Cinema of Cambodia
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Cinema in Cambodia started in the 1950s, and by the 1960s the country's film industry was experiencing a golden age, with many classic films being made and movie theaters throughout the country. Among the filmmakers in Cambodia was none other than King-Father Norodom Sihanouk himself, who wrote, directed, produced and starred in several of his own films. The industry remained strong until just before the Khmer Rouge regime, and has been slow to return since the end of war in the late 1980s, due to heavy competition from video and television.
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[edit] History
[edit] The early years
While documentary films were shot in Cambodia by foreign filmmakers as early as the 1920s, the first Cambodian films were silent films made in the 1950s by filmmakers who had studied overseas. They included Roeum Sophon, Ieu Pannakar and Sun Bun Ly. The United States Information Service held training workshops during this era and provided equipment as well. One films from this time was Dan Prean Lbas Prich, or Footprints of the Hunter. It was made by off-duty Cambodian military personnel using American equipment and contained footage of Cambodian hill tribes.
Sun Bun Ly's first film was Kar Pear Prumjarei Srei Durakut (Protect Virginity). He also established the first private production company, Ponleu Neak Poan Kampuchea. His success inspired others, such as Ly Bun Yim, to try their hand.
[edit] The golden age
Several production companies were started and more movie theaters were built throughout the country in the 1960s. Movie tickets were relatively affordable, although the types of movies that attracted audiences were divided along social lines, with European films popular with students and educated white-collar workers, while the audience for Cambodian movies were mainly farmers and laborers.
Among the classic films from this period are Lea Haey Duong Dara (Goodbye Duong Dara) and Pos Keng Kang (The Keng Kang Snake) by Tea Lim Kun and Sabbseth and Au Euil Srey An (Khmer After Angkor) by Ly Bun Yim.
Stars during this era included actress Vichara Dany, who made hundreds of films but lost her life during the Khmer Rouge regime. The star of Pos Keng Kang, actress Dy Saveth, escaped Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge rule and has returned to act in films and teach at Royal University of Phnom Penh. A leading man of the era was action star Chea Yuthon. His survivors, son Thorn Tharith, and Chea's wife Somvann Sodany, also a famous actress of the 1960s and '70, made an autobiographical drama, Chheam Anatha (The Blood of An Orphan), about the family's struggles during the Khmer Rouge time.[1][2]
King-Father Norodom Sihanouk (then a prince) also made films, mostly romantic melodramas with an underlying social message. A cinema fan since his student days in Saigon in the 1930s, he made his first feature Apsara in 1966 and made eight other films during the next three years, serving as producer, director, writer, composer and star. His other films during this period include Ombre Sur Angkor (1967), Rose de Bokor and Crepuscule (Twilight) (1969).
[edit] The communist era
In the years leading up to the takeover by the Khmer Rouge, refugees crowded the cities and movie-going remained extremely popular. Among the films at this time were the love-triangle melodrama On srey On and Thavory meas bong. Both films featured the music of popular Cambodian singer Sinn Sisamouth.
The industry's decline began in late 1974, with the fall of Phnom Penh to the Khmer Rouge imminent. After the Khmer Rouge takeover, the cities were emptied out, yet the Khmer Rouge itself made some propaganda films to screen at collective meetings. Diplomatic visits were also recorded on film.
With the invasion of Cambodia by Vietnam, the fall of the Khmer Rouge and the installation of the Vietnam-backed People's Republic of Kampuchea government (see History of Cambodia (1979-present)), movie houses in Phnom Penh were re-opened. However, there was no domestic film industry because many of the filmmakers and actors from the 1960s and 1970s had fled the country or had been killed by the Khmer Rouge. Negatives and prints of many films were destroyed, stolen, or missing.
Cinema in Cambodia at this time consisted of films from Vietnam, the Soviet Union, East European socialist countries and India. Audiences soon tired of the socialist realism and class struggle depicted in the films, but other films, such as Hong Kong action cinema, were banned.
Cambodian production companies began to re-emerge and tread the fine line of making films that would entertain people and not incur the wrath of the government. Films from this period include Chet Chorng Cham (Reminding the Mind) and Norouk Pramboun Chaon (Nine Levels of Hell) and would tell such stories as the miseries endured under the Khmer Rouge or lives that flourished under the Vietnam-backed regime. Soon, there were more than 200 production companies, making films that competed for screenings at 30 cinemas in Phnom Penh.
The boom in filmmaking was curtailed, however, by the introduction of VCRs, video cameras and importation of taped foreign television programs, including Thai soap operas.
[edit] Rithy Panh
Since the Cambodian film industry was left in ruin by decades of war and by the video revolution, the best hope for Cambodian cinema has come from overseas: French-trained director Rithy Panh, who escaped Cambodia after seeing his family die under the Khmer Rouge regime.
His films focus on the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge, and include the docudrama, Rice People (1994), which was in competition at the Cannes Film Festival; the 2000 documentary, The Land of Wandering Souls, chronicling the hardships of workers digging a cross-country trench for Cambodia's first fiber-optic cable; the 2003 documentary S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine, about the Tuol Sleng prison; and the 2005 drama, The Burnt Theater, about a theater troupe that inhabits the burned-out remains of Phnom Pehn's Suramet Theatre, which caught fire in 1994 but has never been rebuilt.
Rithy has many other projects planned, the chief of which has been developing Bophana, the Audio Visual Center – Cambodia, with an aim towards preserving the country's film, photographic and audio history.[3]
[edit] Slow comeback
Although production since the 1990s has been mainly devoted to karaoke videos, comedy skits and television dramas, the local industry has started a slow comeback.
In 2001 Fay Sam Ang directed Kon Pouh Keng Kang (The Snake King's Daughter), a remake of a classic 1960s Cambodian film. Though it was a Thai co-production, starring Thai leading man Winai Kraibutr, it was recognized as the first Cambodian film to be released since before the Khmer Rouge era. It opened in cinemas both in Phnom Penh and in Thailand.
The 2003 Phnom Penh riots, prompted by a newspaper article that falsely quoted Thai actress Suvanant Kongying saying that Cambodia had stolen Angkor, resulted in a ban on all Thai films and television programs.
To fill the large gap in programming, a resurgence in Cambodian film and TV production began in earnest.
A national film festival was held in November 2005.
Many of the films shown were locally made low-budget horror films, such as Nieng Arp, or Lady Vampire, which depicts the krasue, a ghostly flying female head with internal organs dangling beneath it.
The best movie trophy went to The Crocodile, a tale of the heroism of a man who killed the beast responsible for the deaths of several people in his village. It starred Cambodian pop singer Preap Sovath and veteran actress Dy Saveth.
Other recent films include Tum Teav, adapted from the classic Romeo and Juliet-style Cambodian folktale and the contemporary family drama A Mother's Heart, by Pan Phuong Bopha, one of the few working female writer-directors in Cambodia.
Even with growing interest in filmmaking, increased access to equipment and training programs, the film industry still faces challenges, including widespread availability of counterfeit DVDs and lax enforcement of copyright and intellectual property laws, which discourages investment in films.
[edit] Foreign films made in Cambodia
Cambodia's Angkor Wat was the location for the filming of 1965's Lord Jim, starring Peter O'Toole, but it wasn't until the early 2000s that foreign filmmakers made their return to the country.
The best-known depiction of Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge years, 1984's The Killing Fields, starring the Cambodian actor Haing S. Ngor as journalist Dith Pran, was actually made in neighboring Thailand.
Since the reopening of Cambodia to international tourism, high-profile directors such as Oliver Stone and Steven Spielberg have scouted Cambodia for locations.
The 2001 action blockbuster, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider was shot on location around Angkor, and its star, Angelina Jolie became so enamored with the country that she adopted a Cambodian boy named Maddox and lived there for a time.
Other films shot on location around Angkor include Wong Kar-Wai's In the Mood for Love (which also includes film footage of the 1966 visit of Charles de Gaulle to Phnom Penh) and Two Brothers by Jean-Jacques Annaud in 2003. Matt Dillon's 2002 drama, City of Ghosts, was filmed in many locations around the country, including Phnom Penh and the Bokor Hill Station.
However, because of the lack of trained film crews, Cambodia remains a challenging place to make films.
[edit] See also
- Asian cinema
- Communications in Cambodia
- East Asian cinema
- Media of Cambodia
- Southeast Asian cinema
- World cinema
[edit] References
- Cambodia Cultural Profile, Visiting Arts and the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts of Cambodia.
- "Cambodian films are undergoing a rebirth", Associated Press, January 6, 2006. (Retrieved from Taipei Times website on May 19, 2006.)
[edit] Notes
- ^ "Famous Khmer movie idols", Andy Brouwer, Blogspot, November 4, 2006.
- ^ "Dy Saveth - Cambodia's Bridgette Bardot", Andy Brouwer, Blogspot, November 3, 2006.
- ^ "Rithy Panh's dream is realized", Andy Brouwer, Blogspot, October 19, 2006.
