Padauk: Myanmar Spring & Pattani Calling & Not Love Songs

Padauk: Myanmar Spring (2021)

Padauk: Myanmar Spring takes the viewer to the streets of Myanmar during the heady days following the February 2021 military coup. Through Nant—a young, first-time protester—we meet three human rights activists whose lives have been turned upside down by the coup. As the protests continue, Nant comes to understand the truth of a brutal regime that has continued to wage war against its own people for decades. Against a foreboding backdrop, Nant’s political awakening regarding the plight of others in her ethnically diverse country gives hope for the future. Beautifully augmented by poetry and art, Padauk: Myanmar Spring shows the resilience and determination of the people of Myanmar, and the sacrifices they've made.

Runtime: 56 mins
Country: Myanmar
Film Language: Burmese
Subtitle Language: English, Malay

Director 
Jeanne Marie Hallacy

Jeanne has lived and worked in Southeast Asia for 25 years, producing and directing documentary films about human rights and social justice issues. She cofounded Kirana Productions to use films as educational and advocacy tools by civil society and educational institutions. Mother, Daughter, Sister, Sittwe, This Kind of Love and Into the Current were each released with an international speaking tour in the United States and Europe where the films were screened with engaged audience discussions. Jeanne is also the Director of InSIGHT Out! digital media project for youth in conflict-affected areas. She is the former Director of Programs at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Thailand.

Rares Michael Ghilezan

A long-time student of Burmese politics and history, Rares jumped into the fray in May 2017 when he visited Northern Rakhine state to learn more about the Rohingya. Since then, he has been to the refugee camps in Bangladesh twice, including as a producer on Kirana Productions' Mother, Daughter, Sister. Rares has lived in Yangon since 2018 where he lead Kirana's film project covering the protest movement of Feb 2021. A partner at Global Legal Law Firm, when he's not filming Rares is either practicing law or surfing. Ever since working at the UN's Human Rights Council in Geneva in 2006, Rares has been passionate about social justice activism and providing a voice for the voiceless.

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Pattani Calling (2021)

From a mosque after prayers, the protagonist explains the cost of being cut-off from modern communications in the insurgency-riddled ‘deep south’ of Thailand. He has to make long drives through dangerous roads to meet people in person or to use a landline to check-in on his wife and son at home. His disconnection is self-imposed but necessary: he refuses to register his biodata to get a SIM card as ordered by the Thai state. The government says it is a necessary security measure covering the Malay Muslim-majority southernmost provinces. It says this is where militants fighting a grinding insurgency against Bangkok use burner phones to detonate their roadside bombs. Muslim locals say it is just the latest tool of Thai security services to creep into their lives: harvesting biodata in a new layer of mass surveillance in a region where appearing on state registers often result to miscarriages of justice.

‘Pattani Calling’ is a story of a community being forced by state digital policies into exile from modern communication. It is also a tale of defiance and resourcefulness by people staying connected when the state refuses to give them SIM cards.

Runtime: 14 mins
Country: Thailand
Film Language: Thai
Subtitle Language: English, Malay

Director
Vijitra Duangdee

Vijitra Duangdee is a Thailand-based producer/reporter. She worked as a reporter and presenter on Thai TV andr Reuters’ TV in Hong Kong, and as a stringer and reporter for AFP news agency, South China Morning Post (SCMP) and Voice of America (VOA). She also produced and directed short films (SCMP Films) about one of Thailand’s richest people as well as about a brilliant, transgender campaigner -to reflecting modern Thai society and the issues impacting in Thailand.

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A video of young Cambodian rapper Kea Sokun performing social justice-themed, nationalist songs goes viral in 2020. But these songs ultimately lead to his arrest and imprisonment for a year on charges of “incitement to commit a felony” — one of the most common tools of suppression by the Cambodian government. This law has increasingly been wielded against citizens expressing political opinion on social media. While the government portrays Sokun as an opposition-funded musician calling for an uprising, his parents argue that he was just a kid making music in his room. Not Love Songs follows Sokun’s rise and fall against the backdrop of the country’s authoritarianism under Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and the Cambodian People’s Party.

Runtime: 17 mins
Country: Cambodia
Film Language: Khmer
Subtitle Language: English, Malay

Director
Jackson Brook

Originally from Palo Alto, California, Jack Brook is a Cambodia-based filmmaker and journalist. He is currently an editor with the Southeast Asia Globe, a publication focusing on human rights and environmental justice issues. Previously, he received a fellowship at the Bophana Audiovisual Resources Center in Phnom Penh to study the Khmer language. He graduated with a degree in history at Brown University in 2019. Brook’s reporting on copper mining and megadams has been supported by the Pulitzer Center. He was part of a team that conducted a year-long investigation into elder abuse that helped change criminal justice policies in Rhode Island. His writing has been published in several publications like the Miami Herald, the Christian Science Monitor, the Jerusalem Post and the Santiago Times in Chile. When not reporting, he enjoys fine-tuning his guacamole recipe.

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