I arrive in Burma under ominous skies. Recalling my predilection for monsoon adventures, black rain clouds gather two weeks early in order to witness my arrival. In the distance, the soaring Shwedagon Pagoda defies the gathering storm and illuminates the gloom with golden rays of optimism. Yangon Picture gallery here.

I’m visiting Yangon as a representative of Media Academic Partners (MAP) at Goldsmiths in response to Aung San Suu Kyi’s invitation for UK Universities to participate in the regeneration of Burmese education and training. In return, we plan to invite Rector U Kyaw Oo (below on my right) and Pro-Rector U Htun Ohn (below on my left) of the National University of Arts and Culture to Goldsmiths via the British Council in Yangon.

My week starts with a visit to artist Htein Lin. I previously met Htein at the Tate Modern in London where he was making plaster casts of the arms of released Burmese political prisoners for his major artwork A Show of Hands. So far, Htein has made 300 plaster casts from a planned total of 1,000. On completion, his powerful art installation will tour international galleries. 

Htein is kindly helping to facilitate my meetings with artists, filmmakers, educators and media professionals in Yangon. While driving to our first appointment he tells me the story of Daw Nita Yin Yin May. Nita May is one of the people that Htein is highlighting in his art. What follows is the story behind Nita's participation in A Show of Hands . . .

In her work as a Press Officer at the British Embassy in Yangon, Nita was involved in distributing freely available information to world media organisations about widespread public protests against military rule in 1988. For her ‘crime’, Nita was sentenced to three years in the notorious Insein Prison. Shortly after her incarceration she discovered that she was pregnant and was forced to give birth to her child in the prison, under conditions of virtually non-existent medical care. 

Burma's former political prisoners demand the release of all current political prisoners in BurmaThough imprisoned they are everywhere amongst us. Burma's former political prisoners from across the world demand the release of all political prisoners currently incarcerated in Burma's notorious prisons. This image is taken from the documentary project "Even Though I'm Free I am Not".

After her son was born, Nita’s father was asked to collect the baby and take him home. Nita had no choice but to serve the rest of her sentence with no contact with her child until her release. Nita and her son now live in London where she works for BBC Burmese Radio. In this photo she is campaigning for the release of her friend Sandar Min who was sentenced to 65 years in prison for her role in peaceful protests.

Some of my meetings . . .

With Min Htin Ko Ko Gyi, Festival Director and Mon Mon Myat, Executive Director of the Human Rights Dignity Film Festival that takes place in Yangon every June. Mon Mon and Min Htin are currently making an in-depth film about the life of Aung San Suu Kyi that will be completed at the end of 2015 - after the democratic election has taken place. Through the festival, they run an intensive documentary filmmaking programme every June, July and August.

Thaiddi and Thu Thu Shein are Filmmakers and Directors of the Wathann (Monsoon) Film Festival that takes place every September. Thaiddhi, Thu Thu and their colleagues run a variety of training programmes, distribute short films and translate much needed film books into Myanmar, largely on a voluntary basis.

Thaiddhi and Thu Thu have strong links with the Yangon Film School and both have completed a scholarship year at Famu International Film School in Prague.  In addition, they distribute their filmmaking books free of charge and donate significant quantities to the University of Culture and the Arts of which Thu Thu is a graduate.

I am very warmly welcomed by the Rector, Pre Rector and Senior Academics at the National University of Arts and Culture and given an insight into the history and mission of the university which was formed in 1993. 

I enjoy a traditional music show and a Myanmar marionette performance that is staged to mark my visit. I then tour the cinema facilities and film studio and enjoy a screening of a student film production. I am pleased to be invited to teach Cinematography for undergraduate Cinema and Drama students on my next visit.

I was of course considered an ideal subject by students in the life drawing class.

The university has 592 students and offers courses in Fine Art Painting, Sculpture, Music, Dramatic Arts, Computer Arts and Cinema. Memorandums of Understanding have been signed with universities in Korea, Thailand and China, but not with any Western universities thus far.

With senior representatives from a spectrum of Arts and Media organisations hosted at the House of Media and Entertainment by famous Burmese Comedian Zarganar.

From left to right: Zaw Thet Htwe, Leader of the Myanmar Journalists Union; Thein Lin, Artist; Zarganar, Comedian; Nan Win, Artistic Director of Myanmar Dance and Musical Theatre; Gerry McCulloch, Goldsmiths Media Academic Partners; Grace Swe Zin Htaik, Secretary of Myanmar Motion Picture Organisation; Su Mon Hywe, Head of Training at Myanmar Media Development Centre and Su’s assistant.

Meeting with Aye Ko, Executive Director and Haymann Oo, Curator of New Zero Art Space. New Zero is a vibrant radical Arts Centre in downtown Yangon that is run by energetic and inspirational volunteers. Other artists present include Yadanar Win, Thyitar and Ko Latt. All are full-time voluntary coordinators of New Zero Art Space.

New Zero is a Non-profit Independent Art Space containing studios that double as a gallery and an impressive library that despite being assembled on a shoestring is more extensive than the library at the Arts University. New Zero host an impressive range of free Art Courses of up to a year in duration.

Haymann is showing me the diverse range of activities coordinated by New Zero Art Space on virtually no budget. For example, they facilitate a broad range of Arts Exchanges with member countries of the ASEAN Contemporary Art Exchange Program. New Zero are keen to establish links with contemporary Artists, Teachers and PhD students on a worldwide basis and can offer free accommodation on-site for visiting contributors.

With Tun Tun Aye, director of the documentary Human Drama. Human Drama is a British Council Burma project co-organised with local charity FXB. The project contracts Pan Intercultural Arts to provide training and guidance to actors for productions in which educational information is communicated in the form of theatre to illiterate rural communities who have no access to radio, television or internet. Human Drama topics include HIV/AIDS, human trafficking, gender equality, family, social and health issues. Tun Tun kindly helped me to understand the considerable complexities of the education and training landscape of Burma.

With the Myanmar Photographic Society, headed by President Pe Myint Oo. The Mayanmar Photography Society was founded in 1950. They run an annual training course that lasts for two and a half months part-time, and are currently open for their 43rd intake. The MPS run a variety of training initiatives and hold their annual exhibition in the Strand Hotel Ballroom every March. They welcome visiting photographers and speakers and have invited me to teach Portrait Lighting on my next visit.

With Kyi Kyi Pyone, Programme Manager; Myat Lay Tint, Programme Coordinator and Susana Galvan, Director of Education at the British Council, Yangon.

Kyi Kyi and Susana offered me a wealth of helpful advice and assistance during my visit.

Finally, here is my portrait by one of the life drawing students at the university.

Yangon Picture gallery here.

I recently met up with Burmese artist Htein Lin to photograph ongoing work on his art project A Show of Hands. 

A Show of Hands is a multimedia public artwork about broken-ness and healing. Under decades of military rule since 1962, Burma became a broken country. The slow process of healing began eighteen months ago with the release of thousands of political prisoners including Aung San Suu Kyi. 

Htein is in the process of making plaster casts of the forearms of the surviving prisoners who are returning to society to make their individual contributions as politicians, business people, teachers, journalists, activists and parents. 

When we met, Htein was making casts of the forearms of former Burmese political prisoners on London’s Southbank - just outside Tate Modern, with St Paul’s in the background across the Thames. 

I will meet Htein again in May when I visit Yangon to represent Media Academic Partners (MAP). My brief is to collaborate with artists like Htein on the setting up of Arts and Media courses throughout Burma.

Myself and Head of the Putnam School of Film in Singapore – Gisli Snaer are collaborating on a Photographic Portrait project on the theme of 'Identity'. The project is supported by the Goldsmiths-Lasalle partnership and will inform related research and film projects at both institutions. Specific outcomes include joint public exhibitions in 2015; one in London and one in Singapore.

The above portrait, resulting from a chance encounter in a Tibetan Café in Bodh Gaya last week is my first contender for the exhibitions. A dedicated web space for this collaboration is coming soon . . .

Keep on blogging . . .

Photo: Emiliano Capozoli
www.emilianocapozoli.com
[email protected]
+44 (0)795 216 9996, London

*******PICTURE MUST BE CREDITED****** In between filming in India, it was great to be in London for my MA Filmmaking Class of 2013 Graduation Screening at BAFTA in the West End of London. All pictures are by Brazilian Photographer Emiliano Cappozoli.

Photo: Emiliano Capozoli
www.emilianocapozoli.com
[email protected]
+44 (0)795 216 9996, London

*******PICTURE MUST BE CREDITED****** These are the Directors of this year’s films introducing the event. From left to right Memed Aksoy (Panfilo), Liv Watson (Spoons), Dave Tynan (The Red Line ) and Bruna Capozzoli (Mamo).

Photo: Emiliano Capozoli
www.emilianocapozoli.com
[email protected]
+44 (0)795 216 9996, London

*******PICTURE MUST BE CREDITED****** This is the Filmmaking team who made Mamo. At the front Akito (Cinematographer); Left to right Snow (Sound Designer), Jay (Cinematographer), Erica (Film Editor), Douce (Film Producer) and Bruna (Writer-Director). Popping his head around the corner is world famous Cinematographer Witold Stok BSC. 

"Beyond the Sea" team pose for official portrait during the BAFTA evenement during the first screening of "Mamo", writen and directed by Bruna Capozzoli (wearing white dress).
25.01.2014

Photo: Emiliano Capozoli
www.emilianocapozoli.com
[email protected]
+44 (0)795 216 9996, London

*******PICTURE MUST BE CREDITED****** You will shortly be able to view clips from these films on the Student Work tab of the MA Filmmaking Website. Further info about the films and filmmaking teams below:

Spoons - Running Time: 17:40

Pangaea Films: www.pangaeafilms.co.uk

A hypnotic tale of confronting the past. A glamorous elderly woman Iris discovers Darryl, a troubled young man, on a park bench. Iris lures Darryl back to her house with promises of pills and alcohol. Darryl enters her world where their fractured memories collide in what becomes an unforgettable experience.

Panfilo - Running Time: 22:05

Lost in Portugal Films www.lostinportugalfilms.co.uk
An apocalyptical fairy tale of three generations of men coming to terms with loss and death in rural Italy. It is the 1970s and a biblical draught is destroying the beautiful Tuscan countryside. In its midst 9-year old Michele is warned of an end-of-the-world prophecy: locusts will crawl out of the ground. It is Panfilo, Michele’s imaginary friends, who foresees it. While Michele's grandfather, Tiziano, indulges Michele’s imagination, his father, Giovanni, strongly opposes him only to find himself increasingly immersed in his son’s fears and solitude.

Mamo - Running time : 13:08

Beyond the sea films : http://www.beyondtheseafilms.com

Mamo is an African woman struggling with life in a foreign country while protecting her granddaughter Felicia. Living in a dystopian society, Mamo bravely holds her sorrow in order to shelter Felicia from life’s hardship. 

The Red Line - Running Time: 18:28

What Elephant? Films www.whatelephantfilms.co.uk

Three strangers in London find themselves on the last tube heading east… An Adaptation of a Charlie Higson short story.

On Thursday I visited the ruins of Nalanda University in Bihar. Nalanda was one of the first universities ever to be established worldwide. The location had been an important site of learning since the time of the historical Buddha Siddharta Guatama, when it was famed as a beautiful resort inhabited by saints and ascetics. Siddharta himself gave teachings here.

King Ashoka built a Buddhist monastery at Nalanda in the 3^rd Century BC, but it was not until the 4^th Century AD that the university as we know it from the surviving ruins became established. Nalanda flourished until the 12^th Century when it was completely destroyed during one of the Muslim invasions of India. By this point, Nalanda’s legacy had been firmly established in all of the Buddhist countries around India, but had sadly been driven from India itself.

Classical Nalanda flourished for a period of seven hundred years and it’s ruins lay under the earth for a further seven hundred until they were discovered in the nineteenth century and partially excavated in the twentieth. Most of Nalanda has yet to be excavated and entire villages and towns have been built on top of it.

My AVPhD research is based on the writings of an Indian Philosopher– Shantideva who taught at Nalanda in the 8^th Century. My investigations crystalise around a single Shantideva text – The Bodhicharyavatara – which translates as: A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life.

03 Buddha calling Earth, 10-11c, Bihar, Indian Museum, Kolkata The Bodhicharyavatara is a pinnacle of Madhyamaka Prsangika philosophy - an intricately refined Buddhist philosophy of living that gave rise to an explosion of poetic art and learning that spread throughout Asia to Nepal, Tibet, Bhutan, Mongolia, China, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Korea and Japan.

The central purpose of my project is to apply Madhyamaka Prasangika philosophy to contemporary still and moving-image photography in parallel to the ways in which it informed the Fine Arts of 8^th Century India and Asia.

This is an artist’s impression of the proposed new university campus at Nalanda. I wonder if they will have a Media Arts department . . .

Gerry is to represent Media Academic Partners (MAP) on a visit to Burma in May as part of an ongoing move to establish a Goldsmiths Burma Centre. The move is in direct response to Aung Sang Suu Kyi's call for UK Universities to participate in the rebuilding of university education in Burma. 

The Goldsmiths Burma Centre is the brainchild of Theatre Director Richard Shannon, Writer and Director of the acclaimed stage play The Lady of Burma. The Higher Education Sector in Burma was systematically dismantled during a forty year period of military rule. Gerry will meet Burmese artists such as Htein Lin as part of international efforts to rebuild Arts Education around the country.

A preliminary meeting took place at Goldsmiths in January which was attended by Kevin MacKenzie - Director of the British Council in Burma, Dr Marie Lalle of the Institute of Education, Gerald Lidstone - Director of the Institute of Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship, Judy Holland - Director of MAP and Patrick Loughrey - Warden of Goldsmiths.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche welcomes HH 17th Karmapa Lama Zopa Rinpoche welcomes HH the 17^th Karmapa, Urgyen Trinley Dorje, on his visit to the Root Institute, Bodh Gaya and Tara Children’s Project on Saturday 2^nd February. Please see the online Picture Gallery here.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche The event represents a meeting of the Kagyu and Gelug traditions of Tibetan Buddhism in the most auspicious of locations in India – close to the Bodhi Tree and Mahabodhi Stupa where the historical Buddha attained enlightenment.

HH 17th Karmapa teaching at Root Institute, Bodh Gaya HH Karmapa gave a public teaching in the main shrine room of Root Institute where Lama Zopa Rimpoche is now in retreat.

Welcoming HH 17th Karmapa to Root Institute, Bodh Gaya Please see the online Picture Gallery here . . . 

Tara Children's Project, Bodh Gaya

The Rajdani Express drops us at Gaya Junction railway station at 5am on Sunday morning and we head to the Root Institute in Bodh Gaya where we are based.

We spend the week gathering footage around Bodh Gaya and filming interviews. We are not yet able to publish pictures from interviews. However these images will appear in this blog in due course.

We attend the Kagyu Monlam, hear teachings from HH 17th Karmapa, witness the Tsechu Lama Dance and visit the Bodhi Tree and Mahabodhi Stupa.

On Saturday evening, Gerry sets off back to London to meet his new students on the 2014 MA in Filmmaking at Goldsmiths. Jorg Wagner arrives to join Chico and continue filming in Jaipur and Kathmandu. Gerry rejoins Chico and Jorg in India at the end of January and all three of us embark on potentially the most important phase of filming . . .

Full Picture Gallery coming soon. A few images for now . . .