Film Programme
An Untitled Life
documentary
Myanmar, 2008, 22'08''
Director: Shin Daewe
Producer: Lindsey Merrison
Director of photography: Thaiddhi
Editor: Shin Daewe
Synopsis: The painter Rahula lives a modest but contented existence with his family in Mingun, a village on the banks of the Ayeyarwaddy 11km upriver from Mandalay. As a new work takes shape on a canvas in his studio next door to the towering base of Mingun’s famously unfinished brick pagoda, we learn how this easy-going artist has managed to survive a sizable chunk of Myanmar’s chequered history. Sawing the air with his cheroot, the jovial Rahula also reveals how he acquired his unusual name, his now successful abstract style, and his supportive wife, of whom he admits: ‘If it weren’t for her I’d still be painting pictures of monks and pagodas for the tourists’.
‘I first met Rahula in a tea shop i
Director: Shin Daewe
Shin Daewe (36) began her film career as an assistant producer at AV Media. She joined the Yangon Film School in 2006 where she made her first documentary, The Uninvited Guest, about one family’s struggle to overcome tuberculosis. This was followed by her 2007 work, Beyond the Tsunami. With these two successful NGO productions under her belt, she decided that it was time to turn her attentions to a topic of her own choosing. An Untitled Life marks her debut as director-editor.