How Punk Found a New Voice in Myanmar’s Politicized Youth

This article originally appeared in i-D.

In My Buddha Is Punk, filmmaker Andreas Hartmann trailed 25-year-old Burmese musician Kyaw Kyaw as he attempts to spread his message of freedom via the medium of punk. The film, which screens at the Doc'n Roll film festival in London this weekend, is a testament to the enduring power of punk and to people power. We talked to Hartmann about the film's strongest messages.

What attracted you to Burmese punk and Kyaw's story in particular?
Andreas Hartmann: Around 2011, after 50 years of military rule, it appeared Burma (now called Myanmar) was starting to change. But violation of human rights were continuing, the civil war was still going on and ethnic minorities were still persecuted. I was interested in how the youth, the future of the country, were dealing with that situation. At the time, Kyaw Kyaw was dreaming about a flourishing punk scene and was trying make his own dreams come true. He lived an interesting philosophy by connecting ideas from Buddhism and punk.

Why does he use punk as their vehicle for channelling their message?
He and his friends were born and grew up in a military dictatorship. In punk, they found a way to express themselves and to rebel against the dictatorship and its repressions. Burma was a closed country for such a long time. So punk arrived there 20 years later. According to Kyaw Kyaw everything started in the 90s when a sailor returned after traveling the world with CDs by hardcore punk bands. Ko Nyan Lin, a good friend of Kyaw Kyaw, then started to study the movement. Before the turn of the millennium punk was totally underground in Burma. Today, the scene is growing. Kyaw Kyaw and his friends were inspired and motivated to found their band Rebel Riot during the "Saffron Revolution" which occurred when tens of thousands of people, led by Buddhist monks, protested against the repressive military rule in September 2007.

How does Buddhism factor into the ethos?
Kyaw Kyaw was not interested in Buddhism as a religion. For him, Buddhism offers a path you can go, punk is another path and both connected to his personal way of life. He said, there are two kinds of freedom: the first is physical or materialistic freedom and the second one is the real freedom, the mental freedom. Having felt he had reached the physical freedom as his country became a democracy, he is trying to reach the real, mental freedom through meditation.

What—if anything—surprised you about the movement? The no drugs policy perhaps?
Well, yes it was really special to witness this purity. My image of punk was completely renewed when I was hanging out with them. I was impressed to see how they dedicate themselves to their ideals and their way of life. They have this unwritten rule that nobody should waste their time by using drugs or drinking too much. Of course, not everybody was sticking to this and they had conflict inside the group. And I was surprised about their consistent activism. Nowadays Kyaw Kyaw and his friends invented the Burmese version of Food Not Bombs, an international movement founded in the 80s in the US to serve free food to others in need.

Did you encounter any difficulty in filming from authorities?
I was shooting in Burma without an official permission. As the country was flooded by tourists and journalists during the process of political change in 2012, it was easy to hide. It would have been impossible to make this film by asking for official permission.

How important was style to the movement?
Kyaw Kyaw and his friends travelled the countryside to promote their movement and met young people who wanted to know more about punk. But what they encountered were young kids who were mostly interested in the fashion side of it. The kids were really surprised to hear the deep thoughts about idealism of punk.

Did you like the music? Are you into punk yourself?
Not generally, but I like and appreciate their music because I can feel the power and their message behind it. They use their music to spread their word and to inspire change.

My Buddha is Punk is at the docnrollfestival.com on Saturday 12 November and VOD in early 2017. See MY BUDDHA IS PUNK on Facebook for further information.