Synopsis
'Bungkus' is the Malay word for 'parcel', the name given to young women sent abroad to marry a man they may never have met so they can send money back to their families in Myanmar. Set in the Chin community of Yangon, the story follows Zing Zing whose tenderly flowering relationship with local boy Asang is threatened when her mother decides she must become a 'parcel'. The film's end is inspired by a real-life tragedy within the Chin community.
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Credits
Director: Lay Thida
Screenwriter & Production Manager: Anna Biak Tha Mawi
Camera: Kyaw Ko Ko
Sound Recordist: Hnin Ei Hlaing
Assistant Director: Khin Myo Myat
Camera Assistant: Lars Barthel
Editor: Khin Khin Hsu
Project Mentors: Rachel Mathews, Lars Barthel, Ivan Horák, Helke Madry, Regina Bärtschi
Categories
Technical Details
Duration: 18‘50‘‘
16:9 Anamorphic
DVD PAL
English Subtitles
2011
Copyright
Yangon Film School
Director's Biography
Lay Thida was born in 1983 in Loikaw, Kayah state in eastern Myanmar. An English graduate of Taunggyi University, she joined the very first YFS course in 2005. A regular sound recordist on YFS productions, her directorial debut Just A Boy earned her a Heinrich Boell Foundation Documentary Award in 2007. Her subsequent work includes portraits of an ex-poppy grower (A Farmer’s Tale, 2007), a young development worker (The Change Maker, 2008), and a hard-hitting documentary about domestic violence in Shan State (Unreported Story, 2011). In 2010, she received a Charles Wallace Trust Fellowship to attend a documentary course at the National Film and Television School in the United Kingdom, which culminated in the production of a short documentary, Wrong Side Up. A Fulbright scholar, she took an MA in Development in International Policy Studies in Middlebury Institute of International Studies, Monterey, California in 2013 before returning to Myanmar in 2015 where she continued to make films for a range of clients in the development sector. Alongside her work as a filmmaker, Lay Thida also co-founded and ran an NGO, Better Life.
Screenings
Director's Filmography
Director
18‘50‘‘
Director/Editor
8‘15‘‘
Sound Recordist
22‘22‘‘
Sound Recordist
15‘58‘‘
Sound Recordist
13‘49‘‘
Sound Recordist
10‘11‘‘
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Screenwriter Anna Biak Tha Mawi is a Chin national from Hakha who lives in Yangon where she is studying English Literature at the Myanmar Institute of Theology. Her poems and short stories have appeared in Chin magazines and her paintings and photographs have been shown in group exhibitions at the V30 Art Group and the New Zero Art Space. Anna joined a YFS Screenwriting Workshop in 2009 when she wrote early drafts of Bungkus. She would like to develop a feature-length version of this story once she has completed her University studies.
