FIFA 2012: Les images retrouvées des Khmers rouges – a chilling time capsule from Cambodia

A tourist looks at portraits of victims of the Khmer Rouge at the Tuol Sleng genocide museum in Phnom Penh on February 2, 2009. Up to two million people were executed or died of starvation and overwork as the Khmer Rouge dismantled modern Cambodian society during its rule in a bid to forge a communist utopia. (TANG CHHIN SOTHY/AFP/Getty Images)

A Cambodian man looks at pictures of former Khmer Rouge leader Brother No. 2, Nuon Chea (L), former Khmer Rouge leader head of state Khieu Samphan (2nd L), former Khmer Rouge deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs Ieng Sary (2nd R) and former Khmer Rouge leader ex-social affairs minister Ieng Thirith (R) during the trial of former Khmer Rouge leaders at the Extraordinary Chamber in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) in Phnom Penh on November 21, 2011. (TANG CHHIN SOTHY/AFP/Getty Images)

A tourist places incense sticks in memory of Khmer Rouge victims as she visits the former infamous Khmer Rouge Tuol Sleng prison, known as S21 and now turned into a genocide museum, in Phnom Penh on January 31, 2012. (TANG CHHIN SOTHY/AFP/Getty Images)

March 24, 2012
By Liz Ferguson
Montreal Gazette (Montreal, Quebec, Canada)

The movie The Blair Witch Project was fiction, masquerading as “found footage.”

But Mystères d’archives:1978. Les images retrouvées des Khmers rouges is genuine found footage. The 26 minute-long film is chilling because we know now that many of the people we see in it would be dead within a very few years.

In 1975 the Khmer Rouge took control of Cambodia. All the inhabitants of the capitol, Phnom Penh, were expelled from the city and forced to work in the countryside. Intellectuals (a pair of glasses could mark you as such) were killed, jailed or sent to re-education camps.

Opening footage shows the streets of Phnom Penh empty and deserted, looking like a ghost town. The cinemas are closed, the banks are closed – there is no longer a banking system. People no longer use money.

We’re shown some earlier footage by way of contrast – a packed stadium, busy streets, and people welcoming French president Charles de Gaulle.

In the propaganda footage in Les images retrouvées des Khmers rouges, nobody looks like they’re being forced to do anything, they’re smiling, in fact, and no one seems to be starving, either, though many did starve to death.

However, the narrator provides helpful analysis, pointing out things that we might not notice ourselves. Sometimes the screen is divided into a grid, with certain areas highlighted, to make something more obvious.

The fact that someone is wearing shoes means this segment was shot early in the Khmer rouge regime, because later on there were no shoes.

Some people are wearing city clothes, which must be the same things they were wearing when they were forced to leave, and likely the only possessions they still have.

A light pole is an indication that the people were forced to work long into the night.

We see some very young children doing manual labour. We’re told that they were separated from their parents and could no longer call them mother and father. Everyone became their “aunts” and “uncles.” These children were taught to snitch on anyone who seemed to be acting disloyal, so they had the power of life and death over their elders.

There’s footage of Pol Pot, shot by visiting Yugoslavs, showing him well-fed and smiling broadly – he does indeed look like a good-natured uncle, yet we know that starvation was widespread and that he ordered the deaths of millions.

When the revolutionaries have a general meeting the narrator points out that not one person in the audience has glasses or a watch (both forbidden) and yet some of the leaders do.

At yet another meeting, when the big shots arrive, Nuon Chea, known as Brother No. 2, will not shake hands with one of the men waiting to greet him. We’re told that that man was later assassinated, on suspicion of something or other (paranoia was rampant) and so was his family.

The footage we see is propaganda, but since all the cinemas had been closed, who was it for?

That seems to be a question that our otherwise helpful narrator cannot answer.

Mystères d’archives. . . is on a double bill with L’Occupation sans relâche, which I have not seen. Gazette colleague Jeff Heinrich did see it, though.

His take: “Sacha Guitry, Arletty, Tino Rossi, Fernandel, Maurice Chevalier – all of them stayed in France to entertain the masses during the Nazi occupation of 1940-44. Others like Jean Gabin and Louis Jouvet went overseas for the duration. Willing collaborators, fellow travellers or active resisters, they all represented France’s artistic soul during the awful years of Vichy, which this 85-minute doc examines with insight and compassion.”

Jeff Heinrich and T’Cha Dunlevy have written mini reviews of other films being shone at FIFA 2012. You can read them here: The Gazette’s FIFA mini reviews, and here: More Gazette FIFA mini reviews.

Mystères d’archives:1978. Les images retrouvées des Khmers rouges and L’Occupation sans relâche will be shown Saturday, March 24, 2012 at 8:30 in Salle Claude Jutra of Cinémathèque québécoise, 335 de Maisonneuve Blvd. E. as part of FIFA – The International Festival of Films on Art/ Le Festival International du Film sur l’Art. Both films are in French.