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.