Pol Pot Dancing, on OVID.tv

If Sophocles could have written about the Cambodian genocide, he might have created an eepic tragedy like that of Chea Samy. The Khmer Rouge killed her family and nearly every other master of the Cambodian Classical Dance that she had devoted her life to. Imagine her shock to discover the architect of her suffering had been the young boy she cared for like a foster mother, when they both lived in the Royal Palace. That’s right, the mass murder who eventually called himself Pol Pot grew up with the dance troupe sponsored by King Monivong. Decades later, Chea Samy’s protégé, Sophiline Cheam [Shapiro] processes the dual legacies of the dancer and the dictator through her art in Enrique Sanchez Lansch’s documentary Pol Pot Dancing, which premieres today on OVID.tv.

It is easy to understand why Pol Pot was so cagey regarding his origins. His father was a bureaucrat assigned to the palace. Given the demands on his time, the boy originally known as Saloth Sar was largely raised by his aunt, Chea Samy, whose troupe also lived in the palace, thanks to their patron’s patronage. Not exactly proletarian stuff, right? Indeed, in archival interviews recorded after the Khmer Rouge’s fall, Chea Samy explains her nephew became radicalized while attending university in Paris. (The parallels with the current outbreak of violent campus radicalization are only too obvious.)

Frankly, the film takes a good deal of time before it fully addresses the horrors of Pol Pot’s Communist regime, but it gets there eventually. Honestly, it is easy to understand why Cheam and her dancers need some time to work their way into the subject, because they all share their own losses.

The artistry of their dance is also impressive, but the staging (on-site at significant Cambodian landmarks) is often distractingly surreal—especially for the performance set inside the notorious Tuol Sleng prison (which would be more properly referred to as a torture dungeon). There is also the question of appropriateness, but given her family history and survivor status, Cheam is certainly much closer to these real-life events than most viewers.

Regardless, Lansch supplies some very telling and ironic historical context on the Khmer Rouge crimes against humanity, which many might assume were already thoroughly documented. Yet, it offers a highly pertinent cautionary message regarding the consequences when young people with promise are indoctrinated into extreme ideologies.  It is also edifying to see the tradition of Cambodian Classical Dance continues, thanks to the efforts of Chea Samy and Cheam, especially in light of how much Cambodian art and culture has been irretrievably lost. Highly recommended, Pol Pot Dancing starts streaming today (8/6) on OVID.tv.