Cambodian memories depicted on screen

A scene from “S21, the Khmer Rouge Killing Machine”

3:00 pm, June 20, 2014

The Yomiuri Shimbun

The life of filmmaker Rithy Panh has been filled with unusual twists and turns. Eurospace in Shibuya, Tokyo, will screen a selection of five of the Cambodian auteur’s works from June 28 to July 4.

Panh was born in Phnom Penh in 1964, and spent his early childhood at a labor camp under the Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror. He fled Cambodia for Thailand at the age of 15 and, a year later, traveled to France, where he graduated from L’Institut des hautes etudes cinematographiques (institute for advanced cinematographic studies) in Paris. Since then, Panh has directed many works that blur the lines between fiction and documentary, projecting his memories of Cambodia to the screen.

His latest work, “The Missing Picture,” was granted the Grand Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival in 2013. The same year, it also became the first Cambodian film to be nominated for the Foreign Language Film category of the Academy Awards.

Screenings of the film in Japan will begin July 5 under the title: “Kieta E: Khmer Rouge no Shinjitsu.” The other five films will be shown beforehand to mark the screening of his latest work.

Among the five films are his most famous works, “S21, the Khmer Rouge Killing Machine” (Japanese title: “S21: Khmer Rouge no Gyakusatsusha-tachi”) and “Shiiku: The Catch,” a Cambodia-set film adaptation of the novel “Shiiku” (The Catch) by Kenzaburo Oe. The other three films are: “The Land of the Wandering Souls” (Sasurau Monotachi no Chi); “The People of Angkor” (Angkor no Hitobito); and “Paper Cannot Wrap Up Embers” (Kami wa Yojin o Tsutsumenai).

Visit www.eurospace.co.jp for more information