Back to Burma
A Journey of Exploration in Up-Country Burma

8pm, Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Cover charge for non-members: 150 Baht

 

Two years after completing the world's first overland journey from London to Singapore, Antony Barrington Brown and Tim Slessor were hired by the BBC to drive to India and make a film in the Punjab called Life in an Indian Village. When that job was done, they carried on to Calcutta from where they shipped their Landrover to Rangoon.

From there they drove up-country to make two films for David Attenborough's BBC series, Travellers' Tales. One was to be about the search for a baby white elephant and the other about the people and cultures of the leg-rowing tribes of Lake Inle.

For some long-forgotten reason, the films were never completed but the footage of the journey did survive and was lent to the FCCT to be digitized for DVD. It shows a vanished world, a glimpse of life that has completely disappeared in Burma or, indeed, elsewhere. There is probably no better record of life in Burma before the 1962 military coup that brought Ne Win to power and set the country on its long downward slide.

Antony Barrington Brown never made another film but went on to be a successful photographer, inventor, house-builder and more. He died this past January in a car accident. Tim Slessor, however, joined the BBC and worked all his life in film, as a cameraman and a producer - as well as an author. He is very much alive and kicking. These two films are a tribute to both men.

If you couldn't be with us for "First Overland," be sure not to miss "Back to Burma." And if you saw "First Overland," you'll enjoy "Back to Burma" just as much. Don't miss one, the other or both if you can find time in your schedule.

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