Margaret Mead ’19: Wandering Souls

During the Cambodian genocide conducted by the Communist Khmer Rouge, nobody had time to mourn. People were too busy dying. They certainly could not stage a funeral requiem, because most musicians were executed for their alleged decadence. Yet, according to Buddhist theology, those who died without proper burial rituals would be condemned to linger on as restless spirits, making them victims at least twice over. Decades later, a large ensemble of musicians and performers will try to bring some healing to their nation with ambitious multi-media requiem production. Aviva Ziegler follows the development, rehearsals, and premiere of Bangsokol in the behind-the-scenes documentary, Wandering Souls, which screens during the 2019 Margaret Mead Film Festival, at the American Museum of Natural History.

Forty years after the [partial] fall Khmer Rouge, the impact of their crimes still scars Cambodian society. Classically-trained composer Him Sophy originally conceived Bangsokol as a synthesis of traditional Cambodian and Western classical styles, but the nation still lacks a symphony (or even chamber) orchestra. As a result, Him and the traditional musicians must forge partnerships with Taiwanese and Australian ensembles.

However, Cambodia can boast of an award-winning auteurist filmmaker with international accolades. That would be Rithy Panh (director of the extraordinary Missing Picture), a survivor of the genocide, who will produce and design the production triptych video backdrops. He definitely has the authority and credibility for such a project, but his strong personality and aesthetic judgement will cause some friction with the Western choreographer.

CUFF ’19: Last Night I Saw You Smiling

It is a shame when anything that predates the Khmer Rouge is lost, even when it is an ugly Brutalist architectural behemoth. Such was the case with the so-called “White Building” in Phnom Penh. Kavich Neang documents the chaotic relocation process for three families (including his own) in Last Night I Saw You Smiling, which screens tomorrow during the 2019 Chicago Underground Film Festival.

Originally known as the Municipal Apartments, the White Building was constructed in 1963 to be affordable, working-class housing. When the Khmer Rouge took power and emptied the cities, the forced evacuation of the White Building became a microcosmic symbol of the national madness. After the fall of the regime, the building maintained its cultural importance as the residence for many local artists and government officials, despite the poor level of upkeep.

With the help of the new property owners, the White Building was finally condemned. Many of the neighbors Neang captures on-screen openly compare their second exodus to the horrifying events of 1975, even though this time they are getting financial compensation. Perhaps not so surprisingly, many of the residents are openly skeptical regarding whether the government and developer will come through with the promised funds—probably with good reason.

Frankly, Last Night is more of an anthropological record than a documentary that is appropriate for general consumers. Although Neang incorporates several intimate musical performances, he does not concretely establish any of the residents’ personalities or their relationships to one another. The one refreshing exception is his charming aunt, who could have been a star vocalist, were it not for her shyness.

Ironically, viewers will get a vivid, tactile sense of what the building was like during its final days—and it looks alarmingly unsafe, as if a strong breeze could have toppled the crumbling walls. It is regretful to witness this community being dissolved, much like the hutongs in Beijing, but nobody watching the film will be able to dismiss the safety concerns. Recommended only for admirers of uncompromising observational documentarians like Wang Bing and J.P.Sniadecki, Last Night I Saw You Smiling screens tomorrow (6/9) during this year’s Chicago Underground Film Festival.

Funan: GKIDS’ Next Masterwork of International Animation

Parenting is so bourgeoisie. Under the Khmer Rouge, there was no need for such old-fashioned capitalist conventions. They took care of child-rearing, splitting up families for years. It was cradle-to-grave socialism, with an emphasis on the grave. Chou and Khuon will try to survive the camps and endure years of separation from their young son Sovanh in Cambodian-French filmmaker Denis Do’s remarkable animated feature Funan, which opens today in New York.

Chou and Khuon never really saw the rise of Angkor coming, but there is very little they could have done to prepare. Like everyone else, they suddenly found themselves on a forced march from Phnom Penh to the countryside. In the chaos, they lose sight of Sovanh, but that hardly matters to the Khmer Rouge guards, because they would have been split up soon enough anyway. However, Chou finds absolutely no solace in that fact. She bitterly resents Khuon’s acquiescence, insisting he should have deserted their cadre to find their son. Their relationship will fray, but they still must stick together to have any hope of survival.

Funan is visually stunning and emotionally devastating. Do uses the lush, verdant Cambodian landscapes as an ironic (and enormously cinematic) counterpoint to the cruelty and madness that surrounds his characters. Family members die with grim regularity, but it just rips your heart out each time it happens. Technically, Do keeps most of the violence off-screen, but certainly not the suffering and tragedy.

The artistry of Do and his team of animators is so clearly evident, nobody could seriously deny it. Instead, some critics uncomfortable with Funan’s forthrightness have tagged it “cliched,” but the truth is quite the contrary. Chou and Khuon do not suffer nobly and stoically. They hurt each other and act badly, but still remain bound by love. Really, this is an unusually honest and complex portrayal of human emotions under extreme and prolonged stress.

In all honesty, if GKIDS does not finally win an Oscar with Funan than the Academy should just level with everyone and change their name to “The Official Disney/Pixar Awards.” It is an important and, in some ways, timely film (considering the recent vogue for socialism among millennials and presidential candidates), but it is even more fundamentally a work of great artistic merit and humanism.

(As an aside, Do previously made The Ribbon, an achingly beautiful and tragic four-minute short film set amid Mao’s Great Leap Forward. Hopefully, GKIDS can pair them together at some screenings, as they have sometimes done with their shorter features, because both films truly deserve to be seen.)

Regardless, this is genuinely vibrant animation, in service of a deeply haunting film. Very highly recommended, Funan opens today (6/7) in New York, at the IFC Center.

HRW ’18: Angkar

Khonsaly Hay does not like to use the term “Khmer Rouge,” because it implies the entire Khmer people are guilty of genocide. He simply calls those who murdered his first family “Communists” or Angkar, meaning “The Organization.”  He has a good point and more than sufficient standing to make it. After forty years living quietly in France, he has finally returned to his homeland. His filmmaker-daughter Neary Adeline Hay will document his homecoming and the living ghosts he confronts in Hay’s Angkar (trailer here), which screens during this year’s Human Rights Watch Film Festival in New York.

Hay never thought he would return to Cambodia. In fact, he only recently started telling his daughter about his experiences during the genocide. He has a few teary reunions, but most of his original family was massacred by the Communists. Yet, in a colossally weird irony, his daughter owes her existence to the chaos of the late 70’s, because it was the Communists who forced her father to marry her mother (then a complete stranger) in bizarre mass-shotgun wedding.

The Cambodian landscape brings back a cascade of memories for Khonsaly Hay. Frankly, the past is very much present in the rural villages they visit, especially because the men most responsible for the execution of his family are still living there, in prominent positions of community leadership. He will face them all, but it is hard to tell if he gets what he wants from the experience. They all blame Angkar for excessive zeal but do their best to avoid personal responsibility.

Rather counter-intuitively, the Communist genocide has inspired a number of stylistically adventurous, or even downright experimental documentaries, such as Rithy Panh’s The Missing Picture, Davy Chou’s exceptional Golden Slumbers, and Alexandre Liebert’s short doc, Scars of Cambodia (all of them are excellent). Angkar follows in this tradition with its meditative passages and immersive tracking shots. At times, you can feel the humidity and smell the musky air.

Even though it runs just over an hour, Hay’s film is quite effective as an expose, memory play, and family history. One point comes through crystal clear—without some semblance of justice, there will never be any healing. That is not likely to happen when perpetrators continue to live openly in the communities they terrorized and the political system continues to be monopolized by one party. It is a sensitive, evocative film that personalizes Cambodia’s tragic history. Highly recommended, Angkar screens this Saturday (6/16) at the Film Society of Lincoln Center and Sunday (6/17) at the IFC Center, as part of the 2018 HRW Film Festival in New York.

Hot Docs ’17: A Cambodian Spring

It is an awkward fact Cambodian Prime Minister (for life) Hun Sen’s ruling Cambodian People’s Party was also the party of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. It just changed its name (formerly the Kampuchean People’s Revolutionary Party) and supposedly renounced Communism (and genocide). However, you will question how reformed the party truly is when a group of neighborhood activists fight to protect their homes from deliberate flooding and appropriation in Chris Kelly’s A Cambodian Spring (trailer here), which screens during this year’s Hot Docs in Toronto.

Shot over the course of six years, Kelly marks the passage of time by documenting the devastation of Boeung Kak Lake. What was once an oasis within the city of Phnom Penh becomes a dusty wasteland as a World Bank-funded development project steadily fills it with sand. In the process, the houses of the surrounding neighborhoods are flooded out. Those homes that still stand have a date with the wrecking ball swing by the Shukaku Company, which naturally enjoys close ties to the Hun Sen administration/regime.

However, displaced families have little choice but to hang on in the water-logged homes, because the pittance compensation offered by the government will essentially leave them homeless. From within their ranks, working class mothers Tep Vanny and Toul Srey Pov emerge as activist leaders in the struggle for fair compensation and clear titled property rights. They will find one brave, mediagenic ally in Buddhist monk Venerable Luon Sovath, but since the Cambodian government appoints the Supreme Patriarch of the nation’s monastic system, much like China has claimed it has the right to do in Tibet, Venerable Sovath is at constant risk of being defrocked for standing with the beleaguered Boeung Kak residents.

Spring has no narration, because it doesn’t need any. Viewers can see with absolute crystal clarity what is happening and understand the full crushing implications of each development. This is truly an epic of widespread corruption and personal betrayal. It runs just over two hours, which is usually a tad long by doc standards, but it will leave you utterly staggered.

Sovath is indeed a profile in courage and both Vanny and Pov show plenty of guts during the first and second acts. In fact, both will see the inside of Cambodia’s prisons on trumped up charges. However, their falling, for acutely human reasons, is arguably the greatest tragedy Kelly documents.

Perhaps what is most galling about the Boeung Kak neighborhood’s plight is that as a World Bank voting member, we helped fund their woes. Even though bank officials were fully informed of the Boeung Kak horror show unfolding in their name, they continue to steer development funds to the Hun Sen regime. Frankly, Spring will put audiences in a mood to gather up pitchforks and march on 1818 H Street or 1 Dag Hammarskjold Plaza.

Throughout Spring, Kelly captures scenes so telling, they will turn your stomach to ice-water. In fact, this documentary is important beyond the malicious corruption it exposes. After watching Spring, viewers will better understand how and why oppressive regimes can so thoroughly grind down democratic reformist movements. It is also worth noting that the crux of the Boeung Kak residents’ woes are their lack of enforceable property rights, which are the cornerstone of the capitalist system. Eye-opening, emotionally draining, and altogether revelatory, A Cambodian Spring is easily one of the best documentaries of the year. Very highly recommended, it screens again this afternoon (5/4) and Sunday evening (5/7), as part of this year’s Hot Docs.

HIFF ’15: Cambodian Space Project—Not Easy Rock ‘n’ Roll

During the swinging sixties, Cambodia’s King Sihanouk was composing rock & roll tunes. Unfortunately, when he made his Faustian deal with the Khmer Rouge, he had to shift gears and churn out patriotic dirges. Needless to say, Cambodians prefer his earlier work. The 60s pop surveyed in Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten remains popular, but sadly nine out of ten Cambodian recording artists were murdered during Pol Pot’s socialist genocide. However, an unlikely new group has found success giving those catchy tunes a fresh contemporary spin. Marc Eberle documents their formation and growing pains in Cambodian Space Project: Not East Rock ‘n’ Roll (trailer here), which screens during the 2015 Hawaii International Film Festival.

When Australian musician Julien Poulson met Srey Thy [Channthy], she was working in a karaoke bar. Her job did involve singing, but other duties were implied, as Poulson quickly confirmed. However, something about her stage presence stuck with him. Like a Cambodian Pretty Woman, Poulson hatched an idea to form a band with Srey Thy, combining elements of Western and Cambodian pop.

Despite her humble status and other assorted prejudices against her, the Cambodian Space Project kind of sort of takes off. In the short run, this means more gigs than dough. However, Srey Thy starts to envision a respectable future for herself—with Poulson, at least for a while. Let’s just say their relationship evolves considerably.

Cambodian Space Project might be the only band truly worthy of a reality TV show. There is a heck of a lot going on with them backstage (even though Eberle problematically ignores the other members of the group). Yet, in many ways, the identity of the CSP is inextricably intertwined with the tragic history of Cambodia. Srey Thy has a particular affinity for the sassy songs of Pen Ran, who was one of so many artists deliberately ferreted out and executed by the Khmer Rouge for their involvement in bourgeoisie culture. She can also directly observe the effects of their reign of terror in her father, who ostensibly survived the genocide, but remains deeply traumatized by the tortures he endured.

Clearly, chronicling the Cambodian Space Project was a mission of passion for Eberle, who also directed several of the band’s videos. He invested several years following them around the world, capturing some significant and telling moments as a result. While their story is deeply Cambodian, it has elements both Horatio Alger and O. Henry would appreciate. Of course, that messiness makes it rather fascinating, in a voyeuristic kind of way.

While Eberle’s doc is nowhere near as emotionally moving or aesthetically elegant as Davy Chou’s Golden Slumbers, it is briskly paced and incorporates some cool graphics and interstitial animation. It is also nice to be hipped to such a groovy band. Recommended for fans of world pop, Cambodian Space Project: Not East Rock ‘n’ Roll screens this Friday (11/13) and Monday (11/16) as part of this year’s HIFF.

AAIFF ’15: The Killing Fields of Dr. Haing S. Ngor

Dr. Haing S. Ngor had a reasonable productive film career, but he never landed a role that equaled his Oscar winning debut in Roland Jaffe’s The Killing Fields (although Oliver Stone’s Heaven & Earth will have its champions). Yet, the platform it provided Ngor to keep the memory of the Khmer Rouge genocide alive and to criticize the current undemocratic regime was far more important. It might have even been the reason why the actor and activist was murdered in 1996. The late Ngor will offer his survivor’s testimony once again in The Killing Fields of Dr. Haing S. Ngor (trailer here), which screens as part of a sidebar tribute to documentarian Arthur Dong at the 2015 AsianAmerican International Film Festival in New York.

Rarely is an actor so closely identified with a film as Dr. Ngor and The Killing Fields. He was not a professional actor when he was cast to play Cambodian journalist Dith Pran, but he could identify with the role only too well. Ngor barely survived the Communist re-education camps, but his pregnant common law (formal marriage having been abolished) wife did not. In an environment of horrific deaths, hers was particularly haunting.

You might think you understand the Communist massacre, chapter and verse, but the experiences Ngor describes in his autobiography (extracts of which are read by his nephew, Wayne Ngor) will shock you nonetheless. For instance, even table utensils were banned (on pain of death) as the decadent tools of western capitalism. To illustrate his experiences during the genocide, Dong often relies on Wilson Wu’s dramatic black-and-white animation that starkly reflects the tenor of the times. These are not things we want to see, but they are necessary to understand Ngor’s life and the utopian ideology he fled.

Dong is an experienced filmmaker, who crafts Ngor’s story with great sensitivity, but also with an eye towards the needs of history. Fortunately, Ngor’s life in America was quite well documented. He assembles quite a bit of primary footage of Ngor, including some unusually heavy commencement speeches. The close participation of Ngor’s surrogate daughter-niece Sophia Ngor and his friend, Iron Triangle co-star, and non-profit foundation executive director Jack Ong also inspire confidence. Of course, high level Khmer Rouge officials were not available for comment, but the allegations of Kaing Guek Eav (a.k.a. “Comrade Duch”) that Ngor was assassinated by the Khmer Rouge are given due consideration.

Dong’s film is both inspiring and horrifying, showing both sides of an incredible life cut short under mysterious circumstances. It never peddles in conspiracy theories, but it makes one wonder nonetheless. It is also something of a wake-up call, especially when it addresses Ngor’s opinions on the not-so untainted regime of today. Timely, moving, and even infuriating, The Killing Fields of Dr. Haing S. Ngor is a truly important film, highly recommended for the socially and historically conscious when it screens this Saturday (7/25) at the Village East, as part of this year’s AAIFF.

Lost Child—Sayon’s Journey, on PBS

By now, everyone should fully understand the Khmer Rouge killed approximately two million Cambodians (maybe more) in their attempt to create an agrarian socialist utopia. However, there are thousands of forgotten victims of Pol Pot’s reign of terror. They are the child soldiers who were abducted by the Khmer Rouge and forced to commit atrocities (sometimes against their own families). One former child soldier finally returns to Cambodia in search of his long lost family ties. Filmmaker Janet Gardner documents Sayon Soeun’s homecoming in Lost Child: Sayon’s Journey (trailer here), which airs this Thursday on New York’s Thirteen.

Abducted at the age of six, Soeun arguably got off easier than many child soldiers, both in terms of what he was required to do and the punishments he suffered. Nevertheless, it was all more than sufficiently brutal to cause long term psychological scarring. Again, Soeun was comparatively fortunate to be adopted by an American family. Effectively denied the basic coming of age process in Cambodia, the teenaged Soeun would emotionally mature in tandem with his new two year-old sister.

While Soeun had a spot of trouble in his early adult years, he soon settled down into a stable and productive life as a social worker and family man. Just as the limited genocide trials began to make international news, Soeun gets word he might just have surviving family after all. In fact, it would be quite a large, extended family. Although skeptical, Soeun hastens to investigate, bringing along his sister-in-law, co-producer Sopheap Theam, while his wife remained to care for their newborn.

In many ways, the tone of Lost Child is not unlike various survivor homecoming documentaries, such as Blinky & Me and Here I Learned to Love. Unlike Thet Sambath in Enemies of the People, he is not searching for cathartic confrontation or higher truths. He would simply like to feel a familial connection again.

Despite references to terrible crimes against humanity, Gardner and Theam only focus on good, decent people. Granted, there are a lot of inconsistencies in the memories of Soeun’s prospective family, but that is not so unusual given the extreme circumstances they endured. Viewers can be assured there will be some closure at the end of Lost Son.

Marking the fortieth anniversary of the fall of Phnom Penh and the start of the Killing Fields era of mass murder, Lost Child is a timely reminder of the dangers of utopian collectivist movements. While it is intimate in scope, Soeun still speaks frankly about the horrors he witnessed. Indeed, viewers can directly see how macro events devastatingly impact discrete macro lives. Recommended for mainstream documentary watchers, Lost Child: Sayon’s Journey airs on WNET 13 this Thursday night (4/30) and on Boston’s WGBX44 this Saturday (5/2). Check local listings for further dates nationwide.

MWFF ’14: Scars of Cambodia (short)

For a fifty-some year old fisherman who survived the Maoist Khmer Rouge reign of terror, words cannot adequately describe the tortures he endured. Yet, he is compelled to silently testify, nonetheless. Despite the language barrier, Tut conveys the horrors of his ordeal to filmmaker Alexandre Liebert in the short documentary Scars of Cambodia (trailer here), which screens during the 2014 Montreal World Film Festival.

Tut is a fisherman in the coastal village of Kampot. He is a rugged man of dignity, who was swept up in the genocidal Khmer Rouge machine that killed an estimated twenty-one percent of the nation’s population. The titular “scars” are metaphorical, but Tut also bears plenty of physical kind, still visible decades later.

Arguably, Scars represents a somewhat experimental approach to documentary filmmaking, but it succeeds on its own terms. Tut rarely speaks and Liebert never subtitles him, yet his body language is beyond eloquent. It becomes crystal clear Tut endured beatings, stabbings, electrocution, and that favorite of torturers down through the ages—the old pliers to the finger nails.

Without question, it is an act of courage on Tut’s part just to revisit these ghastly memories. As some consolation for viewers, he now seems to be a respected member of his community. Yet, the audience will be left with numerous unanswered questions, especially considering Tut and his wife are probably old enough to have a large extended family, yet it seems to be just the two of them from what we can glean.

Although conceived as part of a larger prospective web-documentary series and photo exhibit project, Scars ably stands on its own. It probably should not be the first or last film anyone sees on the Khmer Rouge’s socialist madness. Everyone really should initially have it initially spelled out for them. Still, Scars of Cambodia is an unusually powerful manifestation of non-verbal oral history. Highly recommended, it screens Monday (8/25), Tuesday (8/26), and Wednesday (8/27) during this year’s MWFF.

NYFF ’13: The Missing Picture

According to estimates, the Maoist Khmer Rouge regime executed ninety percent Cambodia’s creative artists and performers.  During their reign of terror, the nation’s once thriving film industry was also literally decimated.  Decades later, a filmmaker and a sculptor combined their talents to chronicle Cambodia’s years of madness with unusual power and grace.  Rithy Panh is arguably the foremost documentarian chronicling the crimes of the Khmer Rouge, but to tell his family’s story he enlisted the skills of French Cambodian artist Sarith Mang.  Where once there were no surviving images, Mang’s carved figures bring the tragic past back to life in Panh’s The Missing Picture (clip here), which screens during the 51^st New York Film Festival.

While the Khmer Rouge churned out plenty of propaganda, they were more circumspect in documenting their own crimes.  That left plenty of holes for Panh to fill in, as his title suggests.  With the help of Mang’s course yet eerily expressive clay figurines, Panh recreates the torturous conditions he somehow lived through, but claimed the lives of his parents, nephews, and little sister, one by one.

Panh’s decision to use Mang’s figures and richly detailed diorama backdrops might sound bizarrely hyper-stylized, but it is shockingly effective. Frankly, the scenes depicting the horrifying death of Panh’s sister are nothing less than devastating.  It is an unlikely approach, but it directly conveys the emotional essence of the circumstances.

To better understand the extent of what was lost, Panh periodically looks back at happier, pre-Khmer Rouge days as well.  Again, he compellingly evokes of tactile sense of those innocent times.  Viewers can practically smell the spices at the neighborhood parties as they listen to a hip local rendition of Wilson Pickett’s “Midnight Hour.”

Rarely has a documentary ever been so exquisitely crafted. Each and every one of Mang’s figures is a work of art, perfectly lit and lensed by cinematographer Prum Mésa to bring out their full eloquence. Composer Marc Marder supports the visuals with what might be the most mournful film score since Schindler’s List.  It is a film that resounds with raw pain and defiant honesty (aside from a dubious bit of moral equivalence regarding western capitalism, probably tossed out to mollify festival programmers).  

Not a film to be shrugged off, The Missing Picture holds viewers completely rapt and haunts them for days after viewing.  Recommended for a considerably wider audience than traditional doc watchers, it screens this coming Monday (9/30) at the Beale Theater and Tuesday the eighth at the Gilman as an official selection of the 2013 NYFF.

Voices from the Killing Fields: Enemies of the People

Euphemisms can be terrible instruments of evil. For instance, when former Khmer Rouge cadres speak of “solving problems” what they really refer to is the systematic torture and execution of roughly two million Cambodians, whose only crime was to be deemed insufficiently Communist. Thet Sambath understands this all too well. After losing his parents and brother to the Khmer Rouge reign of terror, he spent years interviewing former cadres to understand why they killed their countrymen. His self-funded investigation ultimately resulted in Enemies of the People (trailer here), a truly newsworthy documentary co-directed by Rob Lemkin, which opens in New York this Friday.

A newspaper journalist in Phnom Penh, Sambath’s quiet unassuming demeanor is perfectly suited to winning the confidences of his interview subjects. However, he does not advertize his tragic family history, especially not with the big fish, Nuon Chea, a.k.a. Brother Number Two, the Khmer Rouge’s chief theoretician, second only to Pol Pot (Brother Number One). For years, the largely silent Chea has maintained his ignorance of the Killing Fields, but Sambath wore down his reticence. With Chea facing charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, what he says on Sambath’s tapes is extraordinarily timely.

Beyond its potential relevance in the Cambodian Tribunal, Enemies is highly significant as a pioneering Cambodian documentary inquiry into the Khmer Rouge’s crimes. Providing historical context that will likely be instructive for western audiences as well, Sambath explains the Khmer Rouge directly looked to China as their revolutionary inspiration. Indeed, one can argue the Killing Fields were an indirect product of the Cultural Revolution.

The former low level cadres interviewed on camera also confirm their victims were brutalized and murdered out of ideological zeal. They were capitalist or counter-revolutionary “problems” to “fix.” The matter-of-factness of their videotaped statements is quite chilling, lending credence to Hannah Arendt’s concept of the banality of evil. While some express remorse, decades after the fact, for the most part, it seems like Sambath is not tapping into feelings of guilt but a Dostoevskian compulsion to confess. Obviously suffering from his own survivor’s guilt, Sambath also has his own stories to tell. However, he appears to attain a measure of closure through his ambitious undercover research project.

In Enemies, Sambath puts to shame most western journalists who simply preen in front of cameras and regurgitate talking points. At no small risk to himself, he set out to get the truth, succeeding rather spectacularly given his modest resources. Frankly, the ignorance and misunderstanding of the Khmer Rouge borders on the criminal in the west, but Sambath and Lemkin bring their genocidal crimes into sharp focus. Thoughtful and legitimately bold, Enemies opens this Friday (7/30) at the Quad.

Margaret Mead: Paper Cannot Wrap Up Embers

About five or six years ago, Cambodia was the new in place for hipster expats. I hope this wasn’t the attraction for them. Life is brutish and short for Phnom Penh prostitutes. Drug addiction, sexually transmitted diseases, and unwanted pregnancies are facts of life for prostitutes everywhere, but abusive western johns are the greatest occupational hazards endured by the women featured in Rithy Panh’s Paper Cannot Wrap Up Embers, which screened as part of the 32nd Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival.

On the surface, Embers is something of a departure for Panh, a Cambodian filmmaker based in France, whose past films have documented the human misery caused by the Khmer Rouge. However, Embers is actually more closely related to his past films than is immediately apparent. At least one of the featured women was forced into a life of prostitution after the UN incompetently repatriated her family back into Cambodia, after taking sanctuary in a Thai refugee camp. Heckuva job, UN. NGO’s do not emerge looking much better. At one point, two women discuss one do-gooder group that offers money for prostitutes’ funeral expenses, but as they note, no help while they are still alive.

Panh’s film is a tough viewing experience. You see the physical ravages of A.I.D.S. and drug use on the prostitutes sharing a Phnom Penh flat. They live a joyless existence toiling for a madam the audience never sees. The only laughter of the film comes at the expense of the Madam’s useless “tout,” who shares the women’s flat and doles out their meager payments.

Clearly, Panh has established a high degree of trust with the women, because we see them in some very intimate situations, speaking frankly about the mistakes which consigned them to such lives. However, nothing of their working lives is shown, aside from the proverbial street walking. When they speak of their encounters, it is only of the dangers they face. As a result, there is no explicit material in the film, aside from the plight faced by the women, which is truly obscene.

This is a hard viewing experience. Panh’s camera never blinks, showing all the black eyes and lesions that afflict the women of Embers. The greatest shame for western audiences is the repeated fear expressed by the women of their western “clients.” Again, a wary eye should fall on those hipster expats. Embers illustrates how tragedy compounds over time. It is a heartbreaking film that leaves viewers feeling helpless.