Word: cambodia
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Here's something they don't teach in film school: how to make a motion picture in Cambodia, a war-ravaged country without such cinema essentials as, believe it or not, movie theaters. On top of that challenge, director Fay Sam Ang took on the additional burden of making a mythological film about a beautiful half-snake, half-human without the aid of digital special effects. Ang's solution: to glue live snakes onto a cap worn by his exceedingly cooperative leading lady, 17-year old newcomer Pich Chanboramey. "Sometimes the snakes would leap off her head," the director recalls...
...result is Kuon Puos Keng Kang, The Snake King's Child, one of the first major film productions in Cambodia since the Khmer Rouge regime in the 1970s. Considering the recent history of the land of the Killing Fields, few countries have more stories to tell on film, but no one's telling them. Fay Sam Ang's film, which was released last month to coincide with the Year of the Snake?Cambodians also celebrate the Chinese Lunar New Year?is designed to change that and spark a cinematic rebirth of what was once a thriving industry. "I think...
Hollywood, in fact, has recently discovered Cambodia as one of the world's most exotic backdrops. The Angelina Jolie-vehicle Tomb Raider shot scenes in the magnificence of Angkor Wat last year, and Matt Dillon will begin filming Beneath the Banyan Tree in mid-February, which will mark his debut as a director. But Hollywood brings in all the talent and equipment it needs, and only has to do location filming in Cambodia's arduous conditions. Cambodian filmmakers hardly have that luxury...
...According to one estimate by Panitan Wattanayagorn, a regional security specialist, one-third of the arms flowing into the region is left over from Cambodia's decades of war. Another third consists of new weapons smuggled into Cambodia - and sometimes into Thailand through neighboring Laos - from China. The last third is from illegal sales by the Thai army, like the one I saw with...
...middlemen like Joe. When the police do crack down, those at the top, the brains running the muscle, are never touched. Take a man like Samnang. A 45-year-old arms trader, his daytime job is as a border guard on the Thai side of the border with Cambodia. "I am an ex-Khmer Rouge soldier," he says, smiling easily. We are talking outside his office at the bustling gateway, and Samnang is dressed for work - blue shirt and pants and a walkie-talkie. "Even when we were in power, I started selling weapons to make more money. You know...