The Best of Cambodia & Laos

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RECOMMENDED FILMS
The recent trauma of Cambodia has been
visited over and over again in both literature
and film. Roland Joffe’s 1984 movie, The
Killing Fields, chronicles the lives of foreign
journalists covering the fall of Phnom Penh
and the subsequent experiences of Cambodian
journalist Dith Pran at the hands of
the Khmer Rouge during the darkest of
periods. It is an excellent introduction to
recent history, looking at it through both
Cambodian and Western eyes.
These days, Cambodia is a tempting
backdrop for filmmakers from both Asia
and farther away. Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
with Angelina Jolie used Angkor as a set.
In 2002, Matt Dillon made the indescribably
complicated City of Ghosts, using
locations from all around the country. The
plot may be convoluted but the cinematography
is superb, and the film used
many real local characters in cameos,
including Michael Hayes, the then-editor
(and founder) of The Phnom Penh Post.
Cambodian director Rithy Pran made
an extraordinary documentary about Tuol
Sleng, the improvised Khmer Rouge
prison where thousands upon thousands
of people were tortured and killed. In S21:
The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine, one of
the only survivors of Toul Sleng, the artist
Vann Nath, actually confronts the prison
guards who did the torture and killing. It
is moving beyond belief as with immense
dignity Vann Nath questions the men who
did these inhuman and terrible things to
him and thousands of others. There are no
real conclusions, but it is an astounding
and historic marker.
RECOMMENDED BOOKS
There are many books about Cambodia,
plenty of them touching on the years of
turmoil. Jon Swain’s River of Time is a very
affecting story of his lifelong love affair with
Indochina and his journalistic experiences
in covering the Cambodian story. Nic Dunlop,
a British photographer who quite by
chance discovered the Khmer Rouge torturer
in chief, known as Duch, writes a
compelling story about that incident but
touches on many of the wider implications
in The Lost Executioner. It is beautifully
written and a page turner. One of the best
biographies of Pol Pot is by Philip Short
and is called Pol Pot. The Pol Pot Regime by
Ben Kiernan is a very academic but very
inclusive historical analysis of the whole era
and what made the Khmer Rouge tick.
Francois Bizot was a French ethnographer
who was captured and imprisoned by the
Khmer Rouge in 1973. His account, The
Gate, gives some insight into their maniacal
thinking in the days before they took
Phnom Penh. When the War Was Over is an
immensely thoughtful account of the
Khmer Rouge years by Washington Post
journalist Elizabeth Becker. She covered
Cambodia from the early ’70s on and actually
toured Democratic Kampuchea and
interviewed Pol Pot when he was still in
power. Lost Goddesses: Denial of Female
Power in Cambodian History by Dr. Trudy
Jacobsen is the first study to address the
place of women in Cambodian history. It is
a narrative and thoughtful tour de force,
revising accepted perspectives on history
and posing deep questions about modern
Cambodia in the light of history reexamined.
There has also been a series of autobiographies
by Khmer Rouge survivors who
were children at the time. Stay Alive My Son
by Pin Yathey, First They Killed My Father
by Loung Ung, and When Broken Glass
Floats by Chanrithy Him are among them,
but there are many others. Angkor by
George Coedes is the premier read on the
temples of Angkor. Khmer: The Lost Empire
of Cambodia by Thierry Zephir makes a
good guide and intro for a visit to Angkor.
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CAMBODIA IN DEPTH 2
CAMBODIA IN POPULAR CULTURE