38 Brooten, McElhone and Venkiteswaran with their own foreign correspondents, although visas were becoming more difficult to obtain and local journalists working with foreign media have come under threat while covering the crisis in Rakhine State (Brooten and Verbruggen 2017; Crispin 2018; Dickinson 2017). The majority of exiled media returned. Susan Banki and Ja Seng Ing provide an analysis of the changes faced by one of these outlets — The Irrawaddy — as it made the move back to the country. Ethnic media in the borderlands also began moving back, alongside nascent startups publishing and broadcasting in Myanmar and ethnic languages, a transformation which Jane Madlyn McElhone overviews in this volume. The abolition of pre-publication censorship benefitted the artistic industries. Myanmar hosted its first independent international literary festival in February 2013 (VOA 2013). Filmmakers highlighted themes that were formerly off-limits, including politics and social justice. The film industry had been limited by the 1996 Television and Video Law that required all films and videos to be vetted prior to exhibition, but in December 2011 the Minister of Information and Culture, Kyaw San, announced that censorship of film and video would be relaxed. Films that were previously restricted in the country were subsequently permitted to screen, including Burma VJ, about the video journalists who reported on the 2007 Saffron Revolution and the government’s response, and Nargis, by a group of young filmmakers from the Yangon Film School about the aftermath of the 2008 cyclone and the plight of its victims (Aung Min 2012; Harris 2013). Yet, nudity and sex remained off limits, and the horror genre was often banned (Harris 2013). In this volume, Mon Mon Myat discusses the impact of the Human Rights Human Dignity Film Festival, including films blocked by the film censorship board such as Sittwe and Twilight over Burma, the latter after the NLD came into power. The partial relaxing of pre-exhibition censorship for artistic works created a new openness and a freer space for music, comedy and traditional forms of satirical critique that were previously banned, yet bureaucratic hurdles and the highly restrictive legal framework have continued to present challenges (Harris 2013). For example, live music performances required advance permits from multiple levels of government, while public performances have often been controlled through the use of Section 505 of the penal code and Section 18 of the Peaceful Assembly and Peaceful Procession Law (Harris 2013). The 01 ch1-MyanmarMediaIT-5P.indd 38 8/4/19 10:29 am