Cambodian premiere

Tonight's film, that we kept under wraps for safety reasons before the screening, seemed to go down well with the invited packed crowd at Meta House. Finding Face was given its Cambodian premiere having only had its first ever showing in Geneva in March. The safety aspect related to the family, who are still living in Cambodia, of the film's main subject, the singer Tat Marina, who was disfigured by an acid attack in 1999. The attack on Marina signalled a spate of copycat attacks which still continue today. As for Marina, she is rebuilding her life in America and that was the heart-warming part of an otherwise at times sombre film that highlights a culture of impunity and lack of justice for victims that shows no sign of dissipating. Directors Skye Fitzgerald and Patti Duncan did a good job of telling the Marina story without over-egging or sensationalizing it. Read more here.

For the month of July, Meta House will present its usual eclectic mix of film screenings, discussions and a brand new Global Hybrid exhibition from the 2nd, with works from Khmer and US-based artists, such as Ouer Sokuntevy, Leang Seckon and Stephane Janin. My pick of the film screenings start with the evening when I will present a double-bill of Belonging and New Year Baby on Friday 10th at 7pm, in which two women return to find their roots in Cambodia. It will be the first showing of the Tamara Gordon-directed documentary Belonging here in Cambodia, the story of Li-Da Kruger, who left Phnom Penh as a baby and who returns to find the truth about her past. More here. This Friday, 3rd, Out of the Poison Tree - the return of Thida Butt Mam to the country of her birth - gets another screening, alongwith Kampuchea Death & Rebirth, a film shot after the Khmer Rouge left the city in 1979. On Thursday 9th a night of poetry, music and film includes the female chapei player Ouch Savy, while Saturday 11th will host the first ever Cambodian movie featuring a taboo lesbian love story in Who Am I? Dengue Fever's Sleepwalking Through The Mekong gets another airing on Friday 17th and Rithy Panh's film, Burnt Theater, will be screened on Tuesday 21st. And there's lots more besides.

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!