Young Cambodians Recall Their Cinema’s Golden Age

It’s Saturday night in Phnom Penh and the walls of the Chinese House, a 100-year-old former merchant’s home, are hung with old film posters, black and white photographs, and biographies of famous actors, actresses and directors.

The images and colourful posters recall a long-gone golden period of Cambodian filmmaking, when the country was entertained by household names such as leading man Kong Sam Oeun and leading lady Vichara Dany.

But given Cambodia’s traumatic history, this is a retrospective with a difference – most of the people it celebrates died during the Khmer Rouge rule of the country between 1975 and 1979.

The exhibition’s 26-year-old curator, Davy Chou, explains its purpose. “It is for different levels: For the young people to know and to discover, and for the older generation to bring back a little about this happy time for them.”

But he agrees that there is no escaping the sadness associated with what came later. “The great actors and actresses – if we count the top 10 we can just find two today – two actresses. One is the legendary actress Dy Saveth, still known by everybody today because she still plays in the movies. The second one is actress Virak Dara, who is in France.”

Astonishing period of creativity

As Davy Chou points out, it was a terrible end to an astonishing 15-year period of creativity that began around 1960 and resulted in 400 films being made.

Actress Dy Saveth, a huge star in the Sixties, was among the guests of honour appearing at the nine-day exhibition called Golden Reawakening.

She survived because in 1975, just weeks before the Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh, she escaped to Thailand and then to France, which became her home for 20 years.

The pictures bring the memories flooding back. “When I see the photographs it is just like old times – it’s almost 30 years, but it seems like yesterday,” Dy Saveth says.

Understandably it holds mixed emotions. “Sadly some of my colleagues who acted with me during those years died under the Pol Pot regime. I am one actress who is lucky out of hundreds of actors and actresses.”

Wiping tears from her eyes, Dy Saveth tells the team of young organizers – who are all under 30 years old – that their passion for the old films is both unexpected and wonderful.

“I would not have thought that the younger generation would come up with an idea like this. When I saw that, it surprised me and made me want to cry.”

King Norodom launched Cambodian film industry in 1950s

Cambodia’s film industry has a famously royal pedigree – it was practically started by former King Norodom Sihanouk, himself a prolific filmmaker, in the 1950s. The former king even provided one of his films for the exhibition, one of 11 that were screened.

But many other films – perhaps 90 percent of the 400 made – were destroyed by the Khmer Rouge or have disappeared. Professor Adam Knee of the cinema studies department at Singapore’s Nanyang University says very little remains.

“Most of it is gone – I have no idea in terms of percentage but there are really just a handful of prints, some of which are being shown in this festival. Even for this festival they had to track down some of the prints,” he says.

But Professor Knee says the lack of a tangible history adds to the exhibition’s value since it provides a chance to rebuild some of what has gone.

“Here’s something that was lost and there is now finally an opportunity to try and retrieve that – I think it’s something that’s symbolic of more than an interest in film history. Really it’s symbolic of an interest in trying to retrieve a lost time in Khmer history. It’s a fascinating, unstudied area of film history – there aren’t that many around.”

Caring about Cambodia’s film legacy

So what does curator Davy Chou want people to take away from the exhibition? The first thing is simply that they end up knowing a little about this story.

“If we just succeed in this first step that would be wonderful,” he says, “because this story was forgotten and nobody knows a lot about this.”

The other, he says, is more ambitious – that the input of so many young Cambodians in putting together the exhibition will show that there is an interest among the country’s youth in its film past.

“I hope that after these nine days the people will not just think that before was so great, but will feel hope also for the future seeing that some people care about this legacy and heritage.”

Author: Robert Carmichael (Phnom Penh)
Editor: Anne Thomas