Cinema of Cambodia
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| Cinema of Cambodia |
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| List of Cambodian films Cambodian actors Cambodian directors |
| Southeast Asian cinema |
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Cinema in Cambodia began in the 1950s, and many films were being screened in theaters throughout the country by the 1960s, which are regarded as the "golden age". After a decline during the Khmer Rouge regime, competition from video and television has meant that the Cambodian film industry is relatively weak today.
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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-made 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 film from this time was Dan Prean Lbas Prich, or Footprints of the Hunter, made by off-duty Cambodian military personnel using American equipment and containing 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.[1]
[edit] The golden age
In the 1960s, several production companies were started and more movie theaters were built throughout the country. This was the "golden age" of Cambodian cinema, and more than 300 movies were made during the era.[2]
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 Snake King's Wife) 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.[1]
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.
King-Father Norodom Sihanouk (then a prince) also made films, which he wrote, directed and produced himself. They were 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).[1]
[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, and audiences for film shrank. However, the Khmer Rouge itself made some propaganda films to screen at collective meetings, and 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; films from other nations, such as Hong Kong action cinema, were banned. Audiences soon tired of the socialist realism and class struggle depicted in the films.
Cambodian production companies began to re-emerge and tread the fine line of making films that would entertain people without incurring 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 told stories about 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.[1]
[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.
One sign of progress is the career of 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 1994 Cannes Film Festival, and was submitted to the 67th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film, the first time a Cambodian film had been submitted for an Oscar.
His other films include the 2000 documentary, The Land of the Wandering Souls, chronicling the hardships of workers digging a cross-country trench for Cambodia's first fiber-optic cable; the critically acclaimed 2003 documentary S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine, about the Tuol Sleng prison; and the 2005 drama, The Burnt Theatre, about a theatre troupe that inhabits the burned-out remains of Phnom Pehn's Suramet National Theatre, which caught fire in 1994 but has never been rebuilt.
Panh 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.
In 2001 Fai Sam Ang directed Kon pous keng kang (The Snake King's Child), 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. At the time, Phnom Penh did not yet have any viable commercial cinemas, so the film was screened at the French Cultural Center in Phnom Penh and in outdoor screenings, as well as in a wide commercial release in Thailand cinemas.
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.
[edit] Recent developments
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.[2]
Khmer Mekong Films, a production company started by Matthew Robinson, a former executive producer of the UK's top-rated drama EastEnders, and former head of drama for BBC Wales, aims to raise the standards both editorially and technically of the Cambodian film industry. The company released its first full-length feature Staying Single When in March 2007 in Cambodian cinemas. The romantic comedy about a young man trying to find a wife in Cambodia.
Camerado,[3] one of the most consistently innovative media companies in Cambodia, began operations in Asia in 2005. In 2007, Camerado launched Cambodia's first independent film festival, CamboFest[4], and in the same year launched CamboTube[5], a "Youtube-style" video sharing community dedicated to Cambodian and regional issues. Titles by Camerado include: BookWars (2000), Crisis (2005), Have Forest Have Life (2006), Susan Hero (2007), Freedom Deal (currently preparing to shoot), and many other short form docs and PSAs. Although a private sector entity, Camerado insists on training and hiring Khmer staff for key positions even without an agency or donor mandate to do so.
Even with growing interest in film making, 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.[1]
[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] Foreign Remake film into Khmer version
After The khmer film had begin rose.Between 2004 to present,There are several Khmer film had remade from Foreign film that most of them are kind of horror film,such as: Neang Neath,Vegenceful, The Forest, Neang Pomiry and many more.
[edit] Notable films
- Orn Euy Srey Orn (1970s)
- Tep Sodachan (1970s)
- Thavory meas bong (1970s)
- See Angkor and Die (1993)
- Rice People (1994)
- One Evening After the War (1998)
- The Land of the Wandering Souls (2000)
- The Snake King's Child (2001)
- S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine (2003)
- Tum and Teav:Romeo and Juliet (2003)
- Neang Neath (2004)
- Ghost Banana Tree (2005)
- The Forest (2005)
- The Haunted House (2005)
- The Burnt Theatre (2005)
- Staying Single When (2007)
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ a b c d e Cambodia Cultural Profile, Visiting Arts and the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts of Cambodia.
- ^ a b "Cambodian films are undergoing a rebirth", Associated Press, January 6, 2006. (Retrieved from Taipei Times website on December 24, 2006.)
- ^ Camerado Home
- ^ CAMBOFEST: Film and Video Festival of Cambodia
- ^ CamboTube, Cambodia
[edit] External links
- Films from Cambodia at the Internet Movie Database
- Khmer-language films at the Internet Movie Database
- Bophana: Audio Visual Resource Center – Cambodia
- Cambodia Cultural Profile (Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts/Visiting Arts)
- Asia life.com
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