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Introduction to Cambodian cinema
The years immediately following independence from French colonial rule in 1953 are often referred to as the golden age of Cambodian cinema, with over 350 films made between 1960 and 1975 (see asia, film in). Key works from this period include Puthysen Neang Kong Rey/12 Sisters (Ly Bun Yim, 1968) and Puos Keng Kang/The Snake Man (Tea Lim Koun, 1972). A key figure was Prince Norodom Sihanouk who directed a number of popular romantic melodramas, including Apsara (1966), Ombre Sur Angkor/Shadow on Angkor (1967), and Rose de Bokor (1969). Tith Vichara Dany, a popular actress, starred in over a hundred films. Cinemas in the big cities, especially Pnom Penh, screened Cambodian films alongside films from Thailand, Hong Kong, India, France and the US. During the rise to power and dictatorship of Pol Pot, a small number of Khmer Rouge propaganda films were produced with Chinese technical aid but the film industry was effectively destroyed, with a large number of filmmakers killed, imprisoned, or forced into exile. In the period following the overthrow of Pol Pot in 1979 film production resumed and the film exhibition infrastructure was rebuilt. Films from Europe, the US, and Hong Kong were subject to bans and/or strict censorship, with the majority of imports coming from Vietnam, the USSR, the Socialist bloc of Eastern Europe, and occasionally from India (see socialist realism). ...
[Source: Kuhn, A., & Westwell, G. (2020). Cambodia, film in. In A Dictionary of Film Studies. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 9 Mar. 2021]
In the library's collections/Searching the online catalog
- motion pictures AND cambodiaThis is a subject, keyword search for Cambodia AND motion pictures in the online catalog.
- motion pictures indochinaCall number range PN 1993.5 .I82 on Baker Stacks Level 4.
Selected book title(s)
Cinéma-monde: decentred perspectives on global filmmaking in French by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .F74 C56 2018ISBN: 9781474414982The first book devoted to a wide-ranging study of developments in global French-language cinema, from Quebec to Mauritania and from Belgium to Cambodia, Cinéma-monde picks up on the lively scholarly debates generated by the related topic of littérature-monde. Extending the scope of this debate to cover the thriving and diverse area of international French-language cinema, this innovative book also considers cinema from France within the context of global production. ...
East-West encounters: Franco-Asian cinema and literature by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .I82 B58 2003ISBN: 9781903364673East-West Encounters: Franco-Asian Cinema and Literature is the first book of its kind to examine Franco-Asian film and literary productions in the context of France's postcolonial history. It covers French film-makers' approaches to the Asian 'Other', as well as focusing on the works of Vietnamese and Cambodian directors living and working in France. ...
Ferryman of memories: the films of Rithy Panh by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9781978814684Ferryman of Memories: The Films of Rithy Panh is an unconventional book about an unconventional filmmaker. Rithy Panh survived the Cambodian genocide and found refuge in France where he discovered in film a language that allowed him to tell what happened to the two million souls who suffered hunger, overwork, disease, and death at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. His innovative cinema is made with people, not about them--even those guilty of crimes against humanity. ...
La eliminacion by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9788433925992«A los trece años -dice Rithy Panh-, perdí a toda mi familia en pocas semanas... Todos ellos barridos por la crueldad y la locura de los jemeres rojos. Me quedé sin familia. Me quedé sin nombre. Me quedé sin rostro. ...
Perpetrator cinema: confronting genocide in Cambodian documentary by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780231851176Perpetrator Cinema explores a new trend in the cinematic depiction of genocide that has emerged in Cambodian documentary in the late twentieth- and early twenty-first centuries. While past films documenting the Holocaust and genocides in Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and elsewhere have focused on collecting and foregrounding the testimony of survivors and victims, the intimate horror of the autogenocide enables post–Khmer Rouge Cambodian documentarians to propose a direct confrontation between the first-generation survivor and the perpetrator of genocide. ...
Postcolonial cinema studies by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1995.9 .P6 P68 2012ISBN: 9780415782296This collection of essays foregrounds the work of filmmakers in theorizing and comparing postcolonial conditions, recasting debates in both cinema and postcolonial studies. Postcolonial cinema is presented, not as a rigid category, but as an optic through which to address questions of postcolonial historiography, geography, subjectivity, and epistemology. Current circumstances of migration and immigration, militarization, economic exploitation, racial and religious conflict, enactments of citizenship, and cultural self-representation have deep roots in colonial/postcolonial/neocolonial histories. ...
Other library resource(s)
Rithy Panh from Oxford Bibliographies Online by Call Number: Electronic resourceISBN: 9780199791286Rithy Panh (b. 1964) is an internationally and critically acclaimed Cambodian filmmaker and screenwriter. A survivor of the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime (1975–1979), Panh spent a year at a refugee camp in Thailand and another ten years in France, where he attended the prestigious Institut des Hautes Études Cinématographiques (Institute for advanced cinematographic studies). Panh’s first documentary film Site 2 (1989) documents lives of his compatriots at the refugee camp at a Cambodian-Thai border area; it also marks the filmmaker’s return to Cambodia to confront the country’s past violence and its continuing impact on the present. ...
Finding scholarly articles and journal title(s)
You can find articles about Cambodian cinema in a variety of publications. You can use Film & Television Literature Index, Web of Science or the search box at the top of the page.
Film & television literature index by Call Number: Electronic resourceUse this index to find articles about this national cinema.
Screen studies collection by Call Number: Electronic resourceA comprehensive survey of current publications related to film scholarship alongside detailed filmographies. This collection includes the FIAF International Index to Film Periodicals Database and the detailed and complementary filmographies created by the American Film Institute (AFI) and the British Film Institute.
The web of science citation databases by Call Number: Electronic resourceThe online version of 3 separate ISI indexes: Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Science Citation Index and, Social Sciences Citation Index.
Selected movie title(s)
- Cambodia 2099 byCall Number: Streaming videoPhnom Penh, Cambodia. On Diamond Island, the country's pinnacle of modernity, two friends tell each other about the dreams they had the night before.
Churning the sea of time: a journey up the Mekong to Angkor by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #10163A group led by documentary filmmaker Les Guthman travels up the Mekong River through Vietnam and Cambodia, towards the extinct city of Angkor.DUCH: masters of the Forges from Hell by
Call Number: Streaming videoBetween 1975 and 1979, the Khmer Rouge was responsible for the death of nearly 2 million people - a quarter of the Cambodia population. Kaing Guek Eav, known as Duch, directed both the M13 and S21 centers where tens of thousands of people were tortured and executed. He is the first Khmer Rouge leader to be brought before an international criminal justice court; he was found guilty and sentenced to 35 years in prison. ...
Golden slumbers by Call Number: Streaming videoCambodian cinema flourished in the 1960s, drawing huge crowds to theatres around the country, until the industry was destroyed by the Khmer Rouges in 1975. Of the 400 films produced, only 30 remain today. Almost all the actors were killed during the reign of Pol Pot and only a few of the directors were able to flee the country. Most of the old movie theatres of Phnom Penh have become restaurants, karaoke clubs or squats. Golden Slumbers resurrects the myths and legends of this lost cinema.- New masters of cinema byCall Number: Jones Media DVD #10413Mekong interior: When a couple travel to Cambodia, the man is curious to search out his heritage but finds little to connect with and soon feels alienated in the environment. When the woman begins to experience a fascinating and exotic new world, which draws her further and further in, a profound tension develops that soon reaches breaking point.
A river changes course by Call Number: Streaming videoTwice a year in Cambodia, the Tonle Sap River changes course, while life for the Cambodian people continues to flow in a perpetual cycle of death and rebirth and of creation and destruction. The director spent two years in her native homeland following three young Cambodians as they struggled to overcome the crushing effects of deforestation, overfishing, and overwhelming debt. A breathtaking and unprecedented journey from the remote, mountainous jungles and floating cities of the Cambodian countryside to the bustling garment factories of modern Phnom Penh, it traces a devastating and beautiful story of an ancient culture ravaged by globalization.
Internet resource(s)
- Cambodia International Film FestivalThe Cambodia International Film Festival is the most significant and industry driven film event in the Kingdom of Cambodia and SE Asia. Every year, the event features prominent pictures and hosts guests from Cambodia and abroad. CIFF is aimed at sensitizing audiences to the Art of cinema, promote innovative international film making in various forms and present quality productions made in and about Cambodia by national and international filmmakers.
- Cambodia Town Film FestivalOne of the key purposes of Cambodia Town Film Festival (CTFF) is to highlight the diversity of the Cambodian experience through the art of filmmaking. By specifically featuring films that deal with Cambodian social political conflicts, traditions, challenges and characters, the Festival will deepen Cambodian values and encourage new dialogue on a global scale. ...
Keeping up with Film Studies journal literature
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