In my post about Happy World—the short documentary about the absurdity of everyday life under the dictatorship in Burma—I forgot to mention several of the great bonus features, which, along with the movie, can all be enjoyed for free online. In an interview with the French news site Ownie, the filmmakers call their project an experiment in “hypervideo”—an artistic device that allows users to watch a video and “simultaneously receive a feed of related information, such as newspaper articles, data, etc.”
Tristan Mendes-France, the film’s on-screen narrator and co-director, graciously wrote a comment on my original post, pointing to some of these features. To begin, there’s an interactive map [click on photo above] of various Burmese dissident groups, an infographic explaining why the junta moved the capital without warning to a city in the middle-of-nowhere, sample pages of the state-run newspaper The New Light of Myanmar, one hour’s worth of Burma TV—or as the filmmakers call it Valium TV—and lots more, including loads of links to interesting articles that explain more of Burma’s troubled history.
Finally, and perhaps most indicative of their creativity, the filmmakers have created a hilarious web-application that cartoonishly censors your Twitter account. Amazingly, something different happens every time. Watch the Waging Nonviolence Twitter account getting censored and then share it with your friends. But don’t let all these fun features distract you from watching the movie!