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Granted, the article below is old. I am just pleased to see its focus is on reviving Khmer cinema -- an area which I am a big fan. With that in mind, I like many other Khmer film makers would love to return to our motherland and offer a helping hand in reviving the film industry. I know our Khmer people are genetically gifted in the creative field as seen on Angkor Wat walls and ancient sculptures and statues our ancestors left behind to remind us of who we are and who we will be and how capable we all are but cinema has always been the field in which we once excelled and were exalted and hopefully we will excel again, but this time we will bring it to higher heights because some Khmers have honed their film making skills in other countries using advanced filming equipment, technics and special effects which they will gladly share with other up and coming Khmer artists. Since we Khmers have always been good story tellers through music and many other mediums, I'm sure there are endless emotionaly charged stories awaiting to be originated by Khmer screen writers residing across the globe. I am hoping in the next few years I'll find myself shooting feature films with Khmer film makers in the motherland like Rithy Panh had done many times before. He is an inspiration to us all and had left an impeccable trail for us all to follow; some of us will diverge from this trail and leave one of their own; an act that is encouraged by everyone. One of my favorite quotes: "do not go where the path may lead but go where there's no path and leave a trail". By Geoffrey Cain and Kounila Keo / December 16, 2009 Phnom Penh, Cambodia • A local, slice-of-life story from Monitor correspondents. Just before the communist Khmer Rouge marched into the capital in 1975, Tea Lim Koun, the director of the classic Cambodian film “The Snake Man” (1972), escaped bloodshed by fleeing to Canada. Over the next four years, the genocidal regime executed most of Phnom Penh’s remaining directors and actors, wiping out Cambodia’s vibrant filmmaking scene. Traumatized, Mr. Koun vowed never to make a film again. But he was overwhelmed when he learned that Davy Chou, the French Cambodian grandson of a famous director who disappeared in late 1969, had returned to Cambodia last summer to start an annual film festival. “The younger filmmakers will give hope to Cambodian society again,” Koun says. He sent his daughter to represent him and his films at the exhibition called “Golden Reawakening.” As the post-Khmer Rouge generation of Cambodians grows up, they’re producing a flurry of films that mimic the vintage style of the 1960s – widely considered the country’s golden era. Much of the revival is owed to educated filmmaker refugees who are repatriating to Cambodia from France and the United States and opening the country’s first film institutes at local universities. Mr. Chou, the grandson of Van Chann and a film professor at the Royal University of Phnom Penh, is at the forefront of the movement with his new film, “Twin Diamonds,” released in October. “People thought this would never happen, that Cambodians wouldn’t be able to come together and revive the arts,” he says. “Young people here are doing amazing things.” Read more: Tags: Cambodia Cut Off By Khmer Rouge Film Scene Revives At Refugees Return
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