Cambodia

Movie Night! After blogging on several countries where I didn’t find any movies, Cambodia feels like a film festival. Cambodia has been putting out films since the 1920s. I’m just picking a few easily accessible films, each for a different audience. They are in order of the time period they depict.

Lord Jim

I was required to read Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad in graduate school. It’s not a Cambodian story but the 1965 film starring Peter O’Toole was partially filmed at Angkor Wat. The title character might inspire us to discuss how to live after we don’t live up to our own ideals. It is available to watch on Amazon. They’ll show you the HD option for $3.99. Click on “More Purchase Options” to get to the SD option for $2.99.

If you don’t see enough of Angkor’s beautiful setting from the movie, check this video from The Khan Academy for more: https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ap-art-history/south-east-se-asia/cambodia-art/v/angkor-temple-mountains

Two Brothers

Two Brothers is a family movie my mom would like to watch, especially with some of the home school kids she loves. It’s set in 1920s Cambodia, part of the French Colonial period and follows two tiger cubs who were captured separately and reunite unexpectedly. It is free to watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9hLoRXMBrc

If you want to know how they filmed tigers and humans acting together, see: https://www.awn.com/vfxworld/two-brothers-facing-challenges-wild

If you want more information about the looting of Cambodian antiquities that is shown in this film, see this link to another video from The Khan Academy: https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/art-asia/southeast-asia/mainland-se-asia/v/the-looting-of-cambodian-antiquities. This video is a part of a series, so click around if you want more.

The Killing Fields

When The Killing Fields came out in the 1980s, I assumed it was similar to movies I had recently seen about Cambodia’s eastern neighbor Vietnam. I wasn’t interested in more jungle battles and dazed soldiers, so I didn’t watch it. Watching it now for this blog, I discovered I was wrong. The Killing Fields is a true story, even a buddy movie of two journalists, one American and one Cambodian. On a side note, the actor who played the Cambodian journalist was a Cambodian doctor who had also survived a Cambodian work camp. He is one of only two non-professional actors to win an Academy Award for acting. It can be watched on either Amazon or YouTube for $2.99.

First They Killed My Father

I watched First They Killed My Father based on the book by Loung Ung on Netflix in June, 2020. Because Netflix changes their films often, I can’t guarantee how long it will be there. This true story shows what it was like for families and children during the time of Khmer Rouge.

The Missing Picture

The Missing Picture from French-Khmer director Rithy Panh is part-documentary, part-clay figure animation on his own story giving a third perspective the time of the Khmer Rouge. It was nominated in the shortlist of the Academy Awards Best Foreign Film category and can be found on Amazon both in the original French and in English starting at $2.99.

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider

Allan and I watched Lara Croft: Tomb Raider when it came out in the theaters in 2001. I had never heard of Lara Croft. He had, and so had many other gamers. It’s a fun action/adventure film showing beautiful settings around Angkor. As of June 2020, it can be watched on NBC.com and SyFy Wire as long as your cable provider includes them. Amazon has it for $2.99.

Same Same But Different

Same Same But Different is a true love story of a German backpacker and a Cambodian bar girl. I enjoyed the story, the charisma of the actors, the beautiful shots of Cambodia, and some insights into cross cultural dating. Languages spoken are German, English and Khmer with subtitles. You can find it free on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEMs4ewW0vo (push the CC button in lower right of the film screen to turn on the subtitles).

More Than Movies

I had to stop somewhere. Of the many, many Cambodian movies, Wikipedia has descriptions of more than 30 of them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_Cambodia. I also watched the documentary on Cambodia from the series Asia’s Monarchies on Amazon.

If you would rather read a book than watch a movie, the Los Angeles County Library has Unpolished Gem by Alice Pung about Cambodian immigrants to Australia and In the Shadow of the Banyan by Vaddey Ratner, another story of the genocide.

If you would rather eat, Cambodian restaurants might not be as common as the restaurants of Thailand, their neighbor to the west, but I still have a decent list of Cambodian restaurants I want to try in San Diego, Long Beach, Los Angeles, and Oakland. The first Cambodian restaurant I tried is Chez Sovan in Campbell. I ate there with my daughter Kristen in the first year of her masters at San Jose State. We both loved the fish cooked in banana leaf with coconut milk! If you want to try making your own Cambodian food, try https://www.food.com/topic/cambodian

The Crazy Tourist has nine galleries on Cambodia, showing what a popular tourist destination it is (https://www.thecrazytourist.com/?s=cambodia). When this pandemic is over, you might want to plan travel to Cambodia using your local travel advisor. Shout out to my favorite travel advisor, Kaitlin Darnell at Laura's Travel in Redlands. May the travel industry survive and thrive - may we all survive, thrive, recognize our mutual humanity, learn to deal with our conflicts, and allow peace and health to flourish in Cambodia and throughout the world.

Photo Credit: James Wheeler https://unsplash.com/photos/9zXMb-E8pI0