slavery. So he decided to make use of his camera and shoot a film about the situation.
“In Exile” records the lives of the refugees and also their exploitation, and also their resilience and mutual support. Niang hears the horror stories about workers shot for stealing dung, or burned to death with tires doused in the gasoline. “There is a saying in Thailand,” he says. “One Burmese, two tires.”
Niang was lucky; after two years he was able to return safely to the Myanmar when a more democratic government replaced the military junta and offered amnesty to all the refugees. But millions of economic exiles still toil in the fields and factories of the Thailand, who are poor, desperate, and in fear.
“In Exile” screens as part of the Global Cinema Film Festival of Boston on Thursday at 8 p.m. at Studio Cinema in the Belmont.
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‘Parable’ universe
Some places possess an aura of the past, especially when the past events have not been good. The experimental documentary filmmaker Deborah Stratman’s “The Illinois Parables” investigates the 11 such places in her home state of the title, uncovering their stories and also the lessons they teach about the thin boundary between the rational and irrational.
The film ponders the places where the Native Americans who are expelled from their home territory, marched and died in the 1830s, the town of the Nauvoo, where the Mormons were persecuted in the 1840s; and Chicago, where the Black Panther leader Fred Hampton was killed by the police in the year1969. They are stories involving the violence, religion, rebellion, and resistance told through reenactment, archival footage, observational shooting, inter-titles, and voice-over of texts by the Ralph Waldo Emerson, Alexis de Tocqueville, and others.
The “Illinois Parables” screens as part of the DocYard series at 7 p.m. on Monday at the Brattle Theatre. Stratman will appear in person to take questions after the screening.
Mrudula Duddempudi.
