Festival Films A-Z

Invisible Army

Production

Picnic Films
27/1Fz Morningside Drive
EH 105LZ Edinburgh
Schottland
Tel.: +44 131 44 79 188
E-Mail: sammy_riley@hotmail.com

Camera

Sammy Riley

Cut

Sammy Riley

GB 2006, Regie: Sammy Riley, OmeU, 26 min.

Synopsis

Invisible ArmyOld ladies smoke cigars while the military runs the country. The Internet, democracy and filmmakers are banned. Welcome to Burma!

An old lady waits on a street corner in bustling Rangoon. She is an illegal tour guide in a country with few tourists. Ethel takes a naïve filmmaker on a tour to highlight the people's struggle for freedom against the ruling military junta. She also wants to tell her own story, her role in Burma's history.

But Ethel is afraid to talk on the street, she is fearful, saying that she's being watched. She thinks she's being followed, that the soldiers are watching. But there is no one watching, no one interested in the crazy old woman.

How do you fight something you can't see?

Since its independence from the British Empire in 1948, Myanmar (formerly known as Burma), has been ruled by military regimes. Its former capital Rangoon is the setting of this film by Sammy Riley, which he was able to shoot by declaring it a travel documentary. The Australian director interviews 67-year-old Ethel, an agile and slightly loony tourist guide. She was born in 1938 to a British officer and his Burmese wife in Rangoon, where she continues to live today.
In the course of the film, Ethel's statements about the state of the country and her fear of the - according to her - omnipresent military piece together the portrait of a country permeated by fear where the people passively wait for change.
The screening of Invisible Army at perspektive will be the film's world première.

Biography

It never ends (2005), Senorita Salt, Gas and Flamingos (2006), Invisible Army (2006), To El Valle with Love: Eleven Stories about Chocó (2007), Lessons with Milo (2007)

Filmography

It never ends (2005), Senorita Salt, Gas and Flamingos (2006), Invisible Army (2006), To El Valle with Love: Eleven Stories about Chocó (2007), Lessons with Milo (2007)

Dates

1903.10.200715:15Festsaal
7207.10.200717:00Filmhaus