Director, Film Maker Rithy Panh
A user by the name of khemara15 posted this interivew on
khmerconnection.com. I find it very interesting. So, I'm reposting the French version and the unofficial translation here again to share with you all.
Unofficial translation of an interview with Rithy Panh
In Cambodia, Cinema is a Medicine
Rithy Panh (R.P.) talks about his work on memories and identity in a post-genocidal society marked by the ravages of post-colonialism and receiving a humanitarian perfusion.
Juliette Binoche (J.B.) is particularly attached to Cambodia and has seen some of Rithy Panh’s work during the last Film Festival at La Rochelle. She wanted to meet him.
J.B. : What was your first contact with France?
R.P. : I ended up as a 15-year old refugee in Grenoble. I was cold and hungry. I was lost in the midst of the mountains.
J.B. : and previously?
R.P.: It was the genocide in Cambodia. My family and I were transported by the Khmer Rouge from Phnom Penh to a distant place in the country. There was nothing, no house, no food and not many people. I remember the train that took us there, locked wagons, and this jerky sound that is so memorable that it still comes back to me from time to time, 30 years later. I rediscovered it at the Cine-Club of Grenoble in Alain Resnaid’s “Nuit et Brouillard†( a 1955 documentary about the Final Solution transportation of Jews into concentration camps). I am making films today not to forget this sound.
J.B. Can poverty disappear in Cambodia?
R.P. There was poverty before the Genocide, there is still poverty today. This does not diminish the horror of the genocide but this is to say that the poor always pay dearly in Cambodia, regardless of the regime. Cambodia is not a country where people starve. There is agriculture, rice, rain. And yet, under the KR, people were starving to death.
J.B. And your family?
R.P. My grand-parents were poor peasants. My father was the only child out of 8 to have studied. He became a school teacher in Phnom Penh. If there was no genocide, we would have been happy, and especially educated. But my parents died during the deportation and eight of my brothers, sisters, cousins, grand-parents as well. My past is that of a destroyed family.
J.B. Can we try to explain this genocide?
R.P. Somebody who has been through it cannot grasp everything. I don’t want to understand. To try and understand is to want to find solutions, excuses.
J.B. But to make sure that it does not happen again. One has to understand history, where it hurts, where it’s hidden. When I played the character of my last film “ Breaking and entering†directed by Anthony Minghella, which deals with violence in Bosnia, I tried to go back into the past. Why is it that this systematic slaughter repeated itself in history?
R.P: One would have to isolate this Evil Part in human beings and analyse it as a scientist would do in a lab with cancerous cells.
J.B. In the former Yugoslavia, once can see that the lid blew off. After 35 years of socialism under Tito, which brought everybody together without too much thinking, old feuds, hatred from the past just came back in greater intensity. A military defeat from 100 years ago but seen as if it only happened yesterday…
R.P. : This raises the issue of education which is at the center of my films. If the Cambodian peasants had been educated, the majority would not have become executioners. That’s definitely why I always come back to the issue of education in my films.
J.B. There is a beautiful part in “Land of the Wandering Souls†when two men had to choose among four sons who would finish the work…
R.P. Each son is an element and the men have to understand and choose…
J.B. I don’t know whether they had gone to school but one gets the impression that the men chose by relying on culture, which mixes cosmic poetry with deep knowledge of Mother nature…
R.P. It’s natural intelligence, not schooling, that has always impressed me. In their fashion, they already explained globalization to us. In trying to lay this fiber optic cable that crosses the whole country. It’s about technology, big business, going from Frankfurt to Shanghai but these peasants don’t understand everything. They know that wealth is running underneath their country and they are benefiting a little. They dig but they are sure that they will benefit from what is not available to them right now: when the broadband transforms itself into land, water, fire, wind. One must listen to the poorest and the simplest people.
J.B. Do you think Westerners should interact this way with Third World countries?
R.P.: This kind of relationship should not be overlooked. But it sounds too much and too often like neo-colonialism “ we are bringing you civilisation, modernity and you keep quiet†It’s a way of alleviating guilt for little money. I think that the best way to help poor countries is to be good people at home. Charity begins at home. Obviously, emergency situations require immediate help but foreign aid is not a simple matter of sending a check.
J.B. But how does one help with actions?
R.P. Often, a Westerner does a good deed but does not realize that it is a bad deed in a poor country.
J.B. You mean, aid is not real on the ground?
R.P. On the contrary, it’s a real industry in Cambodia, a system. There are over 700 NGOs over there, it’s a booming industry for the past 20 years. If humanitarian aid stops, the country collapses. And that’s precisely the problem. To give clothes to a child, it’s a way of saving her from prostitution. But that’s not enough. The country should be given the means and the opportunity to save itself. Emergency aid is fine but to rebuild, the Cambodians should be given the opportunity to take care of itself. For an NGO, what is most important is to know when to withdraw: transfer knowledge, funds to Cambodians themselves. And it’s not easy, because that’s giving up power, financially, politically, symbolically.
J.B. So, there is no solution.
R.P. The main problem of poor people is to with identity: how to recover their identity, their memory, following colonisation and following genocide for Cambodia? No NGO can help with that. Everything has to happen at the collective level of consciousness. A people has to have self-respect. If it acquires an identity, it can have a strong memory, a history, an education and it can lead a struggle together to define a project, to live As a society.
J.B. Movie-making for you is a way to lead the struggle?
R.P; It’s especially to meet people and to help them recover their memory. I have not felt as enriched as when I meet Cambodians to make my movies, when I make them talk. That’s why I am making a lot of documentaries.
J.B. Documentaries are a stronger source of inspiration than works of fiction.
R.P. The best way is to handle fiction differently: start with an actress and observe her interactions with ordinary people.
J.B. Somewhat like the way Abbas Kiarostami handles his stories and lets his actors confront reality.
R.P. My last film “ The artists of the burnt theater “is of this type but it is produced strictly as a documentary. But you will never find a producer that finances this kind of fiction work.
J.B. Why not?
R.P. One can count on five fingers producers who want this and who can make a living out of it. Me, I would like to be free to do things I want to do. I have just started an AV center in Phnom Penh: There are four people with small DV cameras and they try to bring stories from Cambodia. It’s a center to archive and train. In Cambodia, there are 100 channels on cable and we are not able to get one. We should be able to do it. Once again, it’s a question of memory, therefore identity.
J.B. I have seen a lot of films on Apartheid then on Bosnia, two films which I have been in recently. And I realized how much freedom these DV cameras give to people with no money. Thus, a way to express oneself, to resist.
R.P. The arrival of digital saved us. People whom we meet since , after 4 or 5 months of filming, give us an experience that is 100 times richer.
J.B. When I saw your films at La Rochelle, the silence at the end of the screening was impressive. As if they were mirrors which reflected our lack of consciousness, our selfishness, our history as Westerners…
R.P. In Cambodia, you have the same thing. People don’t help one another very much. I think that the genocide, the experience of survival, has taught selfishness to Khmers, and it’s terrible because it still here, 25 years later. In my first film, “The Rice peopleâ€, the key theme is the solidarity, the mutual help among villagers. Today, these things are almost non-existent, fear has eradicated them. That’s why In Cambodia, the cinema is a medicine. People end up talking in front of the camera. They talk to one another, victims and executioners.
J.B. How was a film as tough as “S-21-The KR killing machine†received in Cambodia?
R.P. A few Executioners have come out in public. They tried to explain, with the help of victims. Silence has hidden guilt, which cinema, theater, song, poetry, art in general, uncovers. In front of history, however tragic, one has to assess oneself. For example, it’s about time France comes out and says that colonisation is one the biggest errors of Western powers.
J.B. We have never said it?R.P. The deputies have voted a law last February 23 how France should be proud of her colonial mission.J.B. That’s incredible.R.P. People are dreaming. Proud of France’s colonial mission! We are in 2005 and the deputies have voted this law! How do you expect the Third World countries to live in peace, given this kind of law?J.B. It’s necessary for the First World to help the Third World but how to do it is another matter.R.P. In its effort to help the Third World, The First World have caused a lot of pain. To civilize through colonialisation, it’s to bring knowledge, values, religion. But it is also to make money. But the Third World remains a child and will rebel. It’s like communism, or KR ideology. We are spreading good, therefore everybody should support it. And in the name of this ideal, we have the worst consequences: no more long hair, no more differences, everybody in black pajamas.J.B. Who is responsible?R.P. Everybody is. How did the peasant become a killer in Cambodia or Rwanda or in the former Yugoslavia? A few people are more responsible than others but political manipulation is at the heart of this terror. There were people who manipulated, spread terrors, pushed people to commit crimes. How did a few people could lead to so much hatred, this has been the subject of one of my films. It happened in Cambodia, in the newspapers, but also in Rwanda on the radio and in Serbia on TV. Or even here in France, it does not take much to create a political or economic situation.
J.B. Who is the most responsible? The person who speaks on the radio or the one who acts upon it and massacres people with a machete?R.P. It’s very complicated. Only time will reveal things and point to culpability. And we need several generations. The process may have an educational role but it is not sufficient. Justice should happen at the same time as the words. Impunity is very dangerous. If there is no justice, there is no guilt, no fault, no need to forgive, no feel for wandering souls.
J.B. Have you felt wandering souls?
R.P. I live with them, talk to them. I see dead people all around me. Every evening, my father, mother, brothers and cousins, friends. At the beginning, it was difficult. I am more at peace now.J.B. Do you know where the bodies of these people are?R.P. No, for the most part. I don’t know where my parents are. But the mourning, little by little, is to learn to live with the memory of these people.J.B. Do you have children?
R.P. I have a Cambodian daughter who was 3 months old when I adopted her 11 years ago. I don’t hide anything from her. I did not want to have any child myself. But there are so many orphans in Cambodia.
J.B. When I was in Cambodia, I went to an orphanage in Phnom Penh. Many Westerners, including French, adopt Cambodian children. What would you like to tell them?
R.P. I am against this type of adoption. Because couples adopt to solve their problem, not that of Cambodia.
J.B. But you adopted a little girl?
R.P. I am Khmer. It’s a meeting between my memory and that of my country, a way of rebuilding an identity. In adopting a little girl, I adopted a whole country. Adoptions in Cambodia are an industry. You pay, children are dressed up to beg for a Western lifestyle. I have seen couples who fly in, and who fly out within 3 days, since the NGOs have already reserved children. My heart aches. I find this humiliating. I am not against generosity but against the exploitation in the system.
J.B. If the Cambodian government took more into consideration the street children who are starving in Phnom Penh, there would be fewer NGOs and adoptions of this type.
R.P. Then the embargo on Cambodia that lasted 10 years , the support for the KR should have stopped, Western powers did not have clear policies on Cambodia, let’s not forget.
J.B. But you were adopted by France and by cinema. Through your films, you forged strong links between France and Cambodia. If everyone stayed in one’s country, through selfishness, what happens?
R.P. I am a pessimist, a skeptic. I see things from a negative perspective. It’s my nature. And as a cinematographer, I want to denounce things which are wrong.
J.B. How are you perceived in Cambodia?
RP. People think that I am perverse. They say “ please pipe down. You are sawing the tree branch we are sitting onâ€. I am perceived as a hellion, someone who prevents people who try to forget. But where do these Cambodians come from? There was not even a Khmer word for genocide. One must let them speak.
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