Finding alternatives to growing opium in northern Myanmar
Synopsis
A Farmer's Tale offers an insight into the life of a former opium poppy grower in the Pa-O region of Myanmar's southern Shan State. Strikingly photographed, this short documentary shows how local NGO, Metta Development Foundation, is helping this farmer and others like him to develop viable alternatives to growing opium and earn a living from a harsh, unyielding land.
The Metta Development Foundation is a local non-governmental organisation established in 1998 to help communities in Myanmar evolve into self-reliant, peaceful societies through social and economic growth. As a result of Metta's Farmer Field School programme, over 3,523 farmers in northern Myanmar have disengaged from opium cultivation; moreover, no fewer than 2,693 acres of land previously used for poppy fields is now completely free from opium cultivation.
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/Editor
8‘15‘‘
Director/Editor
18‘18‘‘
Sound Recordist
22‘22‘‘
Sound Recordist
15‘58‘‘
Sound Recordist
13‘49‘‘
Sound Recordist
10‘11‘‘