… but I’m afraid it was pretty tough going, watching everyone’s films. Afternoon sessions are always difficult, but when you try to squeeze 58 people into a tiny AV room and screen short films in a language half of us don’t understand? Accompanied by lengthy explanations in Khmer, with English translations we can’t hear because we’re sitting too far back in the room?
Difficult. Very difficult. Add lunch beforehand and the fact that two air-conditioners couldn’t keep up with our stuffy body heat, and then maybe you’ll understand why I completely slept through a graphic revenge documentary on the Killing Fields.
The students involved in these projects
The ones that stick in my mind are:
1) Tith Kannitha and Oun Batham’s documentary on the versatile methods of tying the krama scarf
2) Sorn Setpheap and and So Chakrya’s footage of people at the war crimes trials reacting to images of rock’n’roll dancing before the War
3) Koh Rathany, Chan Lida and Tith Narith’s piece based on propaganda video of the Khmer Rouge, celebrating the joyousness and harmony of the Communist regime through dance and army marches. They showed the clips to people under the age of 18, who mused that whoa, the Khmer Rouge period couldn’t have been so bad, and then showed this to their parents, who wept to realise their children didn’t know the truth about this suffering. (The history of the genocides still hasn’t found its way into textbooks.)
FCP 09/10 
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