Eye of the Revolution
covering burma and southeast asia
Thursday, March 28, 2024
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OBITUARY

Eye of the Revolution


By THE IRRAWADDY OCTOBER, 2010 - VOL.18 NO.10


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Documentary filmmaker Sam Kalayanee was not just a witness to history: He was a man of vision with deep insight into the heart of Burma’s struggle for democracy

In 1988, when a crackdown on Burma’s fledgling pro-democracy movement sent thousands of young activists fleeing to their country’s border with Thailand, a small but enthusiastic contingent of supporters from the Thai side was there to meet them. Among them was Sam Sittipong Kalayanee, a former Thai student activist who went on to learn the art of filmmaking and spend the rest of his life exposing the human tragedy of Burma’s complex and seemingly endless conflicts.

Sam Kalayanee
Over the years since then, the Thai-Burmese border has attracted many who have sought to capture some aspect of life in this no-man’s-land of refugees, student warriors and insurgent armies. None, however, have ever matched Sam’s passion and commitment, or his clear-sighted understanding of the causes—and costs—of Burma’s internal turmoil.

As a filmmaker, Sam was tireless in his efforts to reveal the realities of life in Burma. In 1992, he produced his first documentary, “Barefoot Student Army,” about the All Burma Students’ Democratic Front (ABSDF). The following year he founded Images Asia, an independent production company that went on to examine issues such as human rights abuses against women in Burma (“Caught in the Crossfire,” 1995), forced labor (“Road to Nowhere,” 1999), the plight of Burmese refugees and internally displaced persons (“Living on the Line,” 2004), child soldiers (“The Invisible Soldiers,” 2009) and the impact of anti-personnel landmines (“Burma’s Hidden Killers,” 2009).

Sam’s hard-earned expertise on these issues won him the respect of journalists, scholars and fellow filmmakers from around the world. In 2009, he received even greater recognition as the co-producer of the Oscar-nominated documentary film “Burma VJ,” about Burmese video journalists who risked their lives to film the 2007 Saffron Revolution, the largest pro-democracy uprising in the country since 1988.

Sadly, this professional triumph was soon followed by personal tragedy. Earlier this year, Sam contracted lung cancer. Even weeks before he died on Sept. 3, many of his friends were unaware of his condition.

In the months before he died, however, Sam posted many photos of his friends and colleagues on Facebook as a testament to the enduring spirit of camaraderie that has kept Burma’s beleaguered resistance movements alive all these years. They included some memorable pictures of Karen refugees, Shan soldiers, landmine victims and film crews. There were portraits of injustice and poverty alongside pictures of Sam laughing and joking and smoking cheroots with his close friends, the student warriors of the ABSDF, at Thay Baw Boe camp in 1988.

He also captured some rare moments of real hope for Burma’s future. One was in 1993, when the Dalai Lama and other winners of the Nobel Peace Prize gathered in Thailand to show their support for detained fellow laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. The visit created a media frenzy, despite the Thai government’s reluctance to recognize the event. On this occasion, Sam was not just behind the camera taking photographs of this extraordinary encounter, but also hard at work behind the scenes making it all happen.

Sam was not one to claim a place for himself in the history of a struggle that he understood far better than most. But he was much more than a dispassionate observer of what was happening across the border from his native Thailand. Indeed, he knew that Burma’s complexity could only be grasped if one examined it from all angles. And so he traveled to remote parts of the country, into Nagaland from India, across the border from China, and from Thailand into Shan and Karen states. Through these travels, he amassed a vast collection of compelling images of the lives of people who remain, for the most part, unknown to the outside world, but who Sam came to regard as his brothers and sisters.

For Sam, borders were never barriers to a deeper appreciation of our shared humanity. It is this transcendence of narrow, territorial thinking that Burma desperately needs in order to achieve peace, and Sam has brought us closer to this goal by sharing a vision that we would all do well to embrace.

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