Filmmaker Hopes to Bring Justice in Acid Attack

Tat Marina

By Men Kimseng, VOA Khmer
Original report from Washington
30 October 2009

Skye Fitzgerald, whose recent documentary, “Finding Face,” chronicles the life of acid attack victim Tat Marina, hopes support built from the film will go toward punishing the perpetrators and finding justice for his subject.

“One of our strategies with releasing the film here in the United States is to garner more support,” Fitzgerald told VOA Khmer in Washington, where he is on a tour to promote the film.

He had come to the capital, he said, “to make sure that legislators, politicians, and folks from the human rights community have a chance to access the film, learn about Tat Marina’s story, and hopefully get more fully engaged with the issues the film raises.”

Tat Marina, a young karaoke singer who was severely disfigured and nearly killed when she was doused with acid at a market in Phnom Penh in 1999, is expected to speak at the film’s launch in Washington, as she did when it showed in Portland, Ore.

Fitzgerald has also begun sending DVDs by request to Cambodia and has encouraged the distribution of copies.

“It’s not been a project that we engaged with for financial gains necessarily,” he said, “but it is a project that we couldn’t say no to.

“It was one that we felt very powerfully about, because of the nature of the story, because we knew that Marina hadn’t had a chance before to seek out any justice for herself or the family,” he said. “And so we felt very dedicated to making sure we took our resources and used them to help her and the family to tell the story.”

The film has invoked anger and sympathy in its viewers so far, from Americans and Cambodians alike. (The wife of a senior official is suspected in the attack, but no arrests have ever been made.)

“Through what I’ve heard it is injustice for her, and I want to personally see her pictures, and want to know how good the story is,” Keo Ang, a market vendor in Svay Rieng province, told VOA Khmer by phone. “Therefore I want a DVD, to show it to my family and some people so that they are able to understand more about her life.”

Portland Filmmaker Documents Acid Attack Victim's Story

Tat Marina

Skye Fitzgerald

Portland, OR August 21, 2009
BY GEOFF NORCROSS
Oregon Public Broadcasting

Ten years ago, Tat Marina was 16, a pretty rising star in the karaoke video scene in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

She was involved in a sexual relationship with a middle-aged man, who – she later learned – was in fact Cambodia’s Undersecretary of State: a man named Svay Sitha.

In December of 1999, Cambodian police say Marina was attacked in a Phnom Penh market.

She was thrown to the ground, knocked unconscious, and doused with nitric acid.

Tat Marina: “I felt something burning behind my neck through my back. And I got up and there’s acid all over my body and my face,and I’m trying to look for who did that. I feel it burning, and I scream for help. The acid was on my body, burning badly. I couldn’t see, couldn’t open my eye. And I thought I’m going to be blind.”

Marina was burned on more than 40 percent of her body.

The burns were so deep on her face, her ears eventually had to be removed.

According to witnesses, one of the perpetrators was Svay Sitha’s wife.

A warrant for her arrest was issued, but Cambodia’s culture of impunity has protected her and her powerful husband for ten years.

Portland filmmaker Skye Fitzgerald has documented Marina’s story in a new film called Finding Face.

Fitzgerald says he and his collaborators were considering a film about acid attacks on women in general, but Marina’s story kept coming up in their research.

Tat Marina has had over two-dozen reconstructive surgeries on her face in the past ten years, most of them at Shriners Hospital in Boston, where she now lives.

You can meet Marina and the filmmakers at a special screening, this Sunday evening at Portland Art Museum.