This Prison Where I Live
The ogres kneel Their suns kowtow before me.
Poem by Zarganar
THIS PRISON WHERE I LIVE is a film about two comedians. Zarganar, Burma's greatest living comic, has been silenced. Relentlessly victimised by the Burmese military junta, he is now in prison. Michael Mittermeier, in stark contrast, is free to practise his art of humour and provocation as one of Germany’s leading stand-up comedians. Zarganar has been jailed on a series of trumped-up charges for his outspoken criticism and sentenced last year by Burma’s generals to 59 years behind bars, now reduced to 35 years. The genesis of this film began in 2007, when Rex Bloomstein secretly interviewed Zarganar for 2 days in his flat, shot the cinemas that are prevented from screening his films, the bookstalls not allowed to sell his plays or poetry, and the makeshift TV studio where his fellow comedians rehearse on a stage that he himself is forbidden to tread. Footage which has never been seen. Michael Mittermeier travels to Burma with Bloomstein to find out more about this artist whose weapons are satire, films, books, poetry and comedy.
