Rithy Panh’s Graves Without a Name

The history of Communism is littered with mass graves, from the Holodomor in Ukraine to the Killing Fields of Cambodia. Coming to terms with the past is particularly difficult in the Southeast Asian country for at least two reasons. For one thing, the Khmer Rouge is still in power. They simply changed their name and rebranded themselves. Even more troubling for families, the lack of proper burials makes it nearly impossible to hold the Buddhist rituals necessary to help loved ones move on with their after-life. Acclaimed filmmaker Rithy Panh searches for his father’s earthly remains in the meditative documentary, Graves Without a Name, which releases today on DVD.

Even though they often focus on the crushing enormity of the Cambodian genocide, Panh’s documentaries tend to be acutely personal in scope. In The Missing Piece, his defining masterwork (thus far), Panh told his family’s tragic history with carved wooden figurines. Graves is possibly even more personal, but less narrative-driven. We watch as Panh undergoes purification ceremonies to prepare him for further rites that will hopefully lead to the location of his father’s body. However, it seems there is just too much mournful static around the work camp where his father was executed.

In between rituals, Panh intersperses long-take interviews with genocide survivors. One was a peasant “Old Person,” who initially fought with the Khmer Rouge before becoming sickened by their torture, rape, and mass murder. The other was a much abused and despised “New Person” from the city. Both give harrowing testimony in a matter-of-fact tone produced by their resignation they will never see justice done in their lifetimes.

There have been many documentaries produced on the Cambodian genocide (several of them by Panh), but the crimes described in Without a Name still pack a visceral punch. At times, Panh’s closeness to the subject matter leads to a slight blurriness of focus and Randal Douc’s French narration is undeniably overwritten, but the power of this film remains raw and immediate.

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.

Doc Fortnight ’16: France is Our Mother Country

If you could chose a country to be your colonial power, there is no question it would be the United Kingdom. They sure knew how to train civil servants. On the other hand, nobody would voluntarily opt for France. Although they were not quite as bad as the Belgians, the French have had the hardest time accepting the end of the colonial era, often with tragic results. Rwanda certainly proved both points when it became the first non-UK colony to join the British Commonwealth. It had been French. Rithy Panh echoes that critical ambivalence towards the French colonial experience in his archival docu-essay, France is Our Mother Country (clip here), which screens as part of the 2016 Doc Fortnight at MoMA.

Nothing screams “imperialist” like a white suit and a pith helmet. Apparently, that was the uniform of choice for French colonial oligarchs in Indochina. In his spliced together pseudo-narrative, Panh captures plenty of similarly outfitted Frenchmen overseeing factory and plantation work or getting drunk at garden parties. Their images have not aged well, but that is why they are so on-point for Panh.

Essentially, the film’s arc can be summed up as “they came, they exploited, and they left the land in political and military chaos.” However, despite their damning fashion sense and the air-headed French party girls cavorting on sacred religious sites, Mother Country never lowers the final coup de grâce. In fact, the footage of a 1920s or 1930s rain forest medical clinic looks relatively progressive, especially for the times.

Panh has a shrewd eye for imagery, but he never fully establishes a clear cause-and-effect chain of events linking the French imperialist adventurism of the early Twentieth Century with the Communist madness of the late Twentieth Century. He also indulges in the equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel when quoting one of the era’s painfully virulent racial theorists. Yet, Marc Marder nearly saves the day singlehandedly with his distinctive, frequently jazz-influenced score.

Aside from Panh’s subversive editorial sensibilities, there is not so much to take-away from Mother Country. It lacks the beauty, grace, and anger of his Oscar-nominated masterwork The Missing Piece, but that is a hard film to be judged against. Perhaps this represents a pragmatic strategy for a follow-up, precisely because it is so different. Almost recommended solely for Marder’s themes (rather than Panh’s), France is Our Mother Country is mostly just grist for professional Third World Studies majors when it screens again tonight (2/24) as part of this year’s Doc Fortnight at MoMA.

The Storm Makers, On POV, Presented by Rithy Panh

Wars have been fought to end slavery, but the cruel trade in humanity still flourishes internationally. Unfortunately, it is hard to take macro military action when neighbors and family members are the ones selling future generations into slavery. Guillaume Suon and co-writer-assistant director Phally Ngoeum examine human trafficking in Cambodia from three uncomfortably intimate perspectives in The Storm Makers (promo here), produced and “presented” by Academy Award nominee Rithy Panh, which premieres this coming Monday on PBS as part of the current season of POV.

The titular Storm Makers are the human traffickers who barnstorm through provincial villages, luring the young and unemployed into bondage with false promises. Their victims are predominantly but not exclusively women, much like Aya. It was her own mother, perhaps half-knowingly, who sold her into slavery. However, like a flesh-and-blood ghost, Aya returned with stories of harrowing sexual abuse and a toddler, who was the product of repeated rapes. It has not been a happy homecoming for either woman.

In some ways, Aya’s mother is not so different from Ming Dy, who works as a “tout” recruiting girls from neighboring villages. She also sold her own daughter, which has irrevocably poisoned her relationship with her outraged Buddhist husband. Suon and Ngoeum follow the food chain up to Pou Houy, an unrepentant Storm Maker and massively hypocritical Evangelical Christian. His “employment agency” is a transparent front for trafficking, yet he has a steady stream of walk-in victim-clients. Perhaps the most shocking aspect of Suon’s film is just how many people knowingly take a very bad gamble, simply because they see no other options.

Storm Makers is a quietly observational talking-head-free-zone, but it captures enough evil in action to make anyone’s blood run cold—provided they are of good conscience. Suon make it agonizingly clear just how corrosive a problem trafficking is in the long term, even for a relatively “lucky” survivor like Aya. In fact, the damage wrought to her psyche will knock you back on your heels.

Frankly, it is a little baffling how a film produced and blessed by Panh (who helmed the Oscar nominated The Missing Picture) never secured a high profile festival screening in New York, even though it snagged awards at Full Frame and Busan. Regardless, hats off to POV for programming it. Yet, screenings and broadcasts of Storm Makers are even more desperately needed in Cambodia, as well as Thailand, Malaysia, and Taiwan, where so many trafficked Cambodians end up.

This might sound wildly eccentric, but perhaps the Cambodian government’s time would be better spent cracking down on traffickers like Pou Houy than censoring and campaigning against soon-to-be-forgotten Hollywood movies like No Escape. Of course, there is no way the illicit trafficking trade could thrive for so long, without plenty of high level looking the other way. While Storm Makers can be unsettling to watch, it holds viewers riveted in a vice-like grip. Guaranteed to inspire outrage and diminish your appraisal of human nature (so therefore highly recommended), The Storm Makers debuts on POV this coming Monday (8/31).

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.