Martin
Scorsese needs to dispatch an emergency film preservation team to
Cambodia. From 1960 to 1975 about 450
films were produced in the Southeast Asian country. However, only about thirty films survived the
Khmer Rouge. The Chinese-backed
Communists considered cinema just another form of capitalist decadence (which
is sort of true when it is really good). Davy Chou surveys what was lost with the
handful of surviving film industry veterans in his outstanding documentary Golden Slumbers (trailer here), which screens at
the San Francisco Film Society’s 2012 San Francisco International FilmFestival.
Despite
being the grandson of the once prominent Cambodian director Vann Chan, many of
the filmmakers who were able to escape execution (most of whom endured harsh transit
conditions to seek refuge in France) were initially reluctant to talk to
Chou. However, Yvon Hem eventually
relents, taking Chou on a tour of his long abandoned Bird of Paradise studio
(named for the Marcel Camus film that launched many film careers in the country,
including his own). Less reticent is Dy
Saveth, the former Elizabeth Taylor of Cambodian film, now working as a dance
instructor. To this day, the hill where
she once filmed a climactic scene still bears her name.
Obviously
the genocidal murders and forced labor camps are the greater crimes of the
Khmer Rouge regime. Yet, the devastation
of the nation’s cinema is not merely a footnote to the wider tragedy—it is a
tragedy onto itself. Listening to the
movie patrons and movie-makers discussing their beloved films, now presumably
lost forever, is deeply moving. Clearly,
lives and livelihoods were lost, but average Cambodian’s treasured memories and
cultural heritage have also been destroyed by an ideology of death. Watching Slumbers
stirs the same emotions as the sight of a charred family photo album at a
fire scene.
Slumbers also bear an
unexpected but apt comparison to Jafar Panahi’s This is Not a Film, featuring many directors and actors forced to relate
their films like oral history. Yet Chou
is able to convey a sense of them through movies posters, radio commercials,
and soundtrack records (many of which remain widely popular). He also stages his talking head interviews in
ways that are often quite visually stylish.
For
any movie lover, the loss of any nation’s cinematic legacy is truly lamentable,
but it is particularly so in this case. From
the tantalizing descriptions heard throughout Slumbers, many of the popular Cambodian films of the pre-Khmer
Rouge era sound like high-end Bollywood, but incorporating darker supernatural
and mythological elements. Though it is
impossible to know with certainty, if you are reading this review, there is
indeed a strong likelihood these films would have been your cup of tea.
