California Khmer

Dianna Brang, Suely Ngouy, executive director of the Khmer Girls, Linda Moy, Mary Savady, Sovanduongchan So, Jennefer Heng, Joy Yanga, group coordinator, and Samantha Chhim worked on the film "Coming Together," which looks at how the Khmer Rouge still touches the lives of Cambodian immigrants and their American-born children. The film will be shown at LBCC's Pacific Campus today at 3:30 p.m. (Steven Georges/Staff Photographer)

Long Beach girls create film about being Cambodian and American

06/20/2008
By Greg Mellen, Staff writer
Long Beach Press Telegram

LONG BEACH - One talked to her father about his memories of the genocide. Another looked within herself. Another talked to a newly arrived immigrant. And gradually their six individual stories were melded into one.

The aptly named "Coming Together" is the result.

The 30-minute documentary filmed by six teenagers from Long Beach-based Khmer Girls in Action provides an episodic series of glimpses into what it means to be a first-generation Cambodian-American teen in California.

The filmmakers, Jennefer Heng, 17; Dianna Brang, 15; Sovanduongchan So, 16; Samantha Chhim, 17; Linda Moy, 17; and Mary Savady, 16, each took a piece of the Cambodian-American teen puzzle. With the help of Khmer Girls in Action coordinator Joy Yanga and USC film instructor Mariano Elepano, "Coming Together" did just that.

It came together so well, in fact, that it was chosen for inclusion in the Los Angeles Film Festival where it will officially debut next weekend. Those who would like an early glimpse can attend a free prescreening today at Long Beach City College.

Using perspectives from survivors of the Khmer Rouge atrocities, youngsters who struggle to understand their elders, and immigrants who move to the United States and embrace the country, the movie touches on connections and disconnections young Cambodians feel both toward America and the culture and homeland of their elders.

"I think the title tells it all," said Moy, a Poly student, about how the different perspective eventually dovetail.

"We were working on ideas and concept, and we needed a jumping point," Yanga said. "We realized we have more in common even though we have very different stories."

Savady, a Wilson High student, said she hoped the film would help other teens understand they're not alone in the feelings of isolation from their parents.

Heng, who just graduated from Poly, said talking to her father about his experiences with the genocide gave her a new appreciation and respect for him.

"He was emotional, and it was very personal," Heng said. "So when I heard my dad talk about it, I was able to connect. Some of the details were very scary."

Suely Ngouy, the executive director of Khmer Girls, said the film clears up misunderstandings

"I think there's a perception that the youth know what happened," Ngouy said. "They really don't."

While youngsters may understand in general terms that they are the children of refugees from a terrible war, often they have no idea about their own parents' stories.

The film grew from a $30,000 grant from the California Council for the Humanities as part of a campaign called "How I See It," which encouraged teens to explore their lives and cultures through film.

The six teens worked on the film for nearly a year interviewing both survivors of the Khmer Rouge genocide and peers to gauge the effects of the war 33 years after the rise of Pol Pot.

The Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia in 1975. By the time they were ousted by the Vietnamese army in 1979, about 1.7$ 5 $7Cambodians had died from executions, disease and malnutrition.

Beginning in 1979, Cambodian refugees began pouring into the United States, many arriving in Long Beach, which boasts the largest Cambodian population in the United States.

The Khmer Girls in Action was founded in 1997 as a project of the Asians & Pacific Islanders for Reproductive Health to deal with teen pregnancy issues.

It was reconfigured in 2002 to teach young Southeast Asian women how to become leaders in the community and help shape the future for Cambodian-American community.

The group meets weekly during the school year and twice weekly in the summer. Membership is free and usually there are about 25 girls in the program at any given time.

In addition to attending public events, the group engages in various advocacy and academic projects. In 2009, for example, the group will work with UCLA on a project to study the transmission of trauma between generations.

The Khmer Girls movie is one of eight Youth Digital Filmmaker films that grew from the Humanities fund, three of which will play in Los Angeles.

Today's prescreening will be held at 3:30 p.m. in Room 107 Dyer Hall on the Long Beach City College Pacific Coast Campus, 1305 East Pacific Coast Highway in Long Beach.

The free L.A. Film Festival presentation will be June 29, at noon, at the Italian Cultural Institute, 1023 Hilgard Ave., Los Angeles.

greg.mellen@presstelegram.com, 562-499-1291

Cambodian Youth “Coming Together” To Make Movie, Learn Heritage

Khmer Girls in Action (http://www.kgalb.org/)

June 19, 2008
By Carla M. Collado
Staff Writer
Downtown Gazette (Long Beach, California, USA)

When six local Cambodian teenage girls pre-screen their film, “Coming Together” at Long Beach City College on Saturday, they’ll make public the fruits of an almost yearlong journey to learn about their parents’ experiences as refugees of war and to explore their own identities as first-generation Cambodian-Americans.

“I feel more complete in a way,” Jennefer Heng, 17, said of working on the film. “It helped me understand my identity, where I came from.”

The girls — ages 14-18 — from Long Beach’s Khmer Girls in Action (KGA) started working on the film in October 2007 as part of the How I See It: Youth Digital Filmmakers project. The project was sponsored by the California Council for the Humanities, which gave KGA a $30,000 grant to put together its film.

For months, the teens explored the disconnections of life in America (particularly culture, language, socio-economic status and education) to find connections they have with refugees of the Khmer Rouge war, KGA Executive Director Suely Ngouy explained.

They interviewed their parents, relatives and other members of the community, such as the founders of Cambodia Town. They worked closely with Karen Quintiliani, anthropology professor at California State University, Long Beach, to learn about the history of Cambodians in Long Beach and to place the film’s stories into a historical context.

The group also worked with Mar Elepano of Visual Communications (and faculty member at the University of Southern California) to develop their story-telling skills and learn about camera techniques. Each girl had her own video camera, developed her own story line, wrote her own interview questions and produced, directed and edited her piece of the film, Ngouy said.

She explained that one of the biggest challenges for the girls was finding people who were willing to open up about their traumatic experiences escaping the Khmer Rouge and witnessing genocide, and about the hopes and dreams they have for their children.

Heng’s main interview source was her father, who was a victim of the war.

“He never talked about it at all with me,” Heng said. “I actually had to interview him several times…. It was really emotional for me to hear about my dad’s story. It made me respect him more, understand him more.”

One of the reasons she decided to participate in the film project was to discover more about her culture and her people’s history, she said.

“It was a personal experience for me,” Heng said. “It wasn’t just about making a film.”

Ngouy said that one of the most common “connections” between the teenagers and their war-refugee relatives was a desire to find a “home” or place of belonging in the world.

“They’ve really questioned, explored and discovered an aspect of their identity that they otherwise wouldn’t have discovered if they hadn’t gone through this process,” Ngouy said of the girls.

She said that the film reflects the group’s desire to inspire Long Beach’s Cambodian community — the largest outside of Cambodia — to work together to bridge generational gaps and to improve the community.

“It often takes the children or grandchildren to be able to tell the stories,” Ngouy said. “I hope that this will be a healing process for the community, to be able to begin a dialogue…. Whatever history is passed on is going to have to be passed on through the younger generation.”

The 30-minute film, “Coming Together” will pre-screen at 3 p.m. Saturday, June 21, at LBCC, Dyre Hall Room FF 107 (1305 E. Pacific Coast Hwy.), and will premiere at noon Sunday, June 29, at the Los Angeles Film Festival. The group also hopes to show the film at local schools throughout the year, Ngouy said.

Visit www.californiastories.org or www.kgalb.org.