Cloud cuckoo land

I hear that my least-favourite former Khmer Rouge cadre, Nhem En, has made the national press again today. His public relations office works as hard as that of Dengue Fever! This time he's offering a pair of Pol Pot's shoes and two of his own cameras, that he used to take pictures of the prisoners upon entry to Tuol Sleng, for no less than a cool 1/2 million dollars. Yes, US$500,000. He really does live in cloud cuckoo land. He's trying to raise funds for his own museum in the northern outpost of Anlong Veng, where he's the deputy governor. His museum will house his pictures of course, as well as a walking stick owned by Ta Mok, Pol Pot's toilet and the tyres used on his funeral pyre and a rice field - so far I'm not busting a gut to get to the musem. I think he needs to jazz that bit of the story up a bit more. His for-sale items will more than likely end up on eBay soon enough, and for a knockdown price, or for free, which is what usually happens when he attempts to sell anything, whether it be a photo or information. I was told once upon a time that a certain Khmer Rouge photographer could give me the inside story on the Christopher Howes murder (a British deminer killed by the Khmer Rouge in 1996) for the right price - I steered well clear.

Finding Face

Hats off to local newspaper The Cambodia Daily today with a couple of stories that caught my attention and which deserve a quick mention. The first is a new documentary film that will open today for its premiere at the International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights in Geneva, titled Finding Face. It's all about the case of teenage karaoke video star Tat Marina, who was doused in acid during an attack at the end of 1999. It cites the story of Marina's years of plastic surgery and her decision to never return to Cambodia, while the film also focuses on the spate of other attacks on women in the months that followed. No-one has ever been brought to justice for the attack on Marina. Skye Fitzgerald and his wife Patti Duncan created the 80-minute documentary but have no plans to show it in Cambodia for fear of reprisals against some of its subjects who still live here. Find out more at Spin Films. Fitzgerald's previous focus on Cambodia was in his 2007 film Bombhunters, whilst Tat Marina's story was also used as the basis for the graphic novel Shake Girl, which you can read about here.

Next up was the front cover lead of a story that never seems to go away, or come to fruition. It's Nhem En again, the guy who took the face photos of the ill-fated Tuol Sleng prisoners on arrival at S-21 during the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia's late '70s, and who now wants to build a museum documenting the Khmer Rouge using his own pictures. He's bought the land for his project which he will host in the former KR stronghold of Anlong Veng, where he is deputy governor and the museum will house his personal photos from 1975 up until 1998, though his S-21 pictures will not be used, which seems ill-advised to me. He's on the hunt for money of course, which sounds like a never-ending record in his case, claiming that a simple prototype museum which he wants to complete by the year end will cost him $50K out of his own pocket. You may recall that a film about him, The Conscience of Nhem En by director Steven Okazaki, was recently in the running for the best short documentary Oscar. When I see comments like, "the world should thank me for my work," and "everything I did was just following the regime's orders," alongwith his view that his photos are the reason that the world cares one jot about Cambodia and the suffering it went through, I get very annoyed that he gets so many column inches and then realise that I've just done exactly the same as the newspapers...duh!