~ Sakse means “witness & evidence” in Jinghpaw Kachin language. ~
Sakse was founded to create a self-sustaining platform for development, production, achieving and distribution of Kachin media.
We are a media agency, a photo gallery, a library, a cinema, a photo archive and a film production studio.
We give workshops, mentoring, Training of Trainers coaching, awards and grants.
We are focused on media development across genre in Kachin State & Northern Burma.
In 2007 Earth Rights International brought thier ‘Burma School” to visit the Pun Pun farm in Chiang Mai Thailand. DETAILS Tanka with photo
On that day, Ryan had two epiphanies
One, that there was a nation on this planet that he had never heard about, had no Wiki entry and a BBC search for Kachin came up with, “error not found”.
Two, that due to the world’s longest ongoing civil war & it’s isolated geography this nation had not yet had the opportunity to represent themselves visually to the world.
With a degree in Peace Studies, it did not take Ryan long to realize the potential of creating a transformational media project there.
Two Weeks later Ryan was running his very first media boot camp for ethnic activist from Kachin & Burma.
Six months later Ryan received a grant from the Pulitzer Center to spend one month documenting the Kachin micronation & got permission from the KIO to visit as a photographer / media educator. He co-taught, with Tim Patterson, a one week media boot camp for 12 youth from Laiza.
This month was also spend scouting about the state of media creation there & planning which programs would be most transformational.
in 2010 Ryan received the Nikon Inspiration Award for his own works, titled ‘Portraits of Independence : inside the Kachin micronation’. He donated his cash prize of 100,000 Yen to continuing to expand the ability of Kachins to document their own nation
in May 2011 Ryan was invited to his first TEDx talk to share his vision & progress thus far for developing a robust media culture in Kachin. The talk was titled ‘ 100 million new photojournalists’
in Oct 2011 Ryan was awarded the Chapnick Grant from the W. Eugene Smith Fund for ‘leadership in fields ancillary to photojournalism, such as editing, research, education and management.’ These funds where used to start the library & run workshops among other things.
in 2012 Ryan spoke at TEDxBKK about true grassroots media in a talk titled ‘Grassroots Photojournalism & Visual Literacy’
in 2013 Internews gave some seed money to open a full time media center in Laiza. Unfortunately, an inflated trust in ASSK and the NLD led to large scale shift in funding trends & support for projects in the borderlands all shifted to major cities.
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Since 2008 we have been very active in Kachin State. Sakse was founded in 2015 as an independent venture of Doc Arts Asia which had been running many projects for 7 years in Kachin prior.
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We are a media agency of photographers, cinematographers, fixers, directors, teachers and journalists focused on media development in Kachin State and Northern Burma with over a decade of experience and unparalleled access to the front-lines, IDP camps, rebel leadership and areas off limits to international organizations and international journalists.
All content is available for free download or purchase to the local and international media, NGO’s for advocacy, research purposes and our members are available for assignments, be it editorial or commercial shooting, consulting or fixing.
Sakse works closely with local media outlets and NGO’s to make sure our materials are accessible to all interested parties.
Please contact Sakse to introduce your organization or project. Email : hello@sakse.org
Anhte Malawm Ni Gaw Jinghpaw Mung Hte Sam Mung Buga Ginra Ni A Mabyin Masa Lam Ni Hpe Htawng Madun Ai Sumla Dem Sara ,Sumla Hkrung Dem Sara,Journalists Sara Ni Hpe Garum Shing Tau Ai Wa hte Journalists Sara Ni Rai Nga Ai.
Malawm Ni Yawng Gaw Sumla,Sumla Hkrung ,Fixing worker Galaw Ai Lam Hpe Tara Shang Ai Hku Lit Jaw Mai Ai Hkr Re.
Anhte Malawn Ni Gaw Mungdan Atsuya ,Mungkan Madang Dep Magazine A Matu Cover Stories Ni ,Shi Laika, Dat Kasa Galaw Ai Lam Ni A Matu Aten Galu Bungli Jaw Mai Hku Re.
Sakse ဆိုသည်မှာ ကချင်ဘာသာ ဂျိန်းဖော ဖြင့် “သက်သေ နှင့် အထောက်အထား” ကို ဆိုလိုပါသည်။ Saske သည် ကချင်မီဒီယာ ထုတ်လုပ်မှု နှင့် ဖြန့်ဝေမှု တို့ကို ကိုယ်ပိုင်ရပ်တည်နိုင်သည့် ပလက်ဖောင်းတစ်ခု အဖြစ် ရပ်တည်နိုင်ရန်အတွက် ရည်ရွယ်ချက်ဖြင့် တည်ထောင်ခဲ့ပါသည်။ Saske ကို မီဒီယာ အေဂျင်စီ တခု၊ ဓာတ်ပုံပြခန်း၊ စာကြည့်တိုက်၊ ရုပ်ရှင်ရုံ၊ ဓာတ်ပုံမှတ်တမ်း နှင့် ရုပ်ရှင် ထုတ်လုပ်ရေး စတူဒီယို တို့ဖြင့် ဖွဲ့စည်းထားပါသည်။ ထို့အပြင် အလုပ်ရုံဆွေးနွေးပွဲများ၊ လမ်းညွှန်သင်ကြားခြင်းများ၊ သင်တန်းနည်းပြများ အား သင်တန်းပေးခြင်း၊ ဆုကြေးငွေ နှင့် ထောက်ပံ့ကြေး ပံ့ပိုးခြင်းများ စသည့် အစီအစဉ်များလည်းရှိပါသည်။ Saske အနေဖြင့် ကချင်ပြည်နယ် နှင့် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံမြောက်ပိုင်းရှိမီဒီယာများ ဖွံ့ဖြိုး တိုးတက်ရေးကို အာရုံစိုက်ဆောင်ရွက်လျက်ရှိပါသည်။
Building momentium
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Building momentium
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Sakse By The Numbers
Years active in Kachin
EDK Contributors
Sakse's international Exhibitions
Images in the archive
Photo Books in our Collection
Everyday Kachin Followers
Grant & Award money given ( MMK)
Workshop Participants
Kachin Documentary Photography Timeline
The symbolism of the Sakse Logo
Where we work
Sakse’s Show Reel
Team Sakse :
Ryan Libre
Director / Instructor
Ryan is a curator / visual artist. He’s been documenting and teaching local photographer in Kachin State since 2008. Ryan’s photography has been exhibited in museums, galleries & alleyways across the world. He’s the winner of Nikon’s Inspiration award and has received grants from the W.Eugene Smith Fund, Internews & the Pulitzer center as well as having given two TEDx talks.
Yawng Htang
Manager / Curator
Yawng Htang Zinghtung is a photojournalist based in Laiza, the Kachin Independence Army’s capital city. After his villiage of Nam Sang Yang became the front lines of the fight between the KIO and the Burmese army, he and his family fled to the capital. Studied at DVB’s (Democratic Voice Of Burma) Multimedia Academy Journalist Training in partnership with Chiang Mai University 3 month
Hkun Li
Instructor / Curator
Hkun Li is a documentary photographer from Myitkyina. He is an alumni from our programs, as well as an alumni of the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop and the Angkor Photo Workshop. He has had solo exhibitions at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand , The London School of Economics and several others.
Hkun Li received first place at the Yangon Festival in 2020 for his photo project about forced marriages among Kachin IDP women to Chinese Business men titled ‘Beauty Queen’.
Doi Awng Sam
Studio Sakse
Production Manager
Francis Wilmer
All Sakse projects
Communications
Francis is a British documentary producer, writer & photographer. His work spans multiple disciplines focusing on identity, class, indigenous rights and struggles for self determination. He's been focused on Kachin & the Burma peace process since 2015, working in journalism, media development & advocacy in Burma and the wider region.
List of Sakse content contributors can be found on our Agency site
Sakse's Board of Advisors
Our advisors give critical advice & networking to help drive Sakse and it's members to their goals
Lukas Birk
Archive Advisor
artist, archivist & storyteller. Lukas is the founder of the Myanmar Photo Archive & Fraglich Publishing.
John Novis
Impact Advisor
After running Greenpeace's international media desk, John Novis knows how to use an image or media campaign to achive real world impact.
Jarrad Hope
Strategic Advisor
Status co-founder
Naw Ming Lahpai
Honorary Advisor
Naw Ming worked with Sakse in the early days before he was shot & paralized documenting the conflict in Kachin
Chris Lowenstein
Film & Cinema Advisor
With a reputation for integrity and experience, Chris has lead Living films to become one of the top production houses in South East Asia.
Jeanne Hallacy
Networking Advisor
Jeanne has directed several documentary films on a range of topics from political prisioners to rape as a weapon of war in Burma and ran ' Insight out" a photo education program.
Sakse’s Partners
Sakse’s Clients
