Human Rights Cinema in Nuremberg

One of the most popular films was "Invisible Army" -- a film made by Australian director Sammy Riley to show the lives of "ordinary people" in the "forgotten" country of Myanmar. As it premiered on Wednesday, Myanmar was no longer forgotten and the army had once again shown its brutal side to the world.

What Sammy Riley's film (2006) shows is the "ordinary people" of Myanmar who continue their daily struggle against the backdrop of an "invisible army", whose threatening presence is constantly felt by everybody. The last significant protests took place in 1988 and were brutally suppressed by the military regime. Human rights groups estimate at least 3,000 people were killed.

It is not clear yet how many people died in the recent brutal crackdown on the first mass protests to take place in the country but what is certain is that Myanmar's military regime has not lost any of its brutality and still feels no compulsion to respond to international criticism.

This is why the film is important because as the world turns away once again from the small obscure country and some "ordinary people" lose faith once again in the international community, their plight needs to be kept alive and the fact that they are ordinary human beings leading lives very similar to those all over the world needs to be reiterated so that people can identify with them.

Ethel

Riley trained his camera mainly on Ethel, a middle-aged woman, whose father was British. She herself says she is 70 percent Burmese, 30 percent English. As she scurries furtively through the streets of Yangon, she sees "eyes and ears" everywhere and is scared she might be arrested or even killed if caught talking with a foreign filmmaker.

She is one of the dissidents, one of the silent voices who want democracy and do their best to remind everyone of Aung San Suu Kyi's existence. One way of doing this is by printing tiny images of hats on banknotes -- the hats represent the farmers and workers and symbolise solidarity with the opposition leader. But Ethel says the printers have had to stop. She doesn't explain. She never explains anything but hints at suppression, brutality.

It turns out she was arrested after the 1988 protests and spent one-and-a-half years in jail. She then separated from her husband who didn't want her to continue to defy the regime -- she could not promise this, preferred to leave him and her children, in order to continue the struggle.

"People are too afraid"

When Riley tracks Ethel down several months later, she says there is nothing new, she is just waiting. He asks if she is waiting for something to happen. But she replies sadly that "nothing will happen, people are too afraid."

She was thankfully proven wrong -- the Burmese people showed an inordinate amount of courage over the past month.

In a statement read out at the screening of "Invisible Army" last Wednesday, Sammy Riley said that Ethel had helped him with his film and had taken incredible risks for "education". She wanted "to educate the rest of the world about the reality of Burma, about the people, about the grandmothers."

In 2003, Ethel asked Riley, "Where is Bush? He is bombing Afghanistan, Iraq... Why can't he come here? Burma is not big, two or three days, no more." Riley said in his statement: "Every Burmese person I met asked me why the world had forgotten them."

With "Invisible Army," Sammy Riley reminds people not to forget Myanmar once again.

The Nuremberg Human Rights Film Festival will continue until 10 October.