Filming of the movie “The Lady”, the Anglo-French big screen version of the remarkable life of Myanmar freedom fighter Aung San Suu Kyi, was wrapped up on January 18. Michčle Abitbol-Lasry, the publicist for EuropaCorp-Left Bank Pictures-France 2 Cinema, the maker of The Lady, confirms that the eagerly awaited film is already in its post-production and is scheduled for worldwide release later this year.
The movie is directed by Luc Besson, the filmmaker who brought us The Fifth Element and The Professional. Aung San Suu Kyi is played by international superstar Michelle Yeoh (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon) while David Thewlis (of Harry Potter fame) plays her university academic husband Michael Aris. The movie, originally titled as “Into The Light”, has been renamed “The Lady” which is the name that Suu Kyi goes by because saying her real name is forbidden in Burma.
Michelle Yeoh and Aung Sang Suu Kyi
Michelle Yeoh as Aung Sang Suu Kyi in a scene from The Lady
Besson said Aung San Suu Kyi was “more of a heroine than Joan of Arc” and he hopes the film would further disseminate her ongoing struggles. It is the fight of a woman without any weapons, just her kindness and her mentality. She is very Gandhi-like.”
On her first private meeting with Suu Kyi at the Yangon International Airport, Michelle said, “The first thing we did is hug and I thought you are really skinny, man. One of the first things she said was ‘Why doesn’t the BBC world service have more music?”
“You feel a real sense of calm when you’re with her. She’s a very striking figure. She is so proud of her culture and the best way to show it is with dignity and elegance. She has a glow and an aura about her.”
The film will chart her remarkable journey from housewife bringing up her children in Oxford to taking on the power of Burma’s generals by becoming opposition leader. Filming of the movie, which began on Oct 18, was done in various parts of Thailand, Myanmar, UK and France.
Michelle Yeoh and David Thewlis in a scene from the movie
It will build up to that awful choice she had to make between country and family when her husband, Michael Aris, was diagnosed with terminal cancer.
Yeoh, who made her name in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was instrumental in getting Besson on board to direct, helping to set up a meeting with the producer Andy Harries – who made The Queen – and the French director at Cannes.
The film is a co-production between Besson’s Europacorp and Harries’s Left Bank Pictures and has been written by the novelist and screenwriter Rebecca Frayn – Harries’s wife and the daughter of Michael Frayn.
Rebecca Frayn wrote the script over a period of three year, speaking to the key figures in Suu Kyi’s entourage to enable her to have a personal account of the national heroine of Myanmar who was put under house arrest most of her life.
Michelle Yeoh in another scene from the movie
Harries said the genesis of the project goes back to the early 1990s when he and his wife visited Burma. “At the time Suu Kyi had just won the election but was under house arrest. It was an extraordinary experience for us. On the one hand, it is a stunningly beautiful country but on the other it is frightening – the austerity, the poverty, the sadness of the people. We weren’t really allowed to go anywhere and people were scared of talking to us. It left a long impression on both of us.”
Michelle Yeoh as Aung San Suu Kyi
The film is not a biopic, said Harries. It will be set between 1988 – when Aung San Suu Kyi left Oxford to visit her sick mother and ended up staying – and 1999, the year Aris died after being diagnosed with cancer. Aris had been forbidden from entering Burma, a decision that left Aung San Suu Kyi with the almost impossible decision of whether to stay or go.
“The film builds to that incredible and depressing crossroads,” said Harries. “That is the human tragedy of it all.”
Harries knew that the key to the whole project would be the actress playing Aung San Suu Kyi. “There was never any doubt in my mind about who should play her, Michelle Yeoh was perfect.”
Michelle Yeoh as Aung San Suu Kyi...Micheele does look a bit like Suu Kyi in this photo
The script was sent to Michelle’s agent. “Michelle rang me 24 hours later saying she’d read the script and she was coming to London to meet me. We met, she looked at me and said ‘this is a fantastic script, how are we going to do it?’ ”
Although they are making the film without Aung San Suu Kyi’s permission, Harries said they felt a heavy obligation to get it right. “This is a very interesting story, a powerful story and, I think, an important story. She has not had the publicity that, say, Mandela had.
“Her situation is remarkably similar, she is one of those extraordinary people driven by principle who are determined to bring about change peacefully.”
Harries said writing the script involved talking to people involved in the story including monks, activists, diplomats and academics. “It is a bit like a jigsaw involving a very wide group of people who knew her, knew him, knew the family.
“A lot of the story, or the story we wanted to tell … of their relationship, is not known. It is a fantastic love story.”
I eagerly await this movie. And in the meantime, let’s pray for Aung Sang Suu Kyi!
What do Liu Wen, Aki Hoshino, Eunice Olsen, Aishwarya Rai, Shin Min Ah, Nadine Ann Thomas, Sonia Sui, Jessica Cambensy, Dominique Agisca Diyose, Aung San Suu Kyi and Cherman Ploy Boonyasak have in common?
They are all listed in Esquire magazine’s “atlas” of sexiest women alive 2010.
US actress Minka Kelly is at the top of the heap as the Sexiest Woman Alive, and was made Esquire’s cover girl for its November 2010 issue.
Minka Kelly on the cover of Esquire Magazine November 2010
A total of 195 women were singled out by editors of Esquire’s 17 international editions. They were picked for representing “something different, something beautiful, something that reveals a little bit more about who we are.”
The 2010 Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony in Oslo, Norway yesterday was marked by an empty chair due to the absence of the recipient of the award, Chinese author and rights activist Liu Xiaobo. The empty chair in itself sends a powerful image which makes this year’s Peace Prize even more significant.
Significant absence: Norwegian Nobel Committee chairman, Thorbjoern Jagland, sits next to an empty chair that should have been occupied by Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, whose picture adorns the wall
Last night’s ceremony was the first time in 74 years the prestigious $1.4 million award was not handed over, because Liu is serving an 11-year sentence in China on subversion charges for urging sweeping changes to Beijing’s one-party communist political system.
China on trial: Dignatories attend the Peace Prize ceremony which Beijing derided as a farce and lobbied intensively for allies to avoid - 16 other countries failed to send diplomats
Liu Xiaobo is an academic who has spent the last twenty-five years writing about Chinese society and calling for non-violent change in China. Despite having written 11 books and over 900 articles, and been imprisoned four times, he was not widely known – until October 8th 2010 when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He is the man the Norwegian Nobel Committee call, “a symbol for all human rights activists in China”.
China was infuriated when the 54-year-old literary critic won, describing the award as an attack on its political and legal system. Since the Peace Prize announcement, many of those closest to Liu Xiaobo, including his wife Liu Xia, have been placed under house arrest to prevent anyone from picking up his prize.
In Beijing, both CNN and BBC TV went blank at 8 p.m. local time, exactly when the Oslo ceremony was taking place. Security outside Liu’s apartment in Beijing was heavy and several dozen journalists were herded away by uniformed police to a cordoned-off area.
The last time a Nobel Peace Prize was not handed out was in 1936, when Adolf Hitler prevented German pacifist Carl von Ossietzky from accepting his award.
China had successfully pressured more than a dozen countries not to attend the ceremony to honour Liu Xiaobo last night. China and 17 other countries have declined to attend, including Russia, Pakistan, Iran, Venezuela and Cuba.
Some 1,000 guests, including ambassadors, royalty and other VIPs took their seats in Oslo’s modernist City Hall for the two-hour ceremony, among them U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and U.S. Ambassador Barry White. About 100 Chinese dissidents in exile and some activists from Hong Kong were also attending.
Supporting freedom: Denzel Washington and his wife Pauletta look on before before the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo
Actress Anne Hathaway at the ceremony in Oslo
Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi with her husband Paul
Chinese dissident Wan Yanhai, the only one on a list of 140 activists in China invited by Liu’s wife to attend the ceremony, said the jubilation felt by many at Liu’s honor will be tinged with sadness.
“I believe many people will cry, because everything he has done did not do any harm to the country and the people in the world. He just fulfilled his responsibility,” Wan told The Associated Press. “But he suffered a lot of pain for his speeches, journals and advocacy of rights.”
Wan managed to travel to Oslo because he fled to the United States in May after Chinese authorities increased their harassment of his AIDS advocacy group.
Amnesty International said members of Norway’s Chinese community were being pressured by Chinese diplomats to join anti-Nobel protests planned for last night and had been threatened with retaliation if they failed to appear. Outside Parliament, the Norwegian-Chinese Association held a pro-China rally with a handful of people, proclaiming the committee had made a mistake in awarding the prize to Liu.
The Nobel Peace prize can be collected only by the laureate or close family members. Cold War dissidents Andrei Sakharov of the Soviet Union and Lech Walesa of Poland were able to have their wives collect the prizes for them. Myanmar democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi’s award was accepted by her 18-year-old son in 1991.
The ceremony in Oslo was followed by a torchlight parade through Oslo’s streets and a banquet hosted by Norwegian King Harald and Queen Sonja.
In the Swedish capital of Stockholm, the other Nobel laureates were to be honored in a separate ceremony Friday. Winners in literature, physics, chemistry and economics received their awards from Sweden’s King Carl XVI Gustaf, followed by another lavish dinner.
On Thursday, about 100 protesters chanting “Freedom to Liu! Freedom for China!” marched to the Chinese Embassy in Oslo but were thwarted by police from delivering a petition with more than 100,000 signatures urging Liu’s release from prison.
An Israeli at a rally in Tel Aviv today holds a placard calling for Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo to be freed from his 11-year sentence
China’s high-pressure tactics continued unabated hours before the ceremony, with China handing out its new Confucius Peace Prize – hastily created as a riposte to the Nobel.
China’s campaign to vilify this year’s recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize has backfired as criticism of Beijing rose and the imprisoned dissident seemed to be turning into a celebrity.
Myanmar’s pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, freed by the junta from house arrest just 10 days ago, was reunited with her younger son on Tuesday after a decade-long separation during which he was repeatedly denied visas and not allowed to enter the country.
Aung San Suu Kyi reunited with her son
Kim Aris, 33, who lives in Britain, was met by his 65-year-old mother at Yangon airport after flying in from Bangkok. Tears welled up in Suu Kyi’s eyes when she first saw her son.
“I’m very glad and I’m very happy,” Suu Kyi told reporters who witnessed the reunion along with some of the dissident’s relatives, well-wishers and a gaggle of photographers.
On greeting his smiling and excited mother, Aris immediately took off his outer shirt before airport security and the public to reveal a tattoo of the flag and symbol of Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy. Suu Kyi looked at it closely and smiled. The flag and symbol feature a fighting peacock and a star.
Suu Kyi slipped her arm around her son’s waist as the two posed briefly for photographers. With his mother’s arm around him, Aris told reporters he would stay in the country for about two weeks. They then left holding hands for the family’s lakeside home, where Suu Kyi had been confined by the ruling generals.
Aris arrived in the Thai capital ahead of his mother’s release but faced a prolonged wait for a visa to military-ruled Myanmar, where Suu Kyi spent much of the past 21 years locked up.
Under house arrest, the democracy champion had no telephone or Internet access and only limited contact with the outside world. It has been about 10 years since she last saw Aris or her elder son, Alexander.
The daughter of Myanmar’s assassinated independence hero General Aung San was released less than a week after the first election in 20 years, dismissed by many as a sham for cementing the military regime’s grip on power.
When her freedom was granted, crowds of jubilant supporters gathered outside her home to glimpse the charismatic activist, seen by many as the best hope for democratic change after almost five decades of army rule.
Suu Kyi’s long struggle for democracy has come at great personal sacrifice. Tuesday’s reunion underlined the personal toll of the political campaign Suu Kyi has waged during the past two decades. During that period she was detained for 15 years and only rarely allowed visitors or communication with the outside world.
She has always been free to leave Myanmar, according to her lawyers, but chose to stay because she was afraid she would be denied re-entry.
In 1991, her eldest son, Alexander Aris, accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of his mother. Her late husband, Michael Aris, raised their two children in Britain. He died in 1999 at age 53, and in the final stages of his battle with prostate cancer the military junta refused him a visa to see his wife. Suu Kyi has never met her two grandchildren.
While her family supported her, she said her sons had suffered particularly badly.
“They haven’t done very well after the breakup of the family, especially after their father died, because Michael was a very good father,” she said. “Once he was no longer there, things were not as easy as they might have been.”
But she added that she always had their support: “My sons are very good to me,” she said. “They’ve been very kind and understanding all along.”
Through her lawyer Nyan Win, Suu Kyi thanked the authorities for issuing the visa to her son.
For my earlier post on the release of Suu Kyi, please go here.
Suu Kyi’s reunion with her son Kim Aris stirs up a nostalgic evocation of the Paul Simon’s song ‘Mother And Child Reunion.” So sit back and enjoy this wonderful song by Paul Simon.
Small but only in physical stature, Aung San Suu Kyi is the very embodiment of Myanmar’s long struggle for democracy. Her long struggle for democracy and freedom from repression and her immense personal sacrifices have earned her the adoration of the Burmese people and the respect of people worldwide. Apart from celebrities, I believe that she would probably be the most admired woman in the world.
Aung San Suu Kyi
Waving and smiling, the petite but indomitable Nobel Peace Prize winner walked free yesterday from the crumbling lakeside mansion where she had been held under house arrest by the military junta for 15 of the past 21 years.
As she emerged from the house, huge cheers and clapping erupted from the huge crowds of thousands of people who had gathered outside her house under the tropical sun for a glimpse of the 65-year-old dissident, known to her supporters simply as “The Lady”. Someone threw her a flower which she put in her hair.
Aung San Suu Kyi given a bouquet of flowers
Despite the risks of opposing the military regime in a country with more than 2,200 political prisoners, many supporters wore T-shirts bearing her image and the words: “We stand with Aung San Suu Kyi.” Undercover police were photographing and filming the crowds.
Although she has been sidelined and silenced by the junta – occasionally released briefly only to be put back in confinement – for many in the impoverished nation she still embodies hope of a better future.
The 65-year-old human rights activist has defied Myanmar’s authoritarian military junta with her quiet demeanor and grace. For that she has endured house arrest for most of the past two decades and, perhaps, has become the world’s most recognizable political prisoner.
She has lived quietly by herself at her disintegrating Inya Lake villa in Yangon (the former capital, also known as Rangoon), accompanied solely by two maids.
The lakesisde house at Tonpn, Burma where Aung San Suu Kyi was held under house arrest
Before her release Saturday, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate has had little outside human contact except for visits from her doctor.
Sometimes, though, she has been able to speak over the wall of her compound to her supporters, never once giving up her crusade to break down the tyranny of dictatorship in her beloved homeland of Burma, the alternate name for Myanmar.
Suu Kyi with her sons Alexander,left, and Kim in the early 1990s
Known as the “lady” in Myanmar, Suu Kyi has been compared to former South African President Nelson Mandela, who spent a chunk of his life in jail for fighting apartheid.
In an interview with CNN, Suu Kyi, in fact, likened Myanmar’s plight to South Africa’s former brutal race-based system.
“It’s a form of apartheid,” she said. “In Africa, it was apartheid based on color. Here, it is apartheid based on ideas. It is as though those who want democracy are somehow of an alien inferior breed and this is not so.”
Aung San Suu Kyi derives her name from three relatives – “Aung San” from her father, “,Suu” from her grandmother and “Kyi” from her mother. She is frequently called Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. Daw is not part of her name, but is an honorific, similar to madam, for older, revered women, literally meaning “aunt”. She is also often referred to as Daw Suu by the Burmese, and as Dr. Suu Kyi, Ms. Suu Kyi, or Mrs. Suu Kyi by the foreign media. However, like other Burmese, she has no surname.
Photo of a very young Suu Kyi
Aung San Suu Kyi was born on 19 June 1945 in Yangon. She is the third child and only daughter of General Aung San, considered to be father of modern-day Burma for his role in establishing the modern Burmese army and negotiating Burma’s independence from the United Kingdom in 1947. He was assassinated by his rivals in the same year.
Suu Kyi grew up with her mother, Khin Kyi, and two brothers, Aung San Lin and Aung San Oo in Rangoon. Her favourite brother Aung San Lin died at age eight, when he drowned in an ornamental lake in the grounds of the house. Her elder brother emigrated to San Diego, California, becoming a United States citizen. After Lin’s death, the family moved to a house by Inya Lake where she met people of very different backgrounds, political views and religions.
Aung San Suu Kyi aged two, with her parents and two elder brothers in 1947.
Suu Kyi was educated in Methodist English High School (now Basic Education High School No. 1 Dagon) for much of her childhood in Burma, where she was noted as having a talent for learning languages. She is a Theravada Buddhist.
Suu Kyi’s mother, Daw Khin Kyi, gained prominence as a political figure in the newly formed Burmese government. She was appointed Burmese ambassador to India and Nepal in 1960, and Suu Kyi followed her there, graduating from Lady Shri Ram College with a degree in politics in New Delhi in 1964.
Suu Kyi continued her education at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, obtaining a B.A. degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics in 1969. After graduating, she lived in New York City with a family friend and worked at the United Nations for three years, primarily on budget matters, writing daily to her future husband Dr. Michael Aris.
Suu Kyi & Michael Aris
In 1972, Aung San Suu Kyi married Aris, a scholar of Tibetan culture, living abroad in Bhutan. The following year she gave birth to their first son, Alexander Aris, in London; their second son, Kim, was born in 1977. Following this, she earned a Ph.D. at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London in 1985. She was elected an Honorary Fellow in 1990. For two years she was a Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies (IIAS) in Shimla, India. She also worked for the government of the Union of Burma.
Suu Kyi's wedding
Wedding reception after a Buddhist blessing at a family friend's London home
Suu Kyi plays with her two sons, Alexander (in the braces) and Kim
A family picnic in Grantown-on-Spey. Aung San Suu Kyi with her husband (with the beard) and two sons Alexander and Kim.
She never sought political office. Rather, leadership was bestowed upon her when she returned home in 1988 after her mother suffered a stroke. By coincidence, in the same year, the long-time leader of the Socialist ruling party, General Ne Win, stepped down, leading to mass demonstrations for democracy on 8 August 1988 (8-8-88, a day seen as auspicious), which were violently suppressed in what came to be known as the 8888 Uprising.
Aung San Suu Kyi with her hushnad, her mother and her son Alexander
Suu Kyi and her son Alexander
Influenced by both Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violence and by more specifically Buddhist concepts, Suu Kyi entered politics to work for democratization. On 26 August 1988, she addressed half a million people at a mass rally in front of the Shwedagon Pagoda in the capital, calling for a democratic government.
Suu Kyi speaking to her supporters
In her first public speech, she stood before a crowd of several hundred thousand people with her husband, Michael Aris, and her two sons and called for a democratic government.
“The present crisis is the concern of the entire nation,” she said. “I could not, as my father’s daughter, remain indifferent to all that was going on. This national crisis could, in fact, be called the second struggle for independence.”
She won over the Burmese people.
However in September, a new military junta took power. Later the same month, Suu Kyi helped found the National League for Democracy (NLD) on 27 September with her as general secretary.
When Suu Kyi’s mother died the next year, Suu Kyi vowed that just as her parents had served the people of Burma, so, too, would she. One of her most famous speeches is the “Freedom From Fear” speech, which begins, “It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.”
She also believes fear spurs many world leaders to lose sight of their purpose. “Government leaders are amazing”, she once said. “So often it seems they are the last to know what the people want.”
She was put under house arrest on 20 July 1989. She was offered freedom if she left the country, but she refused. But even with Suu Kyi sitting behind bars, her National League for Democracy won the 1990 elections by a landslide, gaining 82 percent of the seats in parliament. Being the NLD’s candidate, Suu Kyi under normal circumstances would have assumed the office of Prime Minister. Instead, the results were nullified, and the military regime under Senior General Than Shwe refused to hand over power, prompting an international outcry. Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest at her home on University Avenue in Rangoon.
During her arrest, she was awarded the Rafto Prize and Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 1990, and the Nobel Peace Prize the year after. Her sons Alexander and Kim accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on her behalf. Suu Kyi used the Nobel Peace Prize’s $1.3 million prize money to establish a health and education trust for the Burmese people. In 1992 she was awarded the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding by the Government of India.
Suu Kyi's husband Michael Aris with their sons Alexander and Kim at the Nobel Prize ceremony
This is a short video clip of the Nobel Prize ceremony :
Over the years, Suu Kyi has repeatedly challenged the junta and discouraged foreign investment in Myanmar.
In one incident in 1998, soldiers prevented her from leaving Yangon. But Suu Kyi refused to turn back and was detained in her minivan for almost two weeks. The ordeal left her severely dehydrated, but was typical of her almost stubborn determination.
“She is the symbol of the hope for the people of Burma. If she is out today the whole country will rise up, will follow her,” said Khin Omar of the Network for Democracy and Development.
Over the years, Suu Kyi has made it clear that she remains devoted to bringing democracy to Myanmar. Her struggle for her country has come at a high personal sacrifice: her husband, British academic Michael Aris, died in March 1999, and in the final stages of his battle with prostate cancer the junta refused him a visa to see his wife whom he had last seen in 1995. Instead, the junta encouraged Suu Kyi to join her family abroad. But she said she knew that if she left, she would never be allowed to return. She has not seen her two sons since 2000 and has never met her grandchildren.
Even before they were married, Suu Kyi had penned a letter to Aris professing her love of country. “I only ask one thing,” she wrote, “that should my people need me, you would help me to do my duty by them.”
Suu Kyi tried to break the monotony of her life by playing her piano, another passion in her life, according to the independent Irrawaddy magazine. But the piano has been broken for years and she has taken up painting to fill the void, the magazine reported. One day, maybe, people will see her canvases.
Suu Kyi has also asked her lawyers to bring her books in English and French. Last year, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz was allowed to present her with his book “Globalization and Its Discontent.”
Again in 2007, people defiantly took to the streets to protest rising fuel costs. The demonstrations were seen as a direct challenge to the authority of the government.
The regime answered with a brutal crackdown. Suu Kyi’s detention was extended again and again.
Even when Cyclone Nargis devastated Myanmar in May 2008, Suu Kyi was not allowed to leave her house, though trees were crashing down all around her.
Her sentence was extended last year over a bizarre incident in which an American , John Yettaw, swam uninvited to her lakeside home using improvised flippers. Yettaw said he had received a message from God to do so. He was arrested, and Suu Kyi was put on trial, charged with harboring Yettaw, and was punished with another 18 months of house arrest, keeping her off the scene for the first election in 20 years.
During the trial, she was able to meet with diplomats. High on her agenda was the election that was held this week. She and her party boycotted the vote, certain that it would be a sham.
The junta has organized national conventions to debate their version of a new democratic Myanmar. The road map makes no mention of Suu Kyi.
Some fear that junta chief Than Shwe will continue to put restrictions on the freedom of his number one enemy.
General Than Shwe
But her lawyer Nyan Win has suggested she would refuse to accept any conditions on her release, as in the past when she tried in vain to leave Yangon in defiance of the regime’s orders.
Her youngest son Kim Aris, 33, arrived in Bangkok ahead of her release but it was unclear whether he would be allowed to visit his mother.
Suu Kyi’s freedom is seen by observers as an effort by the regime to tame international criticism of Sunday’s election, the first since the 1990 vote.
Little is known about her plans although her lawyer says she has expressed a desire to join Twitter to reach out to the Internet generation.
Few expect her to give up her long struggle for freedom from repression and attention is now on whether she can reunite the splintered opposition and bring about the democratic change that has eluded Myanmar for so long. She has clung to her dream of democracy, peace and freedom for Myanmar’s 50 million impoverished people.
Against all odds, Suu Kyi has held fast to her convictions. And with enormous personal sacrifices, she passionately pursues her dreams of a democratic Myanmar. I believe that one day Suu Kyi will be touted as the Mother of Myanmar.
Suu Kyi, you deserve the salute of the whole world!
