One of the early, unexpected fruits of our time in Phnom Penh is the surfacing of a wealth of videos from a now-forgotten age of cinema in Cambodia.
These videos were found by our project partner Kanitha and a Davy Chou, and we’re very grateful for their generosity in sharing them.
The films tend to fall into two categories - fantastic, mythological dramas, and more realist depictions of affluent 60s Cambodia. Much was lost during Khmer Rouge, but this short excerpt gives a good sense of the fragments that have survived - both in the character of the original clips (boy-girl romance, pastoral beauty, deranged musical percussion), and the effects of time (layer upon layer of erosion, continual jumpcuts, way-off audio-visual synchronisation…). Basically, the best of classic video art techniques before you even begin working on it.
These two actors were among the most famous of their generation (= Brangelina or whatever), and both were killed by Khmer Rouge. In the middle of this clip, there is this sudden moment - huge over-saturation and a strange dream sequence, where they seem to be suspended in space, flying, like angels, disappearing into whiteness. We are clearly coming to this retrospectively, but as they fade from the screen, eternally young in cinematic dream-time … well, you make your own conclusions.
Both Kanitha and Davy (who offered much of the above analysis) also discussed the way that although famous 1960s musicians such as Sinn Sisamouth recieve cross-generational devotion, the low quality and lack of distribution of older films within the country means that huge film stars of 60s are almost completely unknown amongst the younger generation, even whilst they remain iconic to those over 40 years of age.
Its an interesting situation, and certainly one that is giving us pause for thought. Anyway - this post is, i guess, a bit of teaser. Kanitha and i are starting to explore a video piece based on some of this material, and we’ll update you as soon as we start working on it. In the meantime, we can also post some technicolour, echo-plex god rants, if enough people are interested…
