This artist book from 2008 accompanies the film installation The Torn First Pages and was published  to mark the first anniversary of the September 2007 uprising in Burma. Both film and book project were co-commissioned by Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary and Public Press. 
 
The Torn First Pages  is an ode to the region of Burma, to Aung Sang Suu Kyi, to the courage of the democracy movement  and to Ko Than Htay, the owner of  a book shop in Mandalay, who was sentenced to three years imprisonment, because of tearing out the first pages, before selling the books. By an order of the  military government, all these first pages had printed on them the slogan of the military regime and an official denunciation of the democratic forces. Illuminating issues such as contemporary nonviolent resistance, political exile, memory and dislocation, the process of evidence collection and display and the creation and negation of histories, this exhibtion presents films by Amar Kanwar accompanied by works by Burmese activists and filmmakers.