Burma Storybook
SECTION: International Forum 2017
SCREENINGS
Sunday 01.10., 3.30 p.m., kommkino, Q&A with Petr Lom
SYNOPSIS
The beauty and suffering of a country emerging from five decades of authoritarian rule as expressed through its poetry. BURMA STORYBOOK is a parade of characters, poems and cinema verité scenes set in this enchantingly beautiful land trying to recover from six decades of fear and suffering. The main story is of Maung Aung Pwint, Burma’s most famous dissident poet, who has spent many years behind bars for his political activism. The yearning for his lost son, who lives in political exile in Finland, and his long-awaited return home after 20 years, are at the heart of the film. “The reserved Pwint is a modest man with an iron will, and Lom’s film is just like its protagonist in its tribute to both the man and to the humanist ideal that his art strives for. And you can almost smell the humid plants and the dust from the roads, which hangs in the warm light and seeps into the maze of rooms where Pwint now lives and where the film’s attentive camera moves around him.” (CPH:DOX)
PETR LOM
Petr Lom, born in 1968 in the Czech Republic, produces, directs and edits his own films. He started his career as a political philosopher at the University of Harvard before he moved on the direct his first feature-length doc Bride Kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan (NIHRFF 2005). His films won numerous international awards and have screened regularly at NIHRFF. He has been collaborating closely with producer Corinne van Egeraat since 2011.
FILMOGRAPHY
Bride Kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan (2005), On a Tightrope (2007), Letters to the President (2009), Back to the Square (2012), Ana Ana (2014), Burma Storybook (2016)
WEBSITE
http://www.burmastorybook.com
