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| Dos Sopheap, Miss Landmine Cambodia (Photo: The Phnom Penh Post) |
By Greg Hoekstra - North Shore Outlook
In the opening scene of Stan Feingold’s new documentary, Miss Landmine, a woman stands in the seaside paradise of Kep, Cambodia, with a sparkling tiara resting on her crown.
As waves gently lap against the sandy shoreline, the woman smiles awkwardly and poses for a series of glamour shots taken by a professional photographer.
Click. Click. Click.
Dangling from the woman’s right hand is a large silver disco ball that glimmers when it catches a ray of sunlight. But it’s the left sleeve of the woman’s white dress shirt that draws the most attention — hanging flat and empty, with no arm to fill it.
It’s then that the viewer realizes the woman in the spotlight is one of tens of thousands of amputees in Cambodia — a victim of the estimated 4 million landmines that litter the countryside.
So when Feingold — an award-winning North Vancouver filmmaker — first heard about the Miss Landmine beauty pageant, he knew immediately that it would make a great documentary.
“It’s a search for beauty in a dire social environment,” says Feingold. “In many ways that’s what my films tend to gravitate toward ... it’s about those that have been labelled rejects in their society, it’s about that flower that grows through the rubble.”
The film, which premiers this weekend at the San Francisco Documentary Film Festival, chronicles artist Morten Traavik’s attempts to stage a controversial beauty pageant for landmine survivors in Cambodia.
Over the course of a year, Feingold and his cinematographer, Brian Johnson, followed Traavik’s travels through the country as he recruited participants from each of the country’s 20 provinces.
Eventually, the pageant is outlawed by the Cambodian government for “causing shame to the Cambodian people,” but the cameras keep rolling, and the pageant continues both online and overseas.
The film culminates with a risky journey back over the Cambodian border to crown the winner with her grand prize — a $20,000 prosthetic leg made from titanium.
As a filmmaker, Feingold is no stranger to controversial subjects. In 2004 he directed the Gemini award-winning film Prisoners of Age, a documentary that examined the self-described “garbage of society” — geriatric convicts — and the often grim circumstances they face as their lives come to an end in prison.
A few years earlier, in 2001, he won an Emmy for his film Heroines, which used music, poetry and photography to illustrate the lives of women trying to survive in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
Even still, Feingold admits he was a little taken aback when Miss Landmine generated a slew of hateful, fiery messages online — mostly on feminist blogs and websites.
Some detractors argued that the pageant was sexist in nature, while others accused Traavik and the film crew of being exploitative white colonialists.
Some even went so far as to suggest the pageant sexualized the prosthetic limbs, making Feingold’s film a piece of amputee porn.
“I’ve heard it all, but I still truly believe it’s a noble effort,” says Feingold. “It meant so much to these people to have someone come and say ‘you’re beautiful.’ It made a huge difference in their lives.”
Feingold says he also hopes people won’t avoid seeing the film based on any presumptions.
“I think sometimes people hear about the pageant and their initial reaction is ‘that must be disgusting,’” he says. “I would encourage people to keep an open mind and watch it. It’s actually a movie full of contrast, irony, and beauty.”
This Saturday, Oct. 16, Feingold will fly to San Francisco to attend the film’s world premier. The following week he’ll fly to Norway to screen the documentary at the prestigious Bergen International Film Festival.
Canadian viewers will get their first chance to see the film when it premiers on Canadian television on November 22 at 6 p.m. on the CBC’s documentary channel.
For more on the Miss Landmine Pageant, visit www.miss-landmine.org.
1 comment:
Cambodia like the rest of the world is all about image and beauty. On the initial outlook of the miss land mine pageant it definitely suggest that the victims of land mines have not been forgotten. And that given the circumstances of their despair they are loved and welcome in any house hold as one of gods beautiful creations. Nontheless alas that is not so in so many aspects of Cambodian society where the obsession with having white skin, beautiful hair and all your body parts where they should be!
Several months ago I was in the Royal Rattanak Hospital waiting to pay my account. There was a blind man with a dishevel face burnt from acid escorted into the hospital by a nurse. She sat him on the chair next to me. I thought what a beautiful man! The lady sitting opposite him obviously did think so. She gave an obvious disgusted look on her face as if her personal space had been invaded. I wanted so much to yell at her. The blind man was none the wise at what was happening before him. I knew then that she only confirmed to me what many people do. Discrimination.
The same for the miss land mine pageant. The only reason that the miss land mine pageant was disapproved by the Cambodian government was that it was demoralizing the typical traditions that are expected of Khmer Women. Yet what the Cambodian government really wanted to do was the same reaction of the women at the Royal Rattanak hospital when she looked at the blind man who suffered from several years of acid burns. The government like her were ignorant and only wanted to look at the beautiful things in life that we were superficial and fake. Women with white skin, and all their body parts in the right places.
So thank you for the Miss Land Mine pageant and also for the people which society tends to shun and forget!
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