Documentary Highlights Plight of Imprisoned Burmese Comedian

In one of his bitingly sarcastic routines, Burmese comedian Zarganar tells the story of an “international boasting competition.” The Americans, he says, were confident of victory when they claimed their man could reach the peak of Mount Everest even if he had no legs. The British, however, rose to the challenge by predicting their champion could swim across the Atlantic Ocean without any arms. “But the Burmese boasters just smiled at these western pretenders to the boasting crown,” Zarganar says. Then they stepped up and took first prize by boasting that “Our leader ran the country for over 20 years without a brain.”

Zarganar is not only Burma's most famous comedian—he is also a popular film actor and director, as well as a fierce critic. But for the last two years, the man who once entertained Burma's oppressed masses has only had an audience of fellow prisoners. For the “crime” of cracking wicked puns against the inept and corrupt junta while working as a volunteer providing disaster relief aid in areas of the Irrawaddy Delta that were ravaged by Cyclone Nargis, Zarganar was arrested, convicted of "public order offenses” and sentenced to 59 years in prison—later reduced to 35 years.

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However, British filmmaker Rex Bloomstein recently helped Zarganar reach a wider audience by featuring the Burmse comedian in his new documentary, “This Prison Where I Live,” that just screened in Bangkok and Chiang Mai, Thailand.

In Bloomstein's authoritative and fascinating film, German stand-up comic Michael Mittermeier serves as narrator in an exploration of the personality, motivation and talent of Zarganar—the man who describes himself as the “loudspeaker” for the Burmese people who have suffered under military dictatorship for nearly 50 years.

The film project began in 2007, before Zarganar was arrested, when the comedian agreed to be interviewed and filmed by Bloomstein following the Burmese junta's deadly crackdown on the peaceful, monk-led “Saffron Revolution” demonstrations that Zarganar sympathetically participated in.

Over the course of two days, Bloomstein filmed an in depth interview with Zarganar in his Rangoon flat, and also went outside to document the cinemas that are prohibited from screening his films, the bookstalls that are not allowed to sell his plays or poetry, and the makeshift studio where Zaganar's fellow comedians perform but he is forbidden to tread.

This rare footage remained unused for two years, until the time Bloomstein heard that Zarganar had been arrested and sentenced to decades in prison.

Then the British director—who said human rights has been one of the major themes of his work—became determined to make a film that would share Zarganar's story with the world.

The result is a documentary that provides unique insight into the Burmese entertainer's thoughts and feelings and tells the story of his arrest and imprisonment, including his ordeal of torture and five years of solitary confinement.

“I wanted the world to experience his humility, his identification with the ordinary people of Burma and his fearless opposition to the generals,” Bloomstein said in a statement. “I also wanted people to hear his response to the years of persecution he had suffered at their hands, when he turned to me on camera and said, ‘My enemy must be my friend.’”

The 50-year-old comedian's troubles with his enemy, the Burmese regime, date back 30 years to the time when he was a third-year dental surgery student registered under his real name—Maung Thura. Even then, Maung Thura was a natural comedian who performed in shows at Burma’s universities. And after completing his dentistry studies, he took to the stage full-time and adopted the name Zarganar, which means “Tweezers” and was taken from a Burmese slogan that was popular during the struggle against British colonial rule: “If you have hairs that stand up when you are afraid, pull them out with tweezers.”

In the film, Zarganar revealed why he chose to be a comedian. “A dentist can open a person’s mouth,” he said.