Newsmekong*
PHNOM PENH, Oct 6 (IPS) - Internationally acclaimed director Rithy Panh remembers how, as young boy in pre-war Phnom Penh, cinema played a central role in his family life.
"When I was young we had so many cinemas not like the situation now, and we used to go to the films all the time. Western, Indian and Khmer pictures, I loved them all."
The director, whose most recent film is an adaptation of Marguerite Duras’s novel, ‘The Sea Wall’, responds bluntly to a question about the health of Cambodia’s film industry: "I think the situation today is that we do not have a film industry."
"We have an entertainment industry. Most of the production is karaoke, soap opera and TV drama. Either that or there are institutional films made by NGOs and the like. There is no film industry in the way there is in the West."
After being devastated by the Khmer Rouge, Cambodia’s film industry enjoyed a resurgence of sorts in the eighties and early nineties, only to be demolished again by rising production costs, the availability of cheap DVD copies and widespread cinema closures.
"The situation now is parlous," says Matthew Robinson, executive producer of Khmer Mekong Films, a local film production house. "Most people have turned to making cheap karaoke spots for TV-- either that or poor quality horror films, because they are cheaper and more popular."
Documentary films were shot in Cambodia by foreign filmmakers as early as the 1920s. Silent films, locally produced by Cambodian directors trained in France, first appeared in the fifties.
As part of the post-independence renaissance in the arts and culture encouraged by the country’s monarch King Norodom Sihanouk, hundreds of Cambodian films were made in the sixties and early seventies.
Movie production companies opened their doors and cinemas were built across the country. Encouraged by the relative cheap cost of tickets, people flocked to see European and locally-made films.
The Khmer Rouge victory in April 1975 brought an abrupt end to this. Most of the country’s actors and directors were killed. Negatives and prints of films were destroyed or went missing.
With the exception of a few crude propaganda pieces, the Khmer Rouge produced no cinema.
After the Vietnamese overthrew the Khmer Rouge in early 1979, cinemas began to re-open and production companies re-emerged and were soon importing films.
"After the fall of the Pol Pot regime, many people flocked to the cinema," recalls Kong Kantara, director of the Cinema and Cultural Diffusion Department at the Ministry of Culture and Fine Art. "There were no Khmer films so we brought them from the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Vietnam."
"It was not unusual to see up to 800 people a day in one cinema alone, no matter what they showed," recalls Tom Som, a young director with Khmer Mekong Films
"At the time there was no TV, no cable and no competition," says Kantara.
The introduction of VCRs, video cameras and taped foreign TV shows in the early nineties led to a major decline in ticket sales, resulting in the closure of many cinemas.
In the mid-sixties, Phnom Penh had more than 30 cinemas. According to Robinson there are now three. Admission prices are high by local standards, at one US dollar per ticket. A few more cinemas are located in large provincial capitals such as Battambang and Siem Reap.
"There is simply nowhere for the limited product that is produced to be shown," says Robinson. "The property boom has meant cinema owners can make more selling or renting out their venues as casinos or restaurants."
"If cinema owners responded by making their cinemas better, they could fight back. But they do not have that type of investment and to be honest, they don’t have the films."
Although the exact number is hard to pin down, most industry observers agree that only a fraction of the movie production houses existing in the mid-nineties still operate today.
Most of these churn out a steady stream of poorly made and scripted horror films and slapstick comedies, which are shot on a low budget, including dubbing the sound after the film has been shot because it is cheaper and faster.
Lack of trained crews and equipment is another problem.
"A lot of people think making a film is buying a camera and putting people in front of it," says Robinson. "They do not think about the story, the script or the production values."
The almost non-existent enforcement of copyright and intellectual property laws further discourages investment in films. "Now you make a film, release it and two days later, it is in the markets, copied and being sold," says Panh. "Copyright is a vital issue and if we do not deal with this it will destroy the industry."
Panh is Cambodian born but was trained in France, where he escaped after his family members were murdered by the Khmer Rouge.
His most famous film, ‘Rice People (1994)’, depicts the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge in rural Cambodia. It was entered in the 1994 Cannes Film Festival and was the first Cambodian film to be submitted for an Oscar.
His other films include ‘One Evening After the War ‘(1998) and ‘The Burnt Theatre’ (2005). All were co-produced with European companies that provided the vast bulk of financing. ‘The Sea Wall’, which Panh finished shooting late last year in the southern port city of Sihanoukville, is set in Cambodia during the French colonial era in the 1930s, just as the first signs of revolution were starting to appear in the countryside.
‘ScreenDaily.com’ has compared Catherine Deneuve’s portrait of a French landowner in French-occupied Vietnam with Regis Garnier’s ‘Indochine’, but much grittier.
"We use film like you go and buy a hamburger," says Panh. "We have to educate young people to love cinema but for this to work, we also need to produce better films."
Although it has the same aim, Khmer Mekong Films sees itself as filling a different niche to that occupied by Panh’s complex, European-style art house pieces.
Its first film, ‘Staying Single When’ (2007) is a romantic comedy about a man trying to find a wife in Cambodia. It enjoyed a four-week cinema run and is shown regularly on state TV.
Robinson describes the company’s current project, ‘Heart Talk’, as a ‘Hitchcock-like thriller’ involving three young women working in a Phnom Penh radio station. It is slated for local release in November.
A former executive producer for the top-rated British drama ‘East Enders,’ Robinson came to Cambodia earlier this decade on a three-year contract with BBC World Service Trust, the charitable arm of the BBC.
He hopes Khmer Mekong Films will play a key role in increasing the skills base of the local industry, both to make better films and lure international crews to shoot in Cambodia.
"I think this place is ripe to be discovered," Robinson says of Cambodia. "There are beautiful locations and beautiful people. The trouble is that until the skills base increases, they (international directors) will bring their own crew and use Khmers only for the lower end jobs like extras and drivers."
Improving the quality of the kingdom’s film and television industry is also a priority of the Ministry of Culture and Fine Art, which is seeking investors to establish Cambodia’s first movie studio.
(*This story was written for the Imaging Our Mekong Programme coordinated by IPS Asia-Pacific)
"When I was young we had so many cinemas not like the situation now, and we used to go to the films all the time. Western, Indian and Khmer pictures, I loved them all."
The director, whose most recent film is an adaptation of Marguerite Duras’s novel, ‘The Sea Wall’, responds bluntly to a question about the health of Cambodia’s film industry: "I think the situation today is that we do not have a film industry."
"We have an entertainment industry. Most of the production is karaoke, soap opera and TV drama. Either that or there are institutional films made by NGOs and the like. There is no film industry in the way there is in the West."
After being devastated by the Khmer Rouge, Cambodia’s film industry enjoyed a resurgence of sorts in the eighties and early nineties, only to be demolished again by rising production costs, the availability of cheap DVD copies and widespread cinema closures.
"The situation now is parlous," says Matthew Robinson, executive producer of Khmer Mekong Films, a local film production house. "Most people have turned to making cheap karaoke spots for TV-- either that or poor quality horror films, because they are cheaper and more popular."
Documentary films were shot in Cambodia by foreign filmmakers as early as the 1920s. Silent films, locally produced by Cambodian directors trained in France, first appeared in the fifties.
As part of the post-independence renaissance in the arts and culture encouraged by the country’s monarch King Norodom Sihanouk, hundreds of Cambodian films were made in the sixties and early seventies.
Movie production companies opened their doors and cinemas were built across the country. Encouraged by the relative cheap cost of tickets, people flocked to see European and locally-made films.
The Khmer Rouge victory in April 1975 brought an abrupt end to this. Most of the country’s actors and directors were killed. Negatives and prints of films were destroyed or went missing.
With the exception of a few crude propaganda pieces, the Khmer Rouge produced no cinema.
After the Vietnamese overthrew the Khmer Rouge in early 1979, cinemas began to re-open and production companies re-emerged and were soon importing films.
"After the fall of the Pol Pot regime, many people flocked to the cinema," recalls Kong Kantara, director of the Cinema and Cultural Diffusion Department at the Ministry of Culture and Fine Art. "There were no Khmer films so we brought them from the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Vietnam."
"It was not unusual to see up to 800 people a day in one cinema alone, no matter what they showed," recalls Tom Som, a young director with Khmer Mekong Films
"At the time there was no TV, no cable and no competition," says Kantara.
The introduction of VCRs, video cameras and taped foreign TV shows in the early nineties led to a major decline in ticket sales, resulting in the closure of many cinemas.
In the mid-sixties, Phnom Penh had more than 30 cinemas. According to Robinson there are now three. Admission prices are high by local standards, at one US dollar per ticket. A few more cinemas are located in large provincial capitals such as Battambang and Siem Reap.
"There is simply nowhere for the limited product that is produced to be shown," says Robinson. "The property boom has meant cinema owners can make more selling or renting out their venues as casinos or restaurants."
"If cinema owners responded by making their cinemas better, they could fight back. But they do not have that type of investment and to be honest, they don’t have the films."
Although the exact number is hard to pin down, most industry observers agree that only a fraction of the movie production houses existing in the mid-nineties still operate today.
Most of these churn out a steady stream of poorly made and scripted horror films and slapstick comedies, which are shot on a low budget, including dubbing the sound after the film has been shot because it is cheaper and faster.
Lack of trained crews and equipment is another problem.
"A lot of people think making a film is buying a camera and putting people in front of it," says Robinson. "They do not think about the story, the script or the production values."
The almost non-existent enforcement of copyright and intellectual property laws further discourages investment in films. "Now you make a film, release it and two days later, it is in the markets, copied and being sold," says Panh. "Copyright is a vital issue and if we do not deal with this it will destroy the industry."
Panh is Cambodian born but was trained in France, where he escaped after his family members were murdered by the Khmer Rouge.
His most famous film, ‘Rice People (1994)’, depicts the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge in rural Cambodia. It was entered in the 1994 Cannes Film Festival and was the first Cambodian film to be submitted for an Oscar.
His other films include ‘One Evening After the War ‘(1998) and ‘The Burnt Theatre’ (2005). All were co-produced with European companies that provided the vast bulk of financing. ‘The Sea Wall’, which Panh finished shooting late last year in the southern port city of Sihanoukville, is set in Cambodia during the French colonial era in the 1930s, just as the first signs of revolution were starting to appear in the countryside.
‘ScreenDaily.com’ has compared Catherine Deneuve’s portrait of a French landowner in French-occupied Vietnam with Regis Garnier’s ‘Indochine’, but much grittier.
"We use film like you go and buy a hamburger," says Panh. "We have to educate young people to love cinema but for this to work, we also need to produce better films."
Although it has the same aim, Khmer Mekong Films sees itself as filling a different niche to that occupied by Panh’s complex, European-style art house pieces.
Its first film, ‘Staying Single When’ (2007) is a romantic comedy about a man trying to find a wife in Cambodia. It enjoyed a four-week cinema run and is shown regularly on state TV.
Robinson describes the company’s current project, ‘Heart Talk’, as a ‘Hitchcock-like thriller’ involving three young women working in a Phnom Penh radio station. It is slated for local release in November.
A former executive producer for the top-rated British drama ‘East Enders,’ Robinson came to Cambodia earlier this decade on a three-year contract with BBC World Service Trust, the charitable arm of the BBC.
He hopes Khmer Mekong Films will play a key role in increasing the skills base of the local industry, both to make better films and lure international crews to shoot in Cambodia.
"I think this place is ripe to be discovered," Robinson says of Cambodia. "There are beautiful locations and beautiful people. The trouble is that until the skills base increases, they (international directors) will bring their own crew and use Khmers only for the lower end jobs like extras and drivers."
Improving the quality of the kingdom’s film and television industry is also a priority of the Ministry of Culture and Fine Art, which is seeking investors to establish Cambodia’s first movie studio.
(*This story was written for the Imaging Our Mekong Programme coordinated by IPS Asia-Pacific)
12 comments:
All state cinema premises had been tunrned to CASINO. One of the only two national theaters has completely gone under fire and sold out, with the other has been extremely inactive.
However I think there is a real need for the truly qualified Cambodian musicians, composers, film directors, film producers and editors, actors/actresses in order to hype up the industry.
None of these CHEAP SKETCHES i.e Hang Meas, Rock and other production houses which could not even produce a single song or a movie of their own, will be able to help accelerate the film industry in Cambodia.
Yeah, and don't forget, we also need Rocket Ships, Satellites, Space Shuttles, Space labs, ..., and a bunch of astronauts to go along with that.
Please don't listen, Ah Kwak-Oversea (10:04). He's on drug.
and what's wrong with wanting better for Cambodia? Cambodia let me ask you, would you settle for this glue sniffing crackhead who wants you to stay in the stoneage? or will you dream and work for a modern and progress respectable nation?
Listen to a fool and you become a fool. Let him eat the bones by himself, we search for better meat right my Khmer fellows.
Nothing wrong with wanting better for Cambodia or Vietnam or Laos or even someone, but don't make them spill blood and cut each other throat based on your stupid dream, alright?
AND DON'T FORGET
Yuon to the south-east and siam to the north-west!
And?
Roum Rith alors qui a dit que le cambodge n'est pas un producteur de cinéma que mes peuples et mes sujet regarde mes films et qui ne sont jamais sélectionnés et ni sélectionnable et il n'y a que mes imbéciles sujets et qui n'ont rien compris le 7 ieme art ont trouvé mes films magnifiques concert de loanges des imbéciles pour me fair plaisir la preuve pour que les gens m'ecrivent à l'approche de mon anniversaire j'ai fais des déclérations comme je suis sournois pas ce geste mes imbéciles sujets vont m'écrire Samdach Ta alias S TA
What is wrong with ah kwak 11:48 AM? this goof is a fucker really. He is the one in oversea.
Stop making films based on the Khmer fairytales that are mostly sad and teary and gloomy.
But start making scientific films, like the American films "Independence Day", and comedy films like "Mr. Mom" or "Lost in New York", and educational films like "Apollo 13" by Ron Howard in 1995.
They can do it and you can request to learn the technic from them. I'm sure they will share with you their expertise if you insist and show your commitment to uphold the quality films without using compromise.
Best yet, diplomatically ask your government to help. When it is a diplomatic request from the government the chances are you might get in the net of film industries with many young and gifted Khmer students, with degrees from universities, being allowed to enter the Hollywood to learn the filming technic and visual/sound effects
Do your utmost to get in the net of Hollywood. Aim high with no compromise. Stop making gloomy and teary movies. God bless the Khmer.
Admit it. All of you know nothing about filmmaking. I've seen that Khmer Mekong Film's films. That Matthew guy talks big but his production is as shitty as any other Khmer movies being produced. He has no place to talk like his shitty production makes anything near international standard quality. Just search KMF on youtube and you'll see what I'm talking about. I'm not being negative but truthful.
The problem with Khmer cinema right now is lack of originality. No one has a sense of artistic authenticity. None of those Khmer so-called filmmakers have no schooling in cinema. They basically know some of the low-end technical aspects of making a movie. I am studying film in the US right now. My school film department sucks ass but I believe it's not the school that makes the artist, it's the artist that makes him or herself. Again, you see, even in the US with plenty of resources, there is still struggle because of the politics of the administration that wants to basically kill the film department.
I am a student filmmaker right now and I know I make shitty films but at least I recognize that fact. However, I am trying to learn more about the art, both substance as well as style.
I know I will get jabbed for saying this but the truth hurts lol. At this moment, only maybe Rithy Panh as an exception, no Khmer film director is qualified. The fact is no Khmer director except him has gone anywhere near film school. I think I might be one of the few but still my school sucks big balls lol. Well, there is always hope if you dare to dream.
I really want to be the one or one of the group that brings Khmer film to international audience and recognition but I truly hate to be egotistical about it so I shall remain anonymous :)
"I still have much to learn about cinema" -Akira Kurosawa, the famous Japanese director upon receiving his Honorary Oscar.
hello, for those very young people, i mean too young to remember what phnom penh or cambodia used to be like in the 1950s and 1960s, cambodia have had a prolific film and music industry then, and now, although cambodia is struggling to get that image back, it still needs a lot of support from everybody to do this. however, please don't say that cambodia never have a film industry because that is so ignorant to say such thing.
10:49PM
Aim high. Wish you the very best in your journey through the path of collecting bits and pieces of knowledge/talents in filming industries.
At your first try, start small projects with big pieces of quality injected in them. Get them done to the best of your ability. Do not use compromise because compromise will lower the quality of your product.
From the many small projects you have started, review/study them carefully and patch up, touch up clip by clip you think is still poor and lacks modern style/idea.
Steven Spielberg is a great film maker. And eventually you too can be as great. Do not shy away from asking the Khmer government for any kind of assistance by providing it substantially the essential reasons to help you. Do it in combination with others as to gather fresh ideas. Make believe and go forth.
Good luck to you. God bless.
Qm.
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