Underground Journalists Report In 'Burma: VJ'

Published June 13, 2009 at 8:00 AM EDT

It is risky, dangerous and next to impossible for journalists to operate in Myanmar, where the military government suppresses dissenting speech. If you saw some of the startling video in 2007 of dissident monks marching through the streets, that video probably came from a group called the Democratic Voice of Burma, or DVB.

The DVB is an organization of Burmese underground videographers and reporters who try to document repression in their country, and smuggle it out of the country to put the news of their homeland before the world.

Some of what they shot in 2007 is the subject of a new documentary, Burma VJ: Reporting From A Closed Country, directed by Danish filmmaker Anders Ostergaard.

Host Scott Simon talks to Ostergaard about the film.

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