Wanderings a film by Christine Bouteiller
Cambodia / 2018
runtime: 58 minutes
After surviving 30 years of war and being refugees for 15 years, 380 000 Cambodians were repatriated in 1992 to their homeland from the Thai borders refugee camps. Some of them were resettled in villages built for them by the United Nations. How can a society rebuild itself after such a traumatic scattering ? Those who never left were suspicious and saw the massive arrival of these exiled families as a threat to their land and equilibrium. The villagers gave to these former refugees a nickname still used today: The wanderers.
Director : Christine Bouteiller Production : Kuiv Production - Michel Rotman / Marie-Hélène Ranc Bophana Production - Rithy Pan -
read more about Christine Bouteiller:
https://christinebouteiller.org/
https://christinebouteiller.org/2013/09/07/123/
Side by Side a film by Ly Polen
Cambodia / 2019
runtime 17:30 minutes
You can find this video among many others at the website of the fantastic META House in Phnom Penh.
https://www.tfiny.org/films/detail/cemetery_of_green_souls
Return to K.I.D a film by Vanna Seang
Australia/Cambodia
April 2020
runtime: 90 min
Film Documentary “Return to K.I.D” Directed by Vanna Seang
Film Synopsis:
'Return to KID' is a 1hr 28min documentary about the survival story of filmmaker Vanna Seang's family, where he journeys together with his parents, mother Ly Heang Seang and father Norn Seang back to Cambodia for the first time in 30 years. Vanna reconnects with relatives and attempts to reconstruct their once severed family tree, before retracing the difficult and arduous trek undertaken by his parents, in escaping the murderous Khmer Rouge - carrying only him and his siblings. The K.I.D (Khao-I-Dang) refugee camp in Thailand offers relative safety - or so it seems. Amidst the struggle, pain and sorrow, Return to KID is also peppered with laughter and joy. At its heart, Return to KID is a very personal story of healing and rediscovery.
Find more information here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NUeOvikEic
Angkar a film by Neary Adeline Hay
France / 2018
Synopsis
Khonsaly confronts his former Khmer Rouge persecutors in the obscure intimacy of the village where they once lived together for 4 years. Oscillating between past and present, forgotten spectres re-emerge and Khonsaly's story is finally told.
THE MISSING PICTURE a film by Rithy Panh
2013
runtime: 92 minutes
The audacity of “The Missing Picture” — a brilliant documentary about a child who held on to life in Cambodia’s killing fields — is equaled only by its soulfulness. On April 17, 1975, the day the Khmer Rouge seized the capital, Phnom Penh, the 13-year-old Rithy Panh, his family and millions more were driven from that city and other towns and villages and straight into hell. Four years later, many of his relatives, including his father, mother, sisters and a niece and nephew were dead; decades later, Mr. Panh, now a filmmaker, has told his story in a movie in which the act of remembrance serves as a form of resistance.
“Memory must remain a reference point,” Mr. Panh asserts in his 2012 memoir, written with Christophe Bataille, “The Elimination: A Survivor of the Khmer Rouge Confronts His Past and the Commandant of the Killing Fields.” “What I’m looking for is comprehension,” Mr. Panh continues, “I want to understand the nature of the crime, not to establish a cult of memory.” It’s an edict that feels like a moral imperative in “The Missing Picture.” The movie, which turns historical reclamation into something of an exorcism, traces Mr. Panh and his family’s ordeal both through familiar documentary devices — including archival news footage, old photographs and haunting snippets of song — and, more radically, through carved and painted clay figurines that serve as human stand-ins.
Le Cinéma de Rithy Panh
2 DVD Box
Editions Montparnasse, 2008
- Site 2 (1989 - 86 min.)
- Bophana, une tragédie cambodgienne (1996 - 59 min.)
- La Terre des âmes errantes (1999 - 106 min.)
- S21, la machine de mortkhmère rouge (2002 - 101 min.)
you can get this box in France
(Amazon.fr)
UN SOIR APRÈS LA GUERRE by Rithy Panh
"Ein Abend nach dem Krieg" (auch "Eine Liebe nach dem Krieg")
Trigon-Film DVD-Edition 47
2006 (Original 1998)
runtime 110 minutes
Synopsis:
After the end of the Cambodian Civil War, people in Cambodia struggled in their return to their normal lives. Among them is a kick boxer Savannah (Narith Roeun). A survivor of the war, who lost most of his family to the horrors of the Khmer Rouge, he lives with his uncle in Phnom Penh. Savannah begins a romance with a 19-year-old bar girl, Srey Poeuv (Chea Lyda Chan). She is humiliated by her debts to the bar's owner, and is forced to keep working. Savannah wants to help Srey clear her debt, so he teams up with an ex-soldier and plans a crime that could net him some money.
order here:
https://www.trigon-film.org/en/movies/Soir_apres_la_guerre
https://www.artfilm.ch/de/un-soir-apres-la-guerre-by-rithy-panh
Les Artistes du Théâtre brûlé by Rithy Panh
"das Theater in den Ruinen"
Trigon-Film DVD-Edition 62
2006 (Original 2005)
runtime 82 minutes
Das Theater Preah Suramarith in Phnom Penh, einst Ort der kulturellen Hochblüte, wurde von den Roten Khmer vor allem dazu benützt, bei offiziellen Besuchen die so genannte Revolution zu feiern. Trotz der systematischen Auslöschung von Kultur und Intellekt überdauerte das Theater die schreckliche Zeit und blieb in Betrieb, ehe es im März 1994 bei Renovierungsarbeiten fast vollständig ausbrannte. Seither steht es leer, die Bühne ist überwuchert von Pflanzen, so wie sich in manchen Tempeln auf dem Areal des grandiosen Angkor Wat der Urwald immer wieder Bahn bricht. Mit seiner scheinbar beiläufigen, unaufdringlichen Art zu filmen gelingt es Rithy Panh erneut, den Menschen, ehemaligen Schauspielern und Schauspielerinnen des Theaters, ausreichend Raum zu lassen für ihre Erinnerungen, ihre Schmerzen, aber auch für die Freude, mit der sie alte Kostüme und Requisiten einer offenbar legendären «Cyrano»-Aufführung betrachten. Wieder gelingen dem Regisseur wunderbare Porträts einfacher Menschen, so etwa der Schauspielerin Phan Peng, die bis heute nicht verkraftet hat, dass sie im Unterschied zu den meisten ihrer Mitgefangenen die Tortur durch die Roten Khmer überlebt hat. Der bittere Kern des Films ist die Tatsache, dass das Theater, sei es das westliche oder das traditionell kambodschanische, keine Anhänger mehr findet, weil die Zäsur durch den Völkermord bis heute nachwirkt, weil die Menschen schlicht andere Sorgen haben und weil die Normalität die da heißt: schrankenloser Kapitalismus auch in Kambodscha um sich greift. Das Land, so Rithy Panh, sei im Begriff, im Taumel der Normalisierung «sein Gedächtnis zu verlieren». Den ironischen «Soundtrack» bestreitet ein Pressluftbohrer: Neben dem Theater, das keiner mehr wieder aufbauen will, wächst unaufhaltsam ein riesiges Casino in den Himmel. (Andreas Ungerböck)
get it here:
https://www.trigon-film.org/de/movies/Artistes_du_theatre_brule
Surviving Bokator by Mark Bochsler & Sandra Leuba
2019
runtime 97 minutes
SURVIVING BOKATOR is a powerful and emotional story about reclaiming cultural identity and building bridges between generations.
It is told through the struggle of an elder genocide survivor to
resurrect a traditional Cambodian martial art and preserve it in the nation’s youth.
Through their journey, the film gets to the very heart of the generational fracture happening in Cambodian communities around the world today, between genocide survivors determined to revive and
maintain old ways and Cambodia’s youth who want to make them new.
The film captures the journey of Grandmaster San Kim Sean, a survivor of the brutal Khmer Rouge regime, as he struggles to revive Cambodia’s traditional martial art of Bokator, and preserve it in
the nation’s youth.
Facing Genocide by David Aronowitsch and Staffan Lindberg
A documentary by David Aronowitsch and Staffan Lindberg
with english subtitles
2012
runtime 95 minutes
The film Facing Genocide is a search into the personality of Khieu Samphan. He was the Head of state of one of the most brutal regimes ever, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. We have followed him one
and half year before his arrest in 2007. He is soon facing a trial and is charged with Crimes Against Humanity, War Crimes and Genocide. The film gives insight into his mindset, his life today
and his close relation to Pol Pot. It is a unique story about an ex-leader the time before his arrest and before he is put on trial.
you can rent or buy this movie on Vimeo:
new title (2017):
Facing Genocide- Khieu Samphan and Pol Pot
Language: Swedish, French, Khmer
Subtitles: English
Ghost Mountain a film by James Taing & Virginia Lynch Dean
a documentary by James Taing & Virginia Lynch Dean
Language : English
runtime 41 minutes
Ghost Mountain is the story of Bunseng Taing, a Cambodian refugee who made his way to Connecticut in 1980 after surviving both the Killing Fields and a second horror never before documented. He was among 45,000 refugees who managed to escape to what they believed was safety in Thailand, only to be forced back over the Cambodian border in an area heavily infested with landmines.
Website and Trailer:
https://www.pvfund.org/?fbclid=IwAR3E8M8Es1eqIIFVsaAKOD7soivu9lVCtRfadr9eRqsNsa0al7OEsIV3_6M
with filmdirector James Taing:
